Q&A: J.T. Ellison, Author of ‘Last Seen’

We chat with author J.T. Ellison about Last Seen, which is a twisted psychological thriller about the bonds of family and the disconnect between memory and the truth. PLUS we have an excerpt to share with you at the end of the interview!

Hi, J.T.! What inspired you to write LAST SEEN (out 1 August 2025)?  

When you dream of the plot of a book, you know it’s going to be something special. I had an incredibly vivid dream of a town called Brockville, which looked lovely on the surface but had a dark, murderous undercurrent. People went missing in Brockville. People were used. They were made into monsters in many ways. But in all darkness, there is light—community, friendship, love. The story morphed from that original dream—it was a romance!—to the dark thriller you’re about to read when I started researching something that’s always interested me: Whether isolation causes a kind of desperate madness or if evil people find one another and retreat to isolated areas where they’re less likely to be caught doing their dastardly deeds. The latter, of course, is utterly terrifying. 

Around that time, I watched the movie Into the Wild, and the seeds of an idea were born. What if one doesn’t cause the other, but they both exist—and a charismatic entrepreneur could capitalize on the very darkness we all fear? The story grew from there, marrying with the origins of my dream, and became the story it is today: What would happen if a writer went missing in an idyllic, artistic, biophilic town called Brockville that was founded by a charismatic loner who can talk his way into and out of anything? There would be secrets, diabolical secrets, that come back to haunt everyone involved.   

Was there a book or movie or TV show that influenced you when you wrote LAST SEEN?  

So many. I did a ridiculous amount of research preparing for this book. It wasn’t enough that I grew up in the backwoods of Colorado, on a dirt road, attending an elementary school with only three people in my first few years of classes. I know what isolation does. For better or worse, it makes people creative. Yes, survival is paramount. But also, boredom must be alleviated, and like-minded people with similar hobbies seek each other out for support and amusement. The idea of someone wanting this isolation with no support structure or guardrails—that was the impetus. When I watched Into the Wild, the romantic, tragic Christopher McCandless (Alexander Supertramp) captivated me. I immediately read everything Jon Krakauer wrote about him, then dove into more stories of people seeking isolation to escape from or make sense of the world. I knew I had to twist these tales into a story. I also read a fascinating article in the New Yorker about a young woman who was involved in a murder as a juvenile and went on to be accepted to Harvard. And Patric Gagne’s Sociopath helped tremendously when I was building one of the characters. Talk about deep water…

How did the idea for the setting, the town of Brockville, evolve?

Despite my upbringing in the forest, that wasn’t the exact setting I chose. Instead, Brockville is an amalgamation of the dream setting and a charming biophilic town in Georgia where friends of mine live. It is definitely not a sinister place, but so much of the vision and excitement around the off-the-grid way of life they’ve embraced made it into the story. I was two days into a visit when I realized I could be looking at the town of Brockville from my dream. Totally wild. So I

combined all the lovely aspects of that town with my dream and my own upbringing, living so far from the nearest stores and services, and, as they say, boom goes the dynamite. 

What inspired you to start writing novels?

I’ve always been a huge reader and was allowed to read anything I could reach on my parents’ bookshelves. (Happily, I was a tall kid, so I got exposed to some incredibly sophisticated work very early). From a very young age, I wrote poems and little short stories. My mom’s Norton Anthology of Poetry was my favorite book, and when I was eight or so, I remember reading Alfred, Lord Tennyson’s The Eagle, and realizing how magnificent it was, how these deceptively simple few lines were packed with metaphor. The concept clicked, and from that moment on, I was compelled to play with words. But the leap to novels didn’t happen until I was older and had some life experience to share. I had a much broader reading palate and a keen desire to try my hand at the form I’d fallen in love with as an adult: Crime fiction.

What are some recurring themes in your work?

My core theme is very straightforward: I love stories about women finding their power and place in the world, and almost every book I’ve ever written has a variation of this theme. I’m also a huge fan of mythology, so my books often have elements of these origin stories. I’m also interested in how we as a society function in a highly curated world. How much can be believed about the people we think we know? What might the real story be? And finally, justice for those who can’t get it for themselves. A college friend of mine (Dail Dinwiddie) went missing in 1992. She disappeared after a U2 concert in Columbia, South Carolina, and I think every story has that sense of dislocation and loss at its heart. 

What about psychological thrillers as a genre appeals to you as a writer?

The fear factor is undoubtedly a part of it but also looking at the dynamic personalities that seek extremes and why they go to the lengths they do to either fit in, or keep themselves separate from society. Psychological thrillers allow us to dig into these very themes. They engage our limbic systems and allow for that biological scare factor that keeps us on our toes. And in many ways, they enable us to be bad, when we always need to be good. Plus, I’ve always been interested in the why behind people. Why do they do the things they do? What made them who they are? What’s happening behind the closed doors in our neighborhoods? What is their biggest secret? Their deepest shame? Why in the world would you flaunt the laws that bind us together as a society? I am not a rulebreaker; people who cheat and lie and commit crimes are incomprehensible to me—so writing and reading this genre is how I try to make sense of their urges. I do think it’s true that no matter what we concoct and put on the page, real life is always stranger.

What advice do you have for new writers?

Every successful author I know is a huge reader. Read everything you can get your hands on in every genre—the one you’re writing in, yes, but also all the popular novels, classics, diverse voices, even stories that seem entirely out of your wheelhouse. You will get a masterclass on how to do your job and broaden your horizons. 

And when you start writing, find a schedule and stick to it. If you respect your creative time, the people around you will learn to respect it as well.