TS. Bestselling author Ella Quinn’s studies and other jobs have always been on the serious side. Political science professor and lawyer. Reading historical romances, especially Regencies, were her escape. Eventually her love of historical novels led her to start writing them.
She is married to her wonderful husband of over thirty years. They have a son and two beautiful granddaughters, and a Great Dane named Lilibet, and a cat named Winnie. After living in the South Pacific, Central America, North Africa, England and Europe, she and her husband decided to make their dreams come true lived on sailboat for three years. After cruising the Caribbean and North America, she completed a transatlantic crossing from St. Martin to Southern Europe. (Yikes!) She’s currently living in Germany, happily writing while her husband is back at work, recovering from retirement. She expects to be back on the boat in 2022.
Q. Where do you write? Do you have a special room, shed, barn, special space for your writing? (please provide a photo of you at work in your shed, room, closet, barn, houseboat….Or tell us about your ‘dream’ work space.
EQ. I have two places, one on my boat, Silver Penny. That’s my favorite place. The other is a room in our apartment that I’ve turned into an office. It’s also where the animals usually hang out during the day.
Q. Do you have any special rituals or quirks when you sit down to write? (a neat work space, sharpened #2 pencils, legal pad, cup of tea, glass of brandy, favorite pajamas, etc.)
EQ. My work space is pretty messy. Before I write, I have to either take a bike ride or a walk, clean up, eat breakfast, read the news, and take care of any emails that came in overnight.
Q. Could you tell us something about yourself that we might not already know?
EQ. I think my life has been an open book. You might not know that I’m a political nerd. I have an undergrad and masters in politics. I’ve also worked on political campaigns. So every two years around election day, I have sleepless nights watching voting results.
Q. What tools do you begin with? Legal pad, spiral notebook, pencils, fountain pen, or do you go right to your keyboard?
EQ. I go right to my keyboard. My handwriting is so bad these days that even I have trouble reading it.
Q. Do you have a set time each day (or night) to write?
EQ. I’m generally a daytime writer, unless I’m on deadline. Then I’ll be up until midnight and start early the next morning again. There are times when I like to write in the afternoons. But since coronavirus started, and my husband is home more, I’m trying to have more of a schedule. That means writing in the morning, adding about 45 minutes of exercise around 1pm, writing until around 4pm, then studying German for an hour. The election threw it off, but I’m starting the schedule again this week.
Q. What’s your best advice to other writers for overcoming procrastination?
EQ. Treat writing like a job. If you want to be successful, you have to do that. There’s just no other way.
Q. Where/when do you first discover your characters?
Join us next week for part 2
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My weekly BLOG features INTERVIEWS with best-selling AUTHORS! October: George Scott, November: Ella Quinn, December: Lauren Willig, January: Madeline Hunter, February: Mike Lupica
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I had a lot of fun with the interview. Thanks for thinking of me!