Ask the Author: Ellen B. O'Brien
Answered Questions (5)
Ellen B. O'Brien
Her book had finally been uploaded to Amazon, just before the system locked her out of edits, and she was free!
Until she found the typo on page one.
Until she found the typo on page one.
Ellen B. O'Brien
This is tough because the worlds of most of my favorite fiction are NOT places where I, a disabled grandma-aged artist, would necessarily find comfort. I am more likely to die on a vampire's fangs. So I'll say S.C. Principale's Pine Ridge, because it has monsters and paranormal creatures but also is a friendly and welcoming community with cozy coffeeshops, and S.C. would absolutely write me a happy ending of my own.
Ellen B. O'Brien
I am reading more than I usually get to, but I am especially interested in the books I have on my Kindle/bedside table by Kimberly Lemming, Nenia Campbell, V.V. Strange, S.C. Principale, Jen DeLuca, and Ali Hazelwood. Also I have two thick biographies of Ayrton Senna for when I am feeling non-fictional.
Ellen B. O'Brien
When I was young, I met a serial killer. Or I think I did. (Obviously, I did not get killed!) Anyhow, I always thought that would make an interesting backstory for an adult detective or FBI agent. But since I've settled into paranormal/fantasy romance and don't care to write copaganda, I'd probably make it some sort of magical investigation.
Ellen B. O'Brien
The first story I have evidence of writing was some Elfquest fanfiction I wrote with my cousin. I was maybe 12 years old and we wrote it on a Commodore 64 in the '80s. I do have a dot-matrix printout of two of the stories in a folder somewhere.
I wrote a decent amount of anime fanfiction (mostly Ranma 1/2) in the mid-'90s to early '00s and then stopped writing for almost a decade. My desire to rewrite was rekindled when I found Buffy the Vampire Slayer in 2014, and over the course of the next decade I wrote about 1.6 million words of Spuffy fic.
I had not considered writing my own original stories until 2022, when I went back to school to study digital arts and took a screenwriting class. My projects for that class did not get turned into screenplays in the end, but they did get translated to romance novel concepts which I started working on for future publication. I was not very serious about it, though, until the summer of 2024, when I heard about the Vellys Awards that were being run through Kindle Vella. I quickly brainstormed the plot of Monsoon and started writing. While Kindle Vella shut down before I could finish the story, I kept writing and completed it in January of 2025. It's been making its way through editing and the remaining work needed for publication ever since.
In the meantime, I was invited to join the Monster Brides Romance community, which led to the writing and publication of Bites on Bourbon and plans for several more monster romance stories. So it's a complicated answer! I started writing a long time ago, but the road to publishing original fiction has been a long one. And I am fortunate that along the way I found some amazing writing friends to brainstorm, co-edit, and cheerlead each other's work. ]
I wrote a decent amount of anime fanfiction (mostly Ranma 1/2) in the mid-'90s to early '00s and then stopped writing for almost a decade. My desire to rewrite was rekindled when I found Buffy the Vampire Slayer in 2014, and over the course of the next decade I wrote about 1.6 million words of Spuffy fic.
I had not considered writing my own original stories until 2022, when I went back to school to study digital arts and took a screenwriting class. My projects for that class did not get turned into screenplays in the end, but they did get translated to romance novel concepts which I started working on for future publication. I was not very serious about it, though, until the summer of 2024, when I heard about the Vellys Awards that were being run through Kindle Vella. I quickly brainstormed the plot of Monsoon and started writing. While Kindle Vella shut down before I could finish the story, I kept writing and completed it in January of 2025. It's been making its way through editing and the remaining work needed for publication ever since.
In the meantime, I was invited to join the Monster Brides Romance community, which led to the writing and publication of Bites on Bourbon and plans for several more monster romance stories. So it's a complicated answer! I started writing a long time ago, but the road to publishing original fiction has been a long one. And I am fortunate that along the way I found some amazing writing friends to brainstorm, co-edit, and cheerlead each other's work. ]
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