J.T. Ellison--A Place of the Heart

DEBORAH CROMBIE: As much as I love London, there is something about Paris that gets me every time, something shadowy and indefinable. A Moveable Feast is my favorite Hemingway book (I read it for the first time in London) and I adore Woody Allen's Midnight in Paris. So when I read J.T. Ellison's essay below, I got chills. Now I'm wondering if, when I'm in London the next few weeks, I might just hop on the Eurostar and spend a day wandering the streets of Paris. Read and see if you are not tempted.

A Place of the Heart

Every afternoon the people one knows can be found at the café.

“Montparnasse” by Ernest Hemingway

Hemingway’s morbid poem aside, nothing speaks to me like the idea of 1920s Montparnasse. It’s so utterly romantic, a generation’s best and brightest living, breathing, creating, loving, drinking, eating, fighting together. And a Parisian backdrop… what could be better? The “moveable feast,” as he referred to it, has always seemed to me the height of collaborative creativity.

I’d dreamed about it, read about it, but I’d never visited, not until my husband surprised me with a birthday trip in 2014 (so much for the seven years of French I took in school, right?). I fell in love, naturally. Paris is a hard city not to adore. It has a vibe of its own, like New York, and London. Unique unto itself, impossible to describe properly to those who haven’t been there.

That trip, we saved Montparnasse for last. My expectations were utterly unrealistic, which I realized the moment we stepped off the Metro and were greeted by a Starbucks.

Where is the romance in a Parisian Starbucks? Where were my ghosts? Where was the creative spirit I knew lingered in city’s dark recesses?

We had a snack at Le Select and then wandered off to look for Sarte's grave, which we couldn't find, and decided the whole afternoon must be an existential joke, then decamped for Montmartre, and Sacré Coeur, with its lovely views of the city.

I stood there, on that windswept hill, bereft. What I was searching for was down there, somewhere in the city of light. I knew it. I could feel it reaching for me. But my time in Paris was up. We had to leave in the morning.

That evening, sitting at a little café we’d been frequenting all week, running the day over in my head, my disappointment with Montparnasse, and with myself for not experiencing it properly, a woman sat down a few tables away. She was so utterly and completely French I had to write her in my notebook. After a cursory description, my writer’s mind took over. Several pages later, I’d sketched a strange little story about her, and what she was doing in Paris.

This became the basis for my newest novel. It seemed my brief encounter with Montparnasse had given me something after all.

Back home in Nashville, as the book got underway, I made plans to return to Paris. This time, I wasn’t going to rush into Montparnasse with high expectations. I was going to spend time there, get to know it, write in its cafés, experience its shadows and light. Montparnasse is a special place. It wants to be coaxed into showing you its best side. Rushing in was never going to work. I needed to follow in Hemingway’s footsteps, to drink and love and create on site.

Trip two, we were leisurely in our approach. We ate in all the restaurants in the 7th, walked the streets morning, noon, night. We bought fruit from the markets and got lost down alleyways. I spent a whole afternoon at La Closerie des Lilas. Inside the dark, silent bar, the tables all have plaques, a veritable who’s who of creativity and history, all placed by their favorite seats. I’d found the ghosts of Montparnasse, at last. I located Hemingway’s plaque, sat in his seat, drank champagne and ate olives, and existed. And then, I wrote.

And as I did, I realized there was something there, in the room with us, an energy I could feel like water on my skin. I tried to capture it in my words. I got very teary and overwhelmed at one point, not like me at all. It was incredibly special. I came home rejuvenated by the experience, and finished the book, which I can honestly say was my most challenging to date. The scenes I wrote in the dark bar made it in, as did many from that week.

I still feel like that afternoon in Paris turned the tide for me, both as a writer, and for this particular book. I achieved a lifelong dream, to write a book in Paris. Parts of one, at least. 

It’s amazing how expectations can ruin the journey for us. If we’d only stop and smell the roses, quite literally, what would we experience? It was a great lesson for me, as a writer, and as a human. To exist within the place, instead of thinking it will come to you.

Do you have a special place, a place of the heart?

DEBS: I know I do. London has always been that special place for me. I feel layers of time and lives in every street and neighborhood. And my favorite way of getting to know any place is to get the touristy things out of the way and then to just live, taking the pulse of things.

REDs and readers, what about you? What's your special place?

Here's more about LIE TO ME, and J.T. will be giving away a copy to one of our commenters!

Domestic noir at its best. Readers will devour this stunning page-turner about the disintegration of a marriage as grief, jealousy, betrayal and murder destroy the facade of the perfect literary couple. New York Times bestselling author J.T. Ellison takes her exceptional writing to a new level with this breakout novel. 

They built a life on lies.

Sutton and Ethan Montclair's idyllic life is not as it appears. They seem made for each other, but the truth is ugly. Consumed by professional and personal betrayals and financial woes, the two both love and hate each other. As tensions mount, Sutton disappears, leaving behind a note saying not to look for her. 

Ethan finds himself the target of vicious gossip as friends, family and the media speculate on what really happened to Sutton Montclair. As the police investigate, the lies the couple have been spinning for years quickly unravel. Is Ethan a killer? Is he being set up? Did Sutton hate him enough to kill the child she never wanted and then herself? The path to the answers is full of twists that will leave the reader breathless.

New York Times and USA Today bestselling author J.T. Ellison writes standalone domestic noir and psychological thriller series, the latter starring Nashville Homicide Lt. Taylor Jackson and medical examiner Dr. Samantha Owens, and pens the international thriller series “A Brit in the FBI” with #1 New York Times bestselling author Catherine Coulter. Cohost of the EMMY^â Award-winning literary television show A Word on Words, Ellison lives in Nashville with her husband and twin kittens.

Follow J.T. online at Facebook.com/JTEllison14, on Twitter @thrillerchick, or on Instagram @jt_thrillerchick for more insight into her wicked imagination.