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Ellen Potter (born 1973) is an American author of both children's and adult's books (as Ellen Toby-Potter). She grew up in Upper West Side, New York and studied creative writing at Binghamton University and now lives in Candor in upstate New York. She has been a contributor to Cimarron Review, Epoch, The Hudson Review, and Seventeen. Her novel Olivia Kidney was winner of the Child Magazine Best Book award and was a Best Book of the Year selection for 8-12 year-olds by Parenting magazine.What made you want to be a writer? What was one of your first stories about?
I’ve always loved to read, and reading great books made me itchy to write one. I started to write stories when I was seven or eight. They were almost always about horses. Growing up in NYC, I had zero opportunity to ride a horse, so I “rode” them fictionally. Those early stories were shameless rip-offs of Black Beauty, and the heroine always looked suspiciously like me.
Tell me about one of your typical writing days...what are your routines? Favorite places to read, write. Music? post it notes over every possible surface?
I write about 2 to 3 hours a day (more when I’m getting close to the end or when I’m revising). When I’m not physically tapping out my story on the keyboard, I am often thinking about it on long walks. Creating a story is nearly equal parts writing and thinking-while-not-writing.
I’m sort of a low-maintenance writer. I’m not fussy about where I write—on my couch, in a café, in a waiting room. I can work with music or in silence. I do have lots of Post-Its all over the place but I recently got the Scrivener software, and that has helped me to cut down on my Post-It consumption.
-How active do you think you are in the book blogging community and how has it treated you? Do you have much interaction with your readers?
Fairly active. I do most of my blogging on the Spilling Ink website with my Spilling Ink co-author Anne Mazer. We mostly write about . . . what else . . . the writing life.
Are there specific reasons you chose to write in this genre?
Kids are the best and most terrifying audience out there. They are in it for the story, pure and simple, and they pay a lot of attention. You have to constantly be on your toes when you write for kids, and your pacing has to be pretty impeccable.
I personally love the style of cover art on your upcoming release - How did that cover art process go for you?
The artist is Jason Chan and he also did the cover art for my book The Kneebone Boy. I have to say that I am smitten with his work. It is so haunting and dreamy. He captures things in my characters that even I hadn’t noticed!
What is your current WIP (Work in Progress) if you have one? Do tell, do tell.
I’m working on a series for younger kids. Much fun to write!
And the most IMPORTANT question you will ever answer *drumroll please*
What are your thoughts and feelings on the Amazingly Delicious - Canned Not quite Meat - SPAM?
Weird as it may sound, I have never, ever eaten SPAM, although I’m sure it is spectacular.
Hiding is Roo Fanshaw's special skill. Living in a frighteningly unstable family, she often needs to disappear at a moment's notice. When her parents are murdered, it's her special hiding place under the trailer that saves her life.
As it turns out, Roo, much to her surprise, has a wealthy if eccentric uncle, who has agreed to take her into his home on Cough Rock Island. Once a tuberculosis sanitarium for children of the rich, the strange house is teeming with ghost stories and secrets. Roo doesn't believe in ghosts or fairy stories, but what are those eerie noises she keeps hearing? And who is that strange wild boy who lives on the river? People are lying to her, and Roo becomes determined to find the truth.
Despite the best efforts of her uncle's assistants, Roo discovers the house's hidden room--a garden with a tragic secret.
Inspired by The Secret Garden, this tale full of unusual characters and mysterious secrets is a story that only Ellen Potter could write.
Pabkins
Countess of Crazy, Insane babbler, Giver of the Evil Eye, Walking Hazard Zone, Maker of Monsters, but above all Lover of a Zombie and those things that are creepy crawly. Step in to my library my pretties…
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