We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Peter Malone Elliott a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Hi Peter, really happy you were able to join us today and we’re looking forward to sharing your story and insights with our readers. Let’s start with the heart of it all – purpose. How did you find your purpose?
Growing up as the son of a NY Times bestselling novelist, I think it’s pretty fair to say that I had the magic (and the absolute vitalness) of storytelling baked into my DNA. From a very early age, it was instilled in me that exploring the trials, tribulations, and triumphs of the human experience through storytelling was one of the most rewarding professions that a person could pursue. Watching my mother write, edit, and put books out to market—and then have the joy of sharing them with hundreds of thousands of readers—was truly the best education that an aspiring scribe could have. I learned what it truly takes to become a successful, self-sustaining writer—and the amount of tenacity, self-discipline, and will-to-succeed that you need to possess. Suffice to say, I was hooked—it was inevitable that I ended up becoming a creator of some stripe. It was more a matter of determining what medium I wanted to enter into!
Initially, I started out in screenwriting. I went to film school at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles, and after graduating, I spent quite a while plying my trade as a working film/TV writer. I was fortunate enough to have some success. I won the Grand Prize of a highly prestigious screenwriting competition in the industry, and wrote and co-produced an indie feature film that earned me a “Best Screenwriting, Motion Picture” Leo Award nomination. I also had several spec scripts go to market with high-level producer/production company attachments. And while those projects ultimately ended up falling through for various reasons, I learned a TON about how the sausage gets made in bigger budget Hollywood filmmaking (ask me about the ever-shifting—and very confusing—process of attaching actors and getting film financing through international pre-sales sometime 🤓). Then when the pandemic hit, I decided to take what I had learned from screenwriting, pivot, and try my hand at writing a novel.
That first attempt ended up becoming my debut novel, BLUE RIDGE, which was nominated for “Best Debut Mystery” at the 2025 Lefty Awards.
Through all of this cumulative experience, my purpose—or my “creative raison d’etre,” if you will—has become quite clear. No matter the medium, I want to create narratives that engage, entertain, and enlighten people—and hopefully spur them on to shine a light on themselves and investigate what makes them who they are. Nothing brings me more joy than exploring the dark crevices and murky grays of the human condition through fiction—and I know it’s something I’m going to do until the day I die.
Great, so let’s take a few minutes and cover your story. What should folks know about you and what you do?
As mentioned in my previous answer, I’m a working novelist and screenwriter. I write propulsive, character-driven psychological thrillers that occasionally employ elements of horror. I have a novel (that’s hopefully the start of a series!) out on submission to publishers right now, and I’m developing my next novel and feature film screenplay.
Concurrent to my writing career, I am an experienced freelance developmental editor with a deep passion for working with authors at any stage in their journey (but particularly first-time writers of genre fiction). Before founding my own business, I was the Director of Book Pipeline, a highly successful author discovery platform, where I launched up-and-coming authors of fiction and nonfiction into the traditional publishing landscape. I truly adore getting into the trenches with writers on their stories, helping them shape narratives that demand to be told, and then advising them on how to best position themselves in the marketplace. I can honestly say that I get the same amount of joy from working with my talented clients that I do from writing my own stuff.
Finally, I’m also currently getting my MFA from Drexel University so I can learn how to teach creative writing at the undergraduate/graduate level. I’m very excited for what’s ahead!
There is so much advice out there about all the different skills and qualities folks need to develop in order to succeed in today’s highly competitive environment and often it can feel overwhelming. So, if we had to break it down to just the three that matter most, which three skills or qualities would you focus on?
If I could go back in time and give younger Peter a piece of advice about his journey, it would probably be twofold.
First, I would sit him down and implore him to be more patient with himself—and to not compare his career to others. It’s a practice that’s certainly easier said than done—and one that I definitely still struggle with now—but is one that is vital not only for preserving your bandwidth to create, but also for maintaining your mental health. There are always going to be peers that are “more” successful than you and achieve certain career milestones before you. Holding yourself to their metrics is a game with moving goalposts that you are never, ever going to win. You must keep your eyes on your own paper, so to speak. Trust the process—and keep moving forward.
Second, I would tell myself to not be afraid to challenge conventional wisdom when it comes to creating. In the publishing and film/TV industries, there are a massive amount of people who will tell you that there is only one way to get content produced—and that any way that doesn’t line up with their way of thinking isn’t legitimate. That is, to put it bluntly, a bunch of hooey. In this day and age, there have never been more opportunities for writers to get their work out there. So don’t be afraid to go against the grain and think outside the box. Rules are meant to be broken—and oftentimes, your biggest successes will come from going against what is deemed to be the “correct” way of doing things.
Is there a particular challenge you are currently facing?
The two authors that I look up to and inspire me most in the industry right now are S.A. Cosby and Catriona Ward. While they write very different types of material from each other—gritty, bone-crunching crime fiction and twisty, haunting psychological horror respectively—both are absolute geniuses when it comes to the most important craft element of being an author: voice. Both of them have such distinct styles to their writing. Meaning, whenever you open one of their books, while obviously you won’t know where the story is headed plot wise, you 100% know from the first line that this is a vintage S.A. Cosby or Catriona Ward classic—their prose is that specific, that commanding, that immersive, and so rich that it practically oozes off the page. Every time I read their stuff, it motivates me to dig deep in my own work—and make sure to try and infuse my own particular brand of stylistic swagger into my writing.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://pmelliott.com
- Instagram: @pmewriter
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