Author Spotlight:
Ellen Dye
New Book Releases:
- Three's the Charm, a contemporary romance from The Wild Rose Press, available as an electronic release on August 22, 2008 and in print on February 20, 2009!
Recent/Upcoming Book Signings & Events:
- Ellen is going to be guest blogging away on October 15th over at sisterwriters.blogspot.com. Drop by, leave a comment, and have a chance of winning a free download of Three's The Charm! And coming up even sooner is her first contest at www.ellendye.com!
Questions We Asked Ellen...
What is your favorite place to write? My absolute favorite writing place is my incredibly comfy lounge chair beside the whiskey barrel of impatiens on our deck which is surrounded by nothing by West Virginia woods as far as the eye can see.
Are you a typewriter, Mac, or PC person? PC in the end, but I usually do all my actual writing longhand in a series of spiral notebooks with really cute covers. Yes, I was serious about the sitting on the deck business above.
How many full-length novel manuscripts did you complete before selling? Interestingly enough the number is one. That’s right, Three’s The Charm is the first novel-length manuscript I finished before selling. However it did take six years to write, polish and sell...
Can you give us a quote from one of your best (or worst) rejection letters? Such a tough question--so many possible answers... I guess I’d have to go with the worst rejection I received which actually became the best the more I thought about it. The editor I’d pinned all my hopes and dreams of selling on babbled on for two pages (nope, not kidding, two full pages) about how she loved my book, loved the characters, loved the interaction between said characters and essentially loved the book. And then in the last paragraph she gave one line to the rejection, which was the actual purpose of the letter. "Sorry, but this just isn't what we’re looking for." Hmmm, that one took me a while to figure out. And fortunately it did improve my sense of humor about the entire publishing industry.
What would you say is the most valuable writers' training course you've taken? I would have to say the training that has helped me most hasn’t arrived in course form. Not that there aren’t great ones out there, because there certainly are. But I’d have to say the two most valuable sources of writing information came from books, mostly those written by successful authors on "how I do it." And the other, absolutely most valuable, is in simply chatting with other authors.
What is your reason for writing? I love it. Yep, it’s as simple as that. I read my first confession magazine when I was nine years old and that’s the first time I realized telling stories was what I wanted to do with my life. Of course I managed to get a little lost along the way, but eventually, through spotting a confession magazine on the shelf of our local grocery store, I found my way back to that original goal.
What would the hero of your latest book say if he met you on the street? Definitely tip his hat, welcome you to town and offer to introduce you to his home town of Trenton’s Forge, West Virginia.
What would he DO? Whatever needed done first--and I’d have to say fixing your car would be at the top of that list. Well, since Trenton’s Forge is a small WV town, usually that’s the only way they get visitors...
What advice would you give to other aspiring writers? Don’t ever give up. Yeah, I know. Everybody says that, but really it’s true. So long as you don’t quit, you will succeed in this business. It’s both as simple and as difficult as that. Oh, and by the way, it’s totally worth it.
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Still have questions?
If you want to know more about Ellen, visit her website at
www.ellendye.com.
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