The Black Hand, vol.9

None Shall Sleep is a NYT bestseller

I am completely shocked and delighted and ABSOLUTELY FREAKING AMAZED to announce that None Shall Sleep has become a New York Times Bestseller.

I MEAN HOLY CRAP, GIVE ME A MOMENT, I CAN’T BELIEVE THIS HAS HAPPENED??

My Thursday started out entirely normal – I woke everyone up for school, sorted out kid lunches, did all that. Then I went to a morning GP check-up (routine, all good), and then I was in the car park afterward, preparing to text my partner to ask if we needed anything at the shops, when Will Kostakis texted me like so:

Being the completely clueless person I am, I had no idea what he was talking about:

So he told me that None Shall Sleep was on the NYT list – and I actually did not believe him:

But once we established that he truly wasn’t joking and that everything was real, then I checked my email, to find messages from my agent and my publisher like:

And that’s when I started crying.

What does it mean to me to make the NYT list? Basically…everything. For most genre writers, it’s the pinnacle. The light at the end of the tunnel, the gold at the rainbow’s end. I tried to explain it to my partner, and the best analogy I could think of is ‘it’s like winning an Olympic gold medal’. But I don’t know if that’s even a fair comparison (mainly because ‘what percentage of athletes win Olympic gold medals’ wasn’t something I could calculate, I am terrible at maths) – all I know is that of the approximately 100,000 new books released each year, only 0.5% of them hit the NYT bestseller list.

And one of them was my book.

Now that I’ve stopped crying, I’d like to say a couple of things: firstly, that None Shall Sleep would not even BE a book without my incredible agent, Josh Adams, and without my publisher, Little, Brown Books for Younger Readers. My editor for None Shall Sleep was Hannah Milton, who has since moved away from publishing, but who I am grateful to every single day.

Finally, I’d like to say that the success of None Shall Sleep is genuinely not about me – it’s about YOU. Readers make books successful. Lots and LOTS of readers. I tried to write absolutely the best book I could, but only readers picking the book up, enjoying it, reviewing it, and sharing the love…only that makes the book soar.

If you are one of the many thousands of people who loved the book and shared word of mouth about it, thank you from the bottom of my heart.

Okay – yes, I’m crying again now, shut up.

Til Death Do Part update

Some of you might now be wondering, what does the success of None Shall Sleep mean for the release of Til Death Do Part?

EXCELLENT QUESTION.

The answer is – I don’t know yet. My agent is going back to my publisher to see if they’d like to talk about it some more. LBYR might want to release it themselves. If they don’t, I’ll stick to the original plan to release the book as a serialized novel here in my newsletter.

I know many of you have already signed up to read the serialized version of Til Death Do Part, which is awesome. If the plan changes, and I need to switch gears with it, I’ll tell you. If I need to refund money, or delay the Til Death Do Part newsletter release, or enact some other weird contingency, I’ll tell you. I’m trying to be as up-front about what’s going on as I can: the behind-the-scenes action of publishing can be a bit torturous, so now you guys understand a little bit of what I feel when I go on submission to a publisher with a new book. There’s a lot of ‘this is yet to be determined’. There’s a lot of ‘hurry up and wait’. Emails and phone calls and zoom conferences must be held…you get the drift. This is not because publishing is awful, it’s because publishing is a large, heavy, slow-moving machine, and sometimes deliberations take a while.

What will the outcome be? I cannot predict that at all. At this stage, I’m just trundling along with the original plan, still aiming for a January 2022 serial newsletter release. But now that None Shall Sleep has made the NYT list, the metrics have totally changed. Exciting! But also confusing.

As soon as I have news about what’s happening, I’ll put out an update.

The Killing Code update

One thing that IS still certain is that The Killing Code is still releasing in Fall (Sept-Oct) 2022.

I have seen early proofs of the cover! It looks AMAZING! No, I can’t show it to you yet! Yeah, I know that sucks, but I guarantee it’ll be more fun once we have the completed cover to coo over.

And of course, now the cover artist has to incorporate the ‘NYT BESTSELLER’ line into the cover art somewhere…

WELP 😁

Pub Dates podcast

To keep you busy while we’re waiting for more info about all these things… Might I suggest a podcast?

Amie Kaufman is collaborating with debut author Kate Armstrong on a podcast called PUB DATES, and it’s going to be amazing. Amie, as you know, is an experienced bestselling author, with loads of industry inside tips. Kate, who you may not know, is an incredible writer with her debut book, Nightbirds, releasing 2023 (and she also hosts a fantastic podcast of her own about women’s achievements through history, called The Exploress).

Together, these two cool women will talk about the process of bringing a book to publication. It will all feel very real, because Amie is releasing a book of her own, and Kate is encountering a lot of these processes for the first time – the conversations will really unpick all the behind-the-scenes stuff I talked about earlier, and walk the listener through the day-to-day reality of publishing a book.

It’s going to be a fascinating listen, and I encourage you to tune in.

Til Death Do Part – brace yourself

Look, I was going to share the planned cover for the newsletter release, and also the synopsis of the book, in this email. But as you may have gathered – if you’ve read this far – all the plans for the serial newsletter release are now up in the air.

HOORAY, and also UGH.

What I do want to say, though, is that Til Death Do Part is a pretty dark book.

I mean, okay, yes, None Shall Sleep was dark – juvenile serial killers, and teenage murder victims, and forensic details about blood-drinking, and a whole lot more. The unofficial tagline for the book is ‘No Monsters, Only People’, so…yeah. Dark.

But Til Death Do Part is the Empire Strikes Back of the series, and it gets pretty damn heavy. All the questions you had about Emma Lewis’s experience in Daniel Huxton’s serial-killer basement? Many of them are answered in this book. There’s a long look at the impact of trauma, and what it’s like to handle complex PTSD. I’ve just finished writing some of the book’s major scenes, and I found them emotionally draining to get down on paper. Emma has been through the wringer already, but she – and by extension, you, the reader – are not ready for the shit that goes down in this book. So, fair warning.

On the up side, I’ve tried to leaven the story with some lightness and hope. Kristin Gutmunsson narrates a number of chapters, and I know a lot of you liked her character – she’s screwed up, like anyone with a sociopathic twin brother would be, but she’s also eccentric and whimsical. Plus, Til Death Do Part dives more into Emma and Travis’s partnership, and how that emotional connection is growing stronger every day…

All this is to say that there’s a lot to come in this sequel, and while some of it is painful and tough, there’s a lot of stuff in the book that I think you’ll really like.

Newsletters I rec

There are a lot of newsletters out there now, especially if you like reading long form articles (friends, I really do) on Substack. I haven’t signed up to everything, because there’s never enough time in the day. But a couple of newsletters I really like are:

The Whippet by McKinley Valentine (snippets of delightful science, history, weirdness and musings, 0% politics)

The Hot Sheet by Jane Friedman (publishing industry info for career authors – the only newsletter I read religiously)

She’s a Beast: A Swole Woman’s Newsletter by Casey Johnston (staying healthy, working out, and being strong physically, mentally and emotionally)

How Not to F*ck Up Your Face by Valerie Monroe (practical and philosophical advice for anyone who’s ever looked in a mirror)

Jstor by multiple authors (a digital archive of academic articles about every subject under the sun)

Currently reading

NOTHING, I’m currently reading NOTHING, because I’m in full drafting mode. So, no books, no TV, just pure head-down in the manuscript for every waking hour.

The last thing I read, weeks ago, was The Man Who Died Twice by Richard Osman (sequel to The Thursday Murder Club) and it was an absolute hoot - I loved it, get on it.

When I next have a moment of reprieve, I’m going to re-read The Hating Game by Sally Thorne – the movie trailer has just come out, and it reminded me just HOW DAMN GOOD the book is. If you like het romance, I rec it. As a friend said recently, be warned that it leans hard into the whole ‘she’s so tiny, and omg, he’s a giant who could lift her up in an elevator’ trope. But seriously, as far as sexual tension on the page goes, this book is a masterclass.

The official trailer for The Hating Game is here, please watch it and tell me what you think because I have Feelings and I need someone to share them with:

#LoveOzYAbookclub

We’re about to announce the book for November (yes, I know, it’s late – I got a little distracted, soz) and if you’d like to join in, we’d love to have you! You can jump on the Facebook group page anytime, and welcome.

Our December book will also be announced a little late, and that’s fine – that book takes us through the group hiatus over the Australian summer period, until we resume in February.

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That’s all I’ve got for today! No research snippets or weird crime-related articles – I was honestly too busy and mentally full to cope with anything else this week. Sorry! I promise I’ll have something cool for you next time.

I hope whatever you’re doing, wherever you are, that life is going smoothly for you and all is well. Thank you for celebrating with me 😊 – it has been an amazing week, and it’s been made even sweeter by all your messages and congratulations.

Onward to the stars!

xxEllie