T.J. Newman Books In Order
Book links take you to Amazon. As an Amazon Associate I earn money from qualifying purchases.Publication Order of T.J.Newman Standalone Novels
| Falling | (2021) | Description / Buy at Amazon |
| Drowning | (2023) | Description / Buy at Amazon |
T.J. Newman
T. J. Newman was born in Arizona, and is a former bookseller turned flight attendant. She worked for Virgin America and Alaska Airlines from 2011 until 2021.
When T. J. got her first library card, she began reading everything that she could get her hands on. Her parents also read to her when she was a baby. She moved onto scribbling down stories her entire life too.
Newman is a lifelong reader, which drew her to writing, but it is her time as a bookseller at Changing Hands when that lofty dream transitioned into being a concrete goal.
When she would shelve books by some author with her last name, she could cover up their first name with her thumb and pretend the book was something she had written. She just knew she wanted to be a part of the publishing world in the long term. Turns out, she had to leave in order to come up with the right idea to work her way back though.
A chance to become a flight attendant popped up and being the daughter and sister of a flight attendant, she knew the benefits of the job. It was a chance she just couldn’t pass up, and left the store. She wanted to fly, however the stories just kept on coming. She would work on various writing pieces, but would soon abandon them, as she just couldn’t stick with anything and see it through all the way to the end. Then she came up with the idea for “Falling” and it all came together.
It was a story she wanted to see through to the end and see what happened to her characters by the end of it. It was then that she knew she wanted to write it. At first, she was looking to write a screenplay, and her original concept was that it would make a good movie. T. J. began studying screenplays, going to the library and checked out some and read them.
She abandoned this pretty early on, as the medium is not something you just wander into, as it’s a difficult thing to do, because it means you have to whittle your tale down to its barest aspects.
She would look out at the passengers and wondered when hundreds of lives depend on just a single pilot’s actions, how vulnerable does this make a commercial pilot? This was a question that she couldn’t shake. She wrote a great deal of the first draft of her debut novel “Falling”, on various cocktail napkins during red eye flights as passengers slept and her plane was chasing dawn.
Some passenger would come up and ask for something, and she would just flip the paper over and tuck it away. Once she got them taken care of, she would pull it out and continue working. During layovers and days off, she would transfer her in-flight notes into one document on her iPad. Little by little the novel started coming together.
On T. J.’s first draft, she had no clue what would happen, because she didn’t plot it out ahead of time at all. The scene in the cockpit when Bill first learns about the predicament that he and his family are in are the first pages of the novel she wrote. It was the only thing that she had to go on.
She wrote the entire book from the cockpit and wrote until she had written their way out of it. Then she went back all the way to the start from the back of the plane, and wrote what happened in the back of the plane and layered it into that.
The most important part of her research was going to work with her ears and eyes open. She was always asking questions of the pilots she would fly with and study and observe the way the crews and passengers would handle themselves in each situation. Then on her days off she would pour over checklists and manuals, read books, and surf the web.
She is fascinated by pilots. They are Type-A left brain thinkers that look at the world through a lens of reason and logic. These aspects of Bill came rather intuitively, but adding the emotion based and softer touches of humanity to him into the cockpit took a little more work. While on the plane, she used Jo’s character to access this because flight attendants are usually right brained and people-centric empaths. They are the counterbalance.
Whenever she writes, she is listening to music. She was listening to soundtracks from movies, comic book movies and thrillers the entire time. The events of “Falling” played out cinematically in her mind, as she is a visual person to start with, and it’s how she processes the world.
Even though she no longer works as a flight attendant, it is a job she recommends to other people. You get to visit these great places you most likely wouldn’t be able to and stay in some nice hotels and fly with some of the best crews. But it’s not pretty all the time, as she has spent many days on her hands and knees, scraping up some strangers’ vomit.
“Falling” is the first stand alone novel and was released in the year 2021. You have just boarded a flight headed to New York. There are a hundred and forty-three other passengers on the flight.
What you do not know yet is that a half an hour before the flight your pilot’s wife and kids were abducted. For his family to live, everybody on the plane has to die. The only way the family to survive is if the pilot follows the man’s orders and crashes this plane.
Enjoy your flight.
This is a fast paced action thriller novel that never lets up for a moment. It is a suspenseful and fun popcorn read, however with a surprising layer of depth from the fascinating characters and some of the reveals. Newman delivers a highly enjoyable race against the clock novel that is filled with entertainment.
Book Series In Order » Authors »
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Great write.
Dave/Prescott AZ.
Fabulous debut novel ! Please write another very soon. X
I picked up “Falling” this morning and read it until I was done this afternoon. Loved it! Look forward to your next one – soon I hope!!
Loved it. Sorry I missed your book signing here in Yuma.
p s I am an author too!
What a first novel. Keep writing.
Lots of luck.
Salil
This is a fantastic read. I was hoping to see something else by this author. Hope there will be another book soon!
What a fantastic read definitely one of the best books I’ve read if not the best. Congratulations TJ can’t wait for the next one.
WOW! Great thriller GIRL
Please continue to write
Super page turning thriller. Couldn’t put it down. Thanks
T. J.,
Wow!
I just now finished your fabulous novel, Falling.
It was outstanding!
You certainly have a new fan, disappointed to find, from what I could tell, that was the only book you’ve written.
Word of advise, get to work lady, you’ll be up there with King, Grisham, and Baldacci.
Best of luck.