The Black Hand, vol.45
My book is out this week, I am deranged
We usually have a macabre crime fact piece in this spot, but I’ve put it near the end so I can crow harder – All Shall Mourn is out tomorrow!! My book is out tomorrow!
It’s finally here – the book I never thought I’d get to finish, that my publisher didn’t want, that readers encouraged me to write. I mean, if you read the acknowledgements at the end of the book (You…you always read book acknowledgements, right? I can’t be the only one…👀) you’ll see that I put the blame for this book (lol) entirely on being ruthlessly enabled by people from this newsletter and Nailbiters and a few other places, who said shockingly motivating things like “I HAVE TO KNOW WHAT HAPPENS, PLEEEEEEASE” and “OMG YOU NEED TO WRITE THE LAST BOOK SO I CAN FIND OUT WHAT’S GOING ON WITH SIMON AND KRISTIN” and “IF TRAVIS AND EMMA DON’T GET A HEA I WILL RIOT”.
Seriously, as an author, this is the best thing ever.
I’m releasing this newsletter on a Tuesday, in anticipation of tomorrow’s publication day. So if you’ve been reading the early chapters of All Shall Mourn as they’ve been released in Nailbiters, you get one last chapter today, and then you can grab the book first thing tomorrow and pick up exactly where you left off.
If you haven’t been reading the early chapters and you’d like to get in on that action – the first 2 chapters are free here, to give you a teaser.
Chapter 7 of ALL SHALL MOURN
At the morning briefing, in the cramped ‘home base’ office, Kirby explains that the interview with the WaPo reporter will be conducted upstairs, in the library of Jefferson.
Travis can tell, from a subtle curtness in Kirby’s speech, how much he wanted to conduct the interview off-base to make it look as though Emma was staying somewhere temptingly accessible. As though Emma is a piece of cheese, and all it will take for the FBI to catch their target is to position her in the middle of a trap that Kirby can snap shut.
I mean, the book comes out tomorrow, so maybe you don’t need to sign up for Nailbiters anymore to read good bits?
But if you’d still like to have access to a rad behind-the-scenes newsletter with writing craft talk, and peeks of WIPs, and extra perks (all my founding members got a free digital copy of All Shall Mourn last week, for instance), plus a chance to support my work, all for the approximate price of one coffee per month (or significantly less than that, like a Snickers 2-pack per month, if you join for a year), then feel free to click and subscribe 😊
ALL SHALL MOURN – all links
BEHOLLLD
You can add/review the book here on GoodReads
Purchase links are here, check it:
I still don’t have a link for Bookshop, so if you see one before me, hit me up in the comments.
And yes, if you use an alternative library app like BorrowBox or Tolino or Odilo, you should be able to find the book on your app.
If you’d like to ask your library or bookstore to order All Shall Mourn, they should be able to do that (bookstores can order through IngramSpark/Lightning Source; libraries should be able to go through their library supplier).
And as soon as my own ordered books arrive, I’ll be offering signed copies on my website, so stay tuned – I’ll do an announcement on Instagram and Threads/Bluesky.
Anyway, I am verklempt – this is the most support I’ve ever had for an indie release, and I AM SO VERY GRATEFUL 🖤 Getting a chance to finish Emma and Travis and Simon and Kristin’s story – and seeing how excited everyone is to read it! – has been one of the coolest things I’ve experienced as an author 😊
What I’m reading
I’ve been looking literally everywhere for a horror novel to give me the creeps/give me a jolt, and THIS WRETCHED VALLEY by Jenny Kiefer actually aced the assignment. If you’ve read The Ruins by Scott Smith (or seen the movie), you’ll understand the vibe. The story is about a group of college students – all experienced hikers or botanists or rock climbers – who head into the Kentucky wilderness to conquer what they believe might be a new climbing spot, but things get freaky when their GPS starts failing, accidents happen, fights break out, and terrible things begin appearing in the shadows of the trees…
What particularly surprised me with This Wretched Valley: It’s Kiefer’s debut, and she did a great job, but she also pulls off a really difficult manoeuvre. She shows you (and this is not a spoiler, it’s on the cover blurb) the weirdly-mutilated dead bodies of most of the protagonists in the opening pages, then backtracks to explain what happened. Maintaining plot tension throughout the story when the reader already knows the fates of the protags is tricky shit! That’s like playing Author in Hard Mode, and honestly, I was super impressed at both the level of difficulty and how successfully it worked, so kudos, Jenny Kiefer – I’ll absolutely be watching for your next book.
I’m giving away three complete signed sets of the NONE SHALL SLEEP series
First signed sets to ever go out into the world! Hot damn! Here’s how to enter:
1)Repost this on Instagram (Feed or Reel, not just Stories! I can’t keep up with Stories before they disappear!):
2)Tag me in the repost so I know you’ve entered;
3)Last entries accepted 11.59PM AEDT on Friday 7 Feb;
4)I’ll put all the names together and pick one out of a hat;
5)Winner will be contacted via IG.
Good luck, hope you win!
Where this newsletter gets its name (but not really)
Honestly, I wasn’t thinking too hard when I came up with the name for The Black Hand. I wanted something that would convey crime, wickedness, the macabre…something that would cover everything from murder mysteries to bloodthirsty thrillers to dark psychological horror.
I wanted to go with The Red Hand, but discovered it contained a multiple of unsavoury meanings (from Irish factional violence groups to antisemitic movements 👀) so uh, no, I chose not to go with that. I picked The Black Hand almost by accident, but it turns out it’s an old name for a mafia extortion racket? I guess you can’t have everything.
In Italian immigrant areas (in both the US and Australia), newspapers talked about a ‘Black Hand Society’ of mafia-connected people who extorted money out of local residents and businesses, and even carried out assassinations. These societies mainly committed crimes against successful members of their own community, starting in about the early 1900s. Typically, they’d send a threatening letter – “we will kill you/kidnap your family members/set fire to your shop” etc – and then specify how much money should be taken to which money-drop place to prevent the threats from being acted on.
The letter “was decorated with threatening symbols such as a smoking gun, hangman's noose, skull, or knife dripping with blood or piercing a human heart, and was frequently signed with a hand, "held up in the universal gesture of warning", imprinted or drawn in thick black ink”.
There’s also another dubious connotation for the phrase ‘The Black Hand’ – it’s the name of a secret Serbian military society that formed around 1911…and may have been involved in the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand? (you know, just the assassination that kicked off WWI…oops).
Anyway, this is all to say that I didn’t know about any of those things when I called my newsletter The Black Hand! I’m glad all the references are plainly historical, and not linked to any contemporary nastiness. But sincerely, if you’re a member of an Irish religious faction, an Italian mafia extortion racket, or a Serbian military society that started WWI…I meant no disrespect, I swear.
That’s it from me for February! Far out, I can’t believe you get to read the book soon. It’s hugely exciting, nail-gnawingly terrifying, and massively relieving all at the same time. However you like (or don’t like) All Shall Mourn, I’m never going to regret having written it – only that it took so long to finally get it into your hands. I appreciate every single one of you who told me to keep going – this book is really yours, my patient ones 🖤
A quick word to US friends: I don’t know wtf is going on in your country right now, and I hope you are all okay. Take care and stay safe. I’m thinking of you, and I hope my book gives you some escape for a while xx
And everyone who’s out there reading this – stay chill, hope you find some good books, happy All Shall Mourn release day and see you in March!
xxEllie
Congrats again on another excellent release, Ellie!
You know Simon has become my nightmare fuel....so of course I am entering!