Arts & Culture

Author TJ Newman.

Photo via tjnewmanauthor.com

Best-selling author writes another great thriller

By Jim Gordon and Leeta Liepins

Published 12:46 PDT, Fri June 9, 2023

Last Updated: 2:53 PDT, Fri August 11, 2023

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T.J. Newman first came to our attention two summers ago with her debut novel, Falling, which became a best-seller. But it was her story of perseverance and not giving up on her dreams that also made big news. Our City Tonight (OCT) recently sat down again with TJ Newman (TJN) to talk about the success of her latest novel, Drowning, and that forty-second time being the charm.

OCT: Congratulations on your new book – which is fantastic. Your first book, Falling was more about terrorists, hostage taking, a plane possibly crashing, whereas your new book, Drowning, is about a plane malfunctioning, and what people will do. It’s a real page-turner.

TJN: Thank you, that makes me so happy to hear that. This novel is intense, it’s about the rescue of a flight that crashes into the ocean six minutes after take-off. Some passengers evacuate until an explosion forces them to close the doors. But it’s too late and the plane floods and starts to sink with twelve people trapped inside including a father and his eleven-year-old daughter.

Their only chance for survival relies on an elite rescue team on the surface, led by the daughter’s mother and her father’s soon-to-be ex-wife. The story is intense. It’s scary, it’s going to keep you up at night, but that’s just the set-up. The true heart of the story is that it’s a rescue story, it’s a survival story, it’s a story of a fractured family coming back together. It’s about hope and love and resilience. That is what this story is really about.

OCT: You recently penned an “open letter” to readers of deadline.com which we found wonderful to read and for you to do. It was all about not giving up, and if we could quote you from that letter you say, “I didn’t come this far just to go this far”. Let’s talk about your thinking and the motivation behind that wonderfully written letter.

TJN: Thank you so much for saying that. The response since that came out has been overwhelming, so many people have reached out to say, this is them. They too have faced or are facing non-stop rejection, and they are trying to keep themselves going and this letter really helped.

My story is, that I tried to be a Broadway actress and I failed at that, and then I did those, whole mid-twenties thing moving back home with my parents, living in my childhood bedroom, and wondering what I’m going to do with my life. When I got a job in a bookstore, that’s when I started dreaming again and started to write.

When I became a flight attendant, that’s where I came up with the idea for my first book, Falling. I wrote it in the galley at night while the passengers slept on the “red eye” flights. When the book was ready to be sent out to agents, I was rejected forty-one times. No one wanted the book, no one wanted me. My forty-second submission was my only “yes”. That failure, that struggle, for so many years was so hard. Those rejections really hurt, but I did it… I could easily not be sitting here with you today, talking about this, had I given up.

But I kept going and now I have two books, I have two film deals, I’m living my dream come true. I didn’t know anybody, I didn’t have an ‘in’, all these things they say you have to have in order to make it, I didn’t have.

So, I wrote this “open letter” to dreamers to let them know not to believe that. Don’t let that be the only voice you listen to because I’m living proof that your dreams can come true. It’s hard, the odds are tough but why not you? I think that message has really resonated with people, and I am so grateful for everything that has come from writing that letter.

OCT: Speaking of dreams coming true, you have that great observation about your life and success over the last two years, where you say, “there’s something insane about the fact that I fell hopelessly short of my Broadway ambitions, and yet I just hired and approved five-time Tony Award nominee Laura Benanti to narrate my second book. Or that as a flight attendant, I had a Zoom meeting with a producer that I remember serving a first-class chicken entrée to.”

TJN: Just hearing you recap my journey, it’s just insane and I’m still trying to process this whole thing, it truly is a dream true. Warner Brothers is going to produce a movie from Drowning and I was on Zoom calls with Nicole Kidman, it’s mind boggling. The response from Canadian readers has been incredible, and hopefully one day we can do the interview in person.

Both novels, Falling and Drowning are in process to be made into feature films.

For the video interview in full go to richmondsentinel.ca/video