<\/p>\nAnatomy of an Alibi, Ashley Elston’s latest book, published Jan. 23, 2026.<\/p>\n
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\n <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\nWhat drew you to Baton Rouge and St. Francisville as the setting for your new book?\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\nAll of my books have been set in Louisiana, and I’ve done some in Shreveport and some in made-up towns. We were down in St. Francisville a couple of years ago. It was just so cute, so quaint, so fun. And I was like, “I should set something here.”<\/p>\n
Then we ended up going to the Angola rodeo, and I thought I had to use this in a book somehow. That’s how I wanted to it be in St. Francisville. Then I needed a big town, and Baton Rouge is the closest big town, so that worked to all be what I needed it to be.<\/p>\n
What was your process in getting to know the area?<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n
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I’ve been to Baton Rouge a ton. I felt pretty comfortable with Baton Rouge, and I do feel like, in general, there’s a lot of similarities between Baton Rouge and Shreveport.<\/p>\n
I came back to St. Francisville last year when I was editing it, just to ride around again and make sure that what I was saying felt right for the place. Then I made some tweaks and changes. That’s the fun part of writing.<\/p>\n
“Anatomy of an Alibi” has many complicated twists and turns, involving legal and business issues. How did you develop a plot like that?<\/strong><\/p>\nIt takes a lot of different drafts for me. I don’t really think of all that at the start. The first draft is typically a bit more straightforward. When I know where I’m trying to go, what I’m trying to do, I ask, “How can I go twist it up?” Then I usually go back in and really look at each scene and go, “How can I make this better and dig a little bit deeper?”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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The characters in “Anatomy of an Alibi” are complex. What inspires you to create ambiguous characters?<\/strong><\/p>\nThat’s what I love when I’m reading. When I’m writing, I hope to get across that everybody’s a bit complicated. Everybody is not just black or white.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Sometimes you’re bad, but you have good qualities, and sometimes you have great qualities, but you have a couple bad moments. I think that makes it so much more realistic and natural.<\/p>\n
I enjoy a complicated character, and I like that you can’t decide whether you like them or not.<\/p>\n
Just as the characters are multidimensional, the plot has many layers. How did you get that deep into the weeds of what the actual truth was?<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n
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I spent a lot of time thinking about those characters and how they would react, the things they would do. A lot of it is just editing, revising, digging deeper, thinking past the surface to motivations.<\/p>\n
That’s why it takes me a long time between books\u00a0\u2014 because I do spend a lot of time trying to get as deep as I can.<\/p>\n
“First Lie Wins” received a lot of national recognition. Were there any expectations for<\/strong> “Anatomy of an Alibi”?\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\nIt’s crazy, especially because they’re my seventh and eighth books, and a lot of people think it’s my first and second. I’ve had books that come out that nobody knew about \u2014 no attention and sales were abysmal. I still think they’re as good as these books. They just didn’t get the marketing dollars.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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I think also, though, that allowed me to really appreciate what I did get, because I have been on that other side. I’m so very well aware of what that other side feels like, so it just made this even sweeter.<\/p>\n
What are you most proud of with “Anatomy of an Alibi?”<\/strong><\/p>\nFinishing it. It was extremely hard to write a book after all of the attention of “First Lie Wins.”\u00a0<\/p>\n
I felt like “First Like Wins” was like lightning in a bottle. And I just thought, “Why would I even attempt to try to write something else?” So, I struggled,\u00a0 just wondering if it was good enough. I second guessed myself in a way that I had never done before. So, I am most proud that I actually finished it because it was the book I was most scared to write.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
\u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.nola.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Monroe native Ashley Elston, author of six young adult novels and two adult novels, lives in Shreveport with her family.\u00a0Elston was a wedding photographer who started writing books as a creative outlet after pausing her photography business when her third son was born. She published her first book, “Rules for Disappearing,” in 2013.\u00a0 Her last […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2249652,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25172],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2249651","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-entertainment"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/Shreveport-author-pens-thrilling-fiction-set-in-Louisiana-EntertainmentLife.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2249651","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2249651"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2249651\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2249653,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2249651\/revisions\/2249653"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2249652"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2249651"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2249651"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2249651"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}