The Scene talks with the surprisingly untwisted woman behind the sadistic Southern Strangler

Though lively and engaging in person, novelist J.T. Ellison doesn’t play it nice and sweet on the page: Her first crime novel, All the Pretty Girls, centers on an investigation into a string of murders by the “Southern Strangler.” Set in Nashville, it’s the first in a three-book series featuring homicide lieutenant Taylor Jackson, a Belle Meade debutante turned cop, and it marks Ellison’s debut as a writer. Originally from Colorado, she now lives in Nashville with her husband Randy. The Scene recently sat down with Ellison to discuss thrillers, cool-kid cliques and Nashville as a crime writer’s paradise.

Scene: Before All the Pretty Girls, you worked in finance, marketing and politics, right?

Ellison: I worked in the White House, the Department of Commerce, Lockheed Martin, a couple of private firms. We moved here, and there weren’t any jobs that fit my background. I tried to get a marketing job, but there was nothing happening. Then I blew my back out, which was perfect timing because I had to have back surgery and I pretty much spent a year laying around, reading. When I came out of that, I was like, “OK, I want to try and write a book.”

Scene: Had you written anything before?

Ellison: I wrote in college, poorly. I was a dual major in politics and English and creative writing. My professor said, “You’re never going to get published. You should really go ahead and give this up.” And I listened to her. Which was just terrible. You see so many writers out there who have that instance in their background: Somebody told them they couldn’t do it. But they buckled down and they did it. I just quit. I was out of it for 15 years.

Scene: How did you develop your style? I certainly wouldn’t call it prissy.

Ellison: I wanted to get in with the guys. I’m writing darker stuff and I wanted to see if I could pull in male readers. [That’s] a really big problem for women like me who are writing dark fiction. We aren’t writing cozies: There are no cats, no amateur sleuths. That is why I chose to make Taylor a cop. Because as a cop she’s going to see things. She’s going to do things. She’s going to have parameters and constraints that she has to work within. She’s not going to stumble upon a body, contravene all the police action and solve it on her own. I don’t believe that happens. It’s not realistic to me, and I wanted to be as realistic as possible. I think a lot of the women writers are moving towards this very realistic, very gritty direction.

Scene: The Nashville you write about looks like Nashville and reads like Nashville, but your version isn’t necessarily the way Nashville sees itself.

Ellison: I want people to see the Nashville I see. I’ve lived here for 10 years. My husband’s from here. It’s not necessarily the Nashville he sees—which is interesting—but he’s a huge resource for me. I can say, “Listen, I need to drop a body and I need it to look like this,” and he’ll say, “Oh, well, you can go and do it here.” Then we drive down there and look at it, and it’s perfect. I wrote fake things in, but I wanted it as realistic as possible. I want people who live here to read it and go, “I know where that is.”

[Nashville’s] changed so much. It’s a great city to write about because it’s got these dichotomies. It’s got the class structures. It’s got gangs and drugs and prostitution, and all the problems of a big city on a smaller scale. Not a lot of people seem to know that outside the city. They just think of Nashville as “Oh, it’s Music City.” Period.

Scene: There’s a whole group of mystery and crime writers in Nashville these days. The Killer Nashville convention, held for the second time in August, must be bringing crime writers out of the woodwork.

Ellison: I think we’re getting a higher profile. The Internet has brought everybody together, and suddenly we’re meeting and realizing, “Hey you live in Nashville, too!” Tasha [Alexander] is with a major New York house. I’m with a major New York house. Steven Womack’s now with a major New York house. Robert Hicks. River Jordan. We’ve all now started meeting and hanging out. When you’ve got the distribution of the major publishers, people begin to take notice.

Scene: So are you a clique?

Ellison: (Laughing) I wouldn’t say that. The occasional lunch. We’re not plotting to overthrow the world.

Scene: There’s no specific place where all the cool literary kids hang out?

Ellison: I’m still trying to find out the answer to that question.