Ellie Di Julio's Blog, page 17
February 17, 2014
The book I didn’t want to write
Confession: I didn’t want to writeThe Transmigration of Cora Riley.
Whew.Feels good to get that off my chest – thanks for listening.
Whaddya mean that’s not good enough? Geez, people. It’s like you wantreasons for things. Fine. Iguess I can write more than one sentence about it.
AfterInkchanger, I swore I’d never write another book like it. Constructing believable characters ina world requiring a different set of rules while ensuring I hadn’t left any glaring plotholes behind was exhausting. I’d...
February 11, 2014
Book Review: Solving For Ex
Title: Solving For Ex
Author: LeighAnn Kopans
Genre(s): Young Adult, Contemporary, Romance
Publisher: Self-Published
THE 140-CHARACTER GIST
Matheletes in Love: Junior Ashley Price is in love with best friend Brendan, but it takes an invading set of twins to get her to speak up.
THE SUMMARY
“Ashley Price doesn’t have much in life after being bullied so hard she had to leave her old school to live with her aunt and uncle in Pittsburgh. But the camera she borrowed from her best friend and secret crush...
February 9, 2014
Inverted Walkabout: Schedule/location update
Just a quick post to let y’all know where I’ll be (roughly) for the rest of my time away from Canada.
Staying in LA until Friday (2/14).
Friday-Sunday, I’ll be in Albuquerque with my mom.
Sunday-3/7 = Magdalena/Mom’s in the middle of nowhere.
3/7-3/19, driving to Kansas City with family
3/20-3/23, back to Mom’s.
Flying home to Hamilton on 3/24.
A few people have expressed interest in meeting up with me! If you’d like to hang out while I’m still in LA, skipping through ABQ, or visiting KC, pleaseplea...
February 4, 2014
Why I gave in and started brainstorming by hand
Ask a hundred different writers how they do their brainstorming, you’ll get a hundred different answers. But I’d bet at least half of them include writing something out longhand, the old-fashioned way. People love to fill up scraps of paper, I tell you what.
I resisted for the longest time, which makes no sense because I’m a habitual list-makerandI learn best when I take notes while listening, but I’d gotten so attached to my technology that I didn’t see the value in going back to the slow, un...
February 2, 2014
The Obligatory Birthday Post
As you may or may not know, I’ve turned 30 today. I’m celebrating with a week in Los Angeles with my brother and best friend, where I’m currently pretending to be a Classy Lady while at the same time quietly wondering if I’ll ever accomplish anything. You know, the usual.
Because I’m an oversharer from the internet, I, of course, felt like I needed to post something deep and meaningful today. Like you do. Then I was like, “Eh, fuck it. I’m on vacation.”
Then some folks from Facebook tried their...
January 29, 2014
State of the Ellie: January 2014
I feel that adequately sums up what happened to me this January. It’s been a rough start to the year when you look at it from the outside. Which is weird, right? Should look hard from inside. But for some reason I’ve been able to bend rather than break under what seems like incredible pressure and last-minute course changes. Could be that whole “faith” thing working out already…
This month, I:
started writing Sword of Souls, the next Forgotten Relics book (progress bar at the bottom of the page...
January 27, 2014
Meet me in Los Angeles (or anywhere, really)
As an addendum to the announcement of my going on inverted walkabout, I wanted to let y’all know where I’m going to be, when, so we can hang out, if that’s something you want to do. Which apparently it is, judging by a) the flattering number of couch-surfing invites I got last week and b) the amount of crap I’ve gotten from friends in the past when traveling on the DL.
Right now, most of my two-month trip is up in the air. Here’s the plan so far:
1/31: Toronto to Los Angeles
2/1 – 2/7: LA/Culver...
January 22, 2014
Inverted walkabout: A marriage adventure
The world sort of shifted for me last week, resulting in an easily-misunderstood situation that I don’t want to have to explain a zillion times in private, so I’m writing this in public. I’ll try to make this as concise as possible, although the story probably deserves a longer, deeper explanation.
Here goes:
Things in my marriage have been rocky since The Incident in 2012. We’ve been up and down, but Lino has been undeniably and increasingly unhappy, getting so bad over the last few months tha...
January 20, 2014
Book Review: Unicorn Western
[Editor's note: In the interest of both expanding my reading experience and supporting the indie industry, I've decided to do some book reviews of self-published and independent authors. We'll see how well I can keep up with it, but the idea is to do one a month. Enjoy.]
Title: Unicorn Western: Full Saga
Author: Sean Platt & Johnny B. Truant
Genre(s): Western, High Fantasy
Publisher: Realm & Sands (self-pub)
THE SUMMARY
Cast out from the Magical Kingdom of The Realm and into the dying desert of the...
January 16, 2014
The no-car experiment analysis and results
Reminder: Since the Focus is dying slowly, I decided to go for a week without it and see what shook out. This is my day-by-day journal on that, followed by a TL;DR for all you impatient folks out there.
Day 1: Wednesday
No big shakes. I didn’t go anywhere because the frozen asshole of winter (also known as the polar vortex) was still shitting ice all over the area. No one should go outside in -30C. Especially not me.
Day 2: Thursday
I had a dentist appointment in the afternoon, but I’d already pl...
