R.J. Ellory Author Tour: 
September 8 – 11

Six years. Twenty two rejected novels. More than four hundred ‘thanks, but no thanks’letters from over a hundred publishers.
It would be easy to forgive R.J. Ellory if he’d given up on a writing career long before getting to that point, but Ellory, who describes himself as bloody‐minded, wasn’t one to let ‘a few’ rejections sway him from his course.


“My belief was that if I just kept on going I would eventually find the right person in the right company at the right time. I had this datum from Disraeli who said ‘Success is entirely dependent upon constancy of purpose’,” he says. However, after six years and two lever arch files full of rejection letters, Ellory decided
enough was enough and stopped writing, turning his attention to other endeavours. After a long hiatus, in 2001 he decided to pick up the pen again and try his hand at yet another book.

Candlemoth was sent to 36 publishers and garnered polite refusal from all but one, where
an editor spotted the potential and passed it on until it wound up at Orion with Ellory’s
current editor. Since then he’s gone onto enjoy tremendous success. He has published seven novels including the bestselling A Quiet Belief in Angels, which was a Richard & Judy Book Club selection in 2008 and also won the inaugural Roman Noir Nouvel Observateur Prize 2008, the Livre De Poche Award 2010, the USA National Indie Excellence Award for Best Mystery of 2010 and The Best Thriller 2009 by The Strand Magazine, New York. His work has now been translated into twenty‐three languages and he has just been shortlisted for the prestigious CWA Dagger in the Library 2009 (which recognises a body of work as opposed to a specific novel).
This is pretty damn impressive I reckon.



September sees the release of his latest effort, Saints of New York (Orion, $38.99 RRP), a dark and intense novel of corruption and redemption centred on a New York PD Detective called Frank Parrish who is desperately trying to make sense of a string of deaths, while battling his own demons.
Ellory describes his books as “literary, contemporary, and yet also accessible”. They are all stand alone, and while they fall into the crime thriller genre, he believes they’re more human dramas than crime novels.
It’s a style of writing that’s obviously working with the author now enjoying outstanding critical and commercial success and clearly proving that persistence does in fact pay off.
 

About the author:
Ellory’s childhood was no less unusual than his path to success as a bestselling author. Roger’s father
left before he was born and his mother died when he was seven, leaving him an orphan. Roger was sent to boarding school where he stayed till he was sixteen when he moved in with his grandmother, until she too died a year later. Roger and his brother had to fend for themselves and at 17 Roger was arrested for poaching chickens and sentenced to a jail term.
See http://www.rjellory.com/ for comprehensive bio information.

NZ Tour: (details to follow)
Auckland, Wednesday September 8
Nelson &Wellington, Thursday September 9
Wellington & Dunedin, Friday September 10
Dunedin & Auckland, Saturday September 11