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Elise (they/them)🇦🇺

@eliseswritings.bsky.social

6.8K followers 1.3K following 9.9K posts

I'm an Epic Fantasy author & Aussie on Wurundjeri country. Living my best ADHD, autistic, chronically ill, enby, aro-ace life! (Blog & Discords in 📌 post 🧵) 📚's Direct: https://payhip.com/EliseCarlsonFantasyAuthor All🔗's: https://elisecarlson.com/

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Elise (they/them)🇦🇺 @eliseswritings.bsky.social · Aug 17

There's no such thing as #1 Pinned Post🧵 to rule them all, but I shall post it nonetheless. It'll be gay, neurodiverse & beyond the binary.

For those who wander but are not lost & ponder "what if"?

It'll contain my books of the above, Final Fantasy +Narnia inspired, &invite All Writers to Discord👇

Left: Walking the Knife's Edges cover. Rarkin stands in foreground, wearing leather jacket and jeans, holding a stun gun raised to shoot to the left.

Miona stands on the right, smiling and with boxing gloved fists raised, ready to fight.

They both stand on a grassy slope, a patchwork of Farm Zone paddocks, fields and tree lined streams behind them, to a cloud covered horizon through which the yellow glow of the sun shines.

Text below cover: Make or break. Friends or fail. Monster containment.

Right: Ruarnon Trilogy Graphic with map background and a box of key points for each book.

Book 1, Manipulator's War: red glyph archway frames a smoky night sky, with fire arrows raining down on battlements on which a few torches burn. Ruarnon leans on a spear (left foreground), wearing fitted bronze armour and holding a bronze helmet.

Book 1 Text: Mystery, aro-arces, autism & ADHD, friendship.

Book 2, Secrets of the Sorcery War: blue glyph arch frames two extremely tall cliffs, through which a sailing ship sails across bright blue waters into sunlight.

Book 2 Text: monsters, forgotten weapons, adventure.

Book 3, War in Sorcery's Shadow: purple glyph arch frames a black cloudy sky, down from which a bolt of lightening strikes a shield around brown, crystaline towers of a castle. Castle sits atop barren plains of dead trees, a skull lying in foreground.

Book 3 text: resistance, secret organisations, save a mind & the world.

Text below: Direct from author & non-Amazon stores.

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Elise (they/them)🇦🇺 @eliseswritings.bsky.social · 7h

I got the former but I have no idea what's standard in that genre.

Elise (they/them)🇦🇺 @eliseswritings.bsky.social · 8h

I've just heard from at least 10 people saying how they do that and I still don't get it 😉

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Elise (they/them)🇦🇺 @eliseswritings.bsky.social · 8h

There's also that you learn so much with the first, and for me even the second and third, and everything gets easier with experience. That said, I've had more replies than I can recall, and one 80kish novel a year seems to be the most common and the average time length.

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Elise (they/them)🇦🇺 @eliseswritings.bsky.social · 8h

Yep, that's some epic drafting. I find the best thing with edits is to sit a novel down for a month or two between drafting and editing. Iits usually longer for me because of life anyway, but when I've edited sooner, I've missed a lot and had to edit more later.

Elise (they/them)🇦🇺 @eliseswritings.bsky.social · 8h

The main answer on my thread so far has been drafting books well ahead of publishing, so you've got multiple lined up. Writing full time helps, and I assume having a single pov character and a fairly straightforward plot with few subplots -the polar opposite of my writing style- would help too.

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Elise (they/them)🇦🇺 @eliseswritings.bsky.social · 8h

Oh that's no good. I didn't click on each link that appealed yet, just noted which ones I want to look into.

Elise (they/them)🇦🇺 @eliseswritings.bsky.social · 8h

I've always got multiple at multiple stages, but I like releasing one a year, ideally in the same month. At least then I've got some kind of schedule, and readers know what to expect.

Elise (they/them)🇦🇺 @eliseswritings.bsky.social · 8h

Anything rapid beginning in 2023 or later would look sus.

Elise (they/them)🇦🇺 @eliseswritings.bsky.social · 8h

That would work well in the year between book releases.

Elise (they/them)🇦🇺 @eliseswritings.bsky.social · 8h

That's understandable.

Reposted by Elise (they/them)🇦🇺

Victoria Strauss @victoriastrauss.com · 2d

Scam alert: there's an IngramSpark impersonator at ingramsparkbookpublishers dot com. Part of a wave of publishing/ghostwriting scams from Pakistan that hijack authors looking to self-publish--they often "borrow" well-known publisher names but this one also "borrows" the real IngramSpark's logo

Screenshot of IngramSpark impersonator's contact form, with chat window where scammer sales rep "Travis Clark" claims that "We are Ingram Spark's hands-on services department. You will be able to find our information here: https://www.ingramsparkbookpublishers.com/

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Elise (they/them)🇦🇺 @eliseswritings.bsky.social · 15h

Writing fast is one thing. I wrote my 50k MG novel in 6 weeks. But editing multiple novels to publishing ready standard in the same year? That's light light years from what those things will do for me.

Elise (they/them)🇦🇺 @eliseswritings.bsky.social · 15h

If by 'book' you mean 20k novellas, maybe. If you mean 60k+ novels... there's no universe in which I can conceive of doing that, including universes in which I'm able bodied and writing single pov, straight forward plots, full time. I'd get bored and creatively drained WAY before then.

Elise (they/them)🇦🇺 @eliseswritings.bsky.social · 17h

That sounds a good approach, given how up and down and round about it can be. I have things in mind I'd like to get done that day, but I'm not too fussy if even on a good day I push some things over to the next.

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Elise (they/them)🇦🇺 @eliseswritings.bsky.social · 17h

Yeah that's a lot of work. I drafted my novels mostly on weekends and school holidays while I was teaching full time. You need the time, energy and head space.

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Elise (they/them)🇦🇺 @eliseswritings.bsky.social · 17h

I feel you on the fibro. Pacing was such a shock to my system that it was 2.5 years before I had a handle on teaching with it. A year on, I still haven't set serious goals/ quite figured out writing and marketing pacing out.

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Elise (they/them)🇦🇺 @eliseswritings.bsky.social · 17h

Nice! At some point I'll review the picture books I've written, and maybe publish some -if I still think they're go enough. I'd love to do in-person author stuff with kids. One of my favourite things as a teacher is reading to kids.

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Elise (they/them)🇦🇺 @eliseswritings.bsky.social · 17h

Brain fog is the worst. I used to only get it with fatigue, but over the past few days I've been full of energy, yet an hour ago I COULD NOT recall the noun 'modem.'

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Elise (they/them)🇦🇺 @eliseswritings.bsky.social · 17h

I love the spirit of this! As a teacher I know there are kids who would love this kind of book.

Robert Tillsley (Author) @tillsley.bsky.social · Aug 31

Announcing My First Zombie, a gentle parody of picture books, perfect for children 4-8 who like a story with a little bit more than fluffy bunnies or sparkling unicorns.

To pre-order the print version in Australia, click here: blackskybooks.square.site/product/myfi...
Wide availability 20 Sept

The cover of My First Zombie, featuring a child in a lab coat holding the hands of a tall zombie in a cute style. There is a blue sky with fluffy clouds and they are standing on a hill. To one side is the top of a gravestone.

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Elise (they/them)🇦🇺 @eliseswritings.bsky.social · 17h

Fair! For me its more it takes a little longer than as many weeks (total) for me to find time to refocus on and actually finish it. (ADHD 😉)

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Elise (they/them)🇦🇺 @eliseswritings.bsky.social · 17h

I also have ADHD, and this is why I drafted a trilogy and then a four book series back to back, edited each back to back, and am now publishing one a year -change and variety are necessities!
And heavy plots/ themes are such fun! Even my 50k MG fantasy got complicated because its fun to write.

Elise (they/them)🇦🇺 @eliseswritings.bsky.social · 17h

Nice! I worked on multiple novels for far longer, but draft to publishing per book for me averages out quite similarly.

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Elise (they/them)🇦🇺 @eliseswritings.bsky.social · 17h

I just included my publishing rate. My writing and editing + publishing (multiple novels over 20+ years), is averaging out to around 3 years per novel. But same thing as you; learning a lot in between and revising each book multiple times, having written them all back to back.

Elise (they/them)🇦🇺 @eliseswritings.bsky.social · 17h

I write series too. My trouble is that between brain fog and hyper focus on non-writing related things, I can still struggle to remember things and need to do a fair amount of re-reading. -I don't have much patience for referring to or reading notes.

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Elise (they/them)🇦🇺 @eliseswritings.bsky.social · 17h

Still an achievement. And you never know, that rate my prove sustainable.