Flight Attendant Signs 7-Figure Deal for Two Books

A former Virgin America/Alaska Airlines flight attendant who created fictional nightmares during downtime on cross country red-eyes has a 7-figure deal for two novels.

Avid Reader Press announced that T.J. Newman’s first book, the thriller “Falling,” comes out in July. The story, a horror story, takes place on a crowded flight from Los Angeles to New York in which passengers are unaware that the pilot’s family has been kidnapped and the pilot must crash the plane to save them.

T.J. Newman, in an interview with the Associated Press, said that the idea came to her on a redeye flight in which all of the passengers were sleeping and the realization that everyone was at the hands of two man flying the plane. She also explained that she posed the question, the plot of her book, to one of the pilots and asked what he would do in that very situation and he didn’t have an answer. “It was right there that I knew I had to figure it out,” she told the AP.

She used everything from an iPad to the backs of napkins while writing “Falling” but should have a much easier time for the next book: Soon after her contract was finalized, she quit her job.