I’ve met people who have a lot to say about Kindle and Self Publishing and basically that anyone can publish a book these days.

I hear this mainly from older authors who believe in gatekeeping writing and letting other groups of people decide what is considered literary or worthy of publication … the majority of these groups I’m sure are predominantly white and male so make of that what is obvious.

I can’t help but think about all the stories we’ve missed out on.

Joy Ellis is quite well known for 3 or 4 different crime series, all of which span 10+ books each … She’s a well respected crime novelist … but she didn’t start out writing pure crime and police procedural. Her first book mixed crime and the esoteric sciences … spirituality, holistics, and psychology.

I finished the first book this morning and I really, really, loved it.

An Aura of Mystery is my very first novel. It has sat in a dusty box file, and on an old floppy disc for over twenty years. I was very much a novice writer, but since childhood I’d had a fascination with mysteries, especially those with a supernatural element. So, I wrote one of my own! There was publisher interest in it, even way back then, but cross-genre was not popular at the time, and it never went any further. Even so, I wrote a sequel, The Colour of Mystery, and then committed them both to the attic!

Joy Ellis

I was thinking about how much we missed out on because some random people decided a paranormal crime novel was “not a thing” instead of taking a chance and publishing something new which caused her to completely give it up all together. She had to decide what to focus on and, because her wife was a retired cop, it just made sense to write crime novels.

That makes me so sad.

Had self publishing existed back then I’m sure she would have written 18+ books in this series.

I’m glad anyone can publish now.

I’m glad that people can decide how they want their work to be seen and just put it out there without approval, even without editing, without anything other than desire and willpower. Some won’t be good, some will be completely unique, some will be utter trash and some will be brilliant AF.

At least it will EXIST.

I believe every book has a reader. It may not be you, but it doesn’t have to be. You’re not the end all, be all of book readers … of anything.

I don’t know if Joy Ellis is going to consider continuing her old series.

I imagine that given her popularity now and the popularity of mixed genres these days, many people are going to clamor for more of these amazing characters she created so long ago.

Over the years, they have haunted me, and a few months ago when I was not feeling well and could not concentrate on new work, I resurrected them. My assistant Luke managed to convert them into a workable manuscript, and I read them again, for the first time in two decades.

Joy Ellis

Maybe this is a sign. Maybe she’s finally tired of writing HUNDREDS of crime novels. She churns them out constantly and I’ve read enough of them (LOVE Jackman and Evans! Richard HURRY UP AND MAKE THE TV SERIES!!!) to be able to say they aren’t all that different from one another …

Maybe she really wants to do something else and revisiting her very first foray into writing maybe will inspire her to consider bringing back her original story.

This time there won’t be anyone who can stop her or discourage her or say no to her.
This time her story can finally find it’s readers.

This was Joy Ellis’ first attempt at writing and as far as I’m concerned this is an amazing start.

I don’t believe in critiquing other writers.

I can’t speak to whether something is good or bad, only if it appeals to me which is subjective and no indication of someones skill. Just because something doesn’t appeal to me, that doesn’t mean it’s bad. It just means it doesn’t appeal TO ME. Over 50+ years I’ve read plenty of books that I didn’t like personally, but they were incredible experiences to have. I can only ever speak on my personal experience and that’s not the same as QUALITY.

I wrote my first book in the 7th grade. It was 250 pages of utter trash BUT for my age I think it was pretty impressive. If I wrote like Joy Ellis’ first novel, I’d probably be a well known author by now … especially since I don’t have to seek approval from some group of white male publishers and can just publish on my own.

I have read Joy’s Jackman and Evan’s series and it’s not very memorable. I love the books when I’m listening to them at night but they tend to blend into each other and come off very similar. What I love best about most books, especially police procedurals, is the TEAM. Like Buffy or X-Files or Alert Missing Persons etc … what I am most interested in is watching that particular team solve the crimes. The crimes are not always interesting, the whodunit is almost always obvious because there are only but so many characters in the book that it could be, or it’s just the same version of another crime from another book … I really don’t care. What I care about are the team I love, their interactions, how they work together and stuff like that. I love Jackman and Evans but some of the books are a snooze. Similar to JD Kirk’s books … I love Jack Logan, I love Heather Filson … but I can’t always say I’m thrilled about the plot of each book. Some are way better than others but the TEAM is always enjoyable.

That said … Ellie and Carole are SO, SO good as a team. The cop portion was … meh. The “mystery” was just like all her other books. The motivation of the killer … eyeroll worthy. BUT Ellie and her story and Carole and Vera … I was absolutely riveted and I wanted more, more, more of them.

Narration wise … what’s to say about Sophie. She has a near perfect voice AS IS … as a narrator she’s fine. Does she give as much “performance art” in her narration as some others? No. She doesn’t. Does she have to? No. She doesn’t. She narrates and speaks beautifully and I have absolutely no complaints. I would listen to more books read by her and I can’t wait to dive into book 2 of the Ellie McEwan Mysteries!