Meet the Author - Ellie Yarde

Hey readers,
I am so excited to introduce you to this amazing writer who is also a blogger, a book publisher and the author of Escape The Choice and Embrace the Choice, Ellie Yarde! We are so intrigued to know more about how it all began and follow her on this writing journey where we immerse ourselves into her inspiring stories. 

To start off this interview, tell us a little about yourself. 
I have done several interviews now, and this is the bit I always find difficult – trying to think of things that make me sound like an interesting person! I’ll give a few facts. I am a writer and a blogger, I have published two books, with more to come, and countless short stories on my blog. I enjoy driving, knitting, and reading, and have a deep dislike for mushrooms. I spend more time binging tv shows than actually writing or reading, and I never seem to finish watching the shows either…

I would love for you to share a little about your book, Escape The Choice, with our readers. 
Escape the Choice is the first book I published. It is a short story, 40 pages long, and it follows Ali as she tries to figure out how to juggle the people in her life. She is friends with Oliver, and has a crush on Noah, but neither man likes the other. Here are the first two paragraphs, just to give you a little taste of the book! I replayed the scene in my head as I twirled my pen absentmindedly around my fingers. We had been talking about Oliver, disagreeing about him. I had been arguing that there was nothing wrong with him, that he was just misunderstood. People thought he looked aggressive and avoided him because of that. I was the only one who didn’t buy into it and saw Oliver as the nice guy he really is, but Noah was arguing against him. Saying that I shouldn’t spend so much time around him by myself. As if Noah could tell me who I should and shouldn’t hang out with. Having floppy, dark hair and brown puppy dog eyes didn’t give him the authority over me to stop me being friends with Oliver. Noah had sighed, glancing at the door of my dorm room, which we both knew had my roommates waiting behind it, eavesdropping on our conversation. “I’ll see you around, Ali,” he had said, defeat clear in his voice as he shoved his arms into his jacket and walked between the beds in the room to the door, nodding a greeting to my roommates as he passed them, and left without a backwards glance.

Is there a specific time of the day that you prefer to write? 
There is a secret I hold, and that is that I don’t have much of a writing routine. I am always seeing tweets from people, saying that they wrote this many words today, or spent this long writing, but sometimes I’ll go weeks between writing. I have a very short attention span, and I get distracted when I know I should really start typing something. I am the worst at writing in the mornings and evenings. When I do write, it is in a short timeframe, between 4 in the afternoon, and dinner, which can sometimes be as early as 5:30. It’s no wonder my longest WIP has taken at least a year to get to 30,000 words! What or who inspired you to begin writing for yourself? My mum is a big inspiration to me. She has always been a writer and a bookworm, and I remember her giving me her old typewriter when I was little. I wanted to write, like her, so I would spend hours lying on the floor of my bedroom, slowly typing out stories. Evidently, my attention span has shortened since I was a child!

Can you tell us a little about your blog and the type of blog posts we can find there? 

My blog, Reading All Night, was originally meant to be a place for me to talk about writing and reading, although it has slowly morphed into a smorgasbord of posts. I now post reviews for books, movies, and podcasts, and try to post a short story each week. My favourite post to date that I have written was a post about three movies, all of which challenged usual necessities of films by removing things, such as sound or dialogue. You can have a look at this post here: https://readingallnightuk.blogspot.com/2022/03/see-hear-and-speak-no-evil-in-form-of.html

You seem to maintain a schedule for your blog. How do you stay consistent? 
If there is anything that is consistent about me, it is my lack of consistency. Keeping up with my blog is something I greatly struggle with, and most of my posts are written late in the evening, the day before they go up. I post on Wednesdays and Saturdays, Saturdays are exclusively short stories, and Wednesdays are everything else, mostly reviews. I was working towards getting my second book ready, and releasing it, the last few weeks, and my blog post schedule suffered from the lack of time I had. Unfortunately, I have been quite behind on writing posts. I am just now starting to get back on track, and am getting things scheduled for the coming weeks.

Is there a particular subject or type of posts that you prefer to write on your blog more than others? 
As much as I like writing, I must admit, I’m starting to struggle with my Saturday short stories. I think I have about fifty short stories currently on my blog, which is a lot of different things to write. My favourite kinds of post are currently what I think are ones I use to cheat – the movie reviews. If I don’t have a post ready for the next day, I can just sit down in the evening, watch a movie, and get the post ready pretty quickly. I am starting to get some more book reviews scheduled now, and I am really enjoying reading more. Have you always wanted to be a writer? If not, what did you want to be? I think, deep down, I always wanted to be a writer, even if I didn’t realise it. I had some odd career dreams when I was under 10, which morphed from being a dentist to being a postman. I wanted to be an actor, a musician. All of the famous things. That is, until I realised I don’t actually like performing in front of people. But I have been writing my whole life. I remember I would read books, and then write stories about them. I wrote a chapter or two about a slave in Rome after reading The Roman Mysteries. I remember writing whatwas basically fan fiction of The Walking Dead once, to add myself into the story. Why I felt the need to live through a zombie apocalypse, I don’t know!

What do your friends and family think about your book? Do you discuss your ideas with them before deciding to write about it? 
I actually rarely tell anyone my story ideas until I’ve started writing. I have one WIP, the one I previous mentioned, that’s at about 30,000 words, that I have told my mum about, although she only knows the premise, not the plot. Usually, I finish writing something before I announce I’ve written it. Not all of my family have read my books, although my mum, gran, and an aunt has.

Do you often get a writer’s block? If yes, what is your secret to get out of it?
With my terrible writing schedule, I rarely get writers block. Unless me not writing for weeks on end classes as writers block, and then I must have it pretty bad! If I don’t know where a story is going next, though, I usually step away from it for a while. The solution will pop randomly into my head at some point, and then I’ll rush to write it down before I forget it.

Is there something about writing that you dislike? 
I really hate editing. I don’t know if this classes as a part of writing, but that’s my answer. I loathe it with a passion. Reading my own work, again and again, sieving through the lines to make sure everything makes sense, and is as it should be. And things still slip through. My first book was published with a missing full stop that I have since corrected. Luckily, my mum is super patient, and she helps me to edit as I quietly sulk at having to do it at all. Which social media do you find more beneficial to promote your writing and why? I am not on a lot of social media. I mainly only use Twitter, so this is a difficult question to answer! Technically, I find Twitter most beneficial to promote my writing, but that’s only because it’s the only one I really use!

Who is your biggest motivation when it comes to writing? 
I can almost watch my unwritten books in my head like a movie, and want to be able to share the film with others through the written word. That is my main motivation. Also, having somewhere to put all the different stories, so I don’t forget them. I have what I would call some amazing ideas for stories, although I came up with them, so that might be a little egotistical to say, and I would hate for them to be lost because I never wrote them down.

Do you simply open a blank page and begin writing? Or do you plan everythingahead?
I wish I could just open a page and write. I have to have some sort of idea of what will happen in the story, or I will get nowhere. I don’t plan everything out, although some endings are pre-decided before I have even written the first word. I have a little notebook that has all my story ideas, so I don’t forget them. Some I know will only be short stories, because there simply isn’t enough to the idea to make it a full length novel, but I am fine with that. As long as I can get them written at some point!

Do you have a favorite quote? 
I am terrible at remembering quotes. I was almost going to go and google ‘good quotes’ to try and find something I liked. I do remember that one that everyone knows, though, “A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies. A man who never reads lives only one.” - George R. R. Martin. I think this one is pretty good!

Can you give us a little insight about your newest book, Embrace the Choice? 

Embrace the Choice is the second book in The Choice Series, although all the books in the series do stand-alone, so you can read book 2 without having read book 1. While book 1 follows Ali, Embrace the Choice is about her roommate, Lena, as she tries to figure out dating when she is usually too sky to talk to anyone outside of her close friends. It is slightly longer than Escape the Choice, by a whole 7 pages! It certainly has more comedy in it than Escape the Choice, and there’s an ongoing joke about smutty romance books…if that doesn’t make you want to read it, I don’t know what will!

Do you have any other plans for either this series or any other books?
The Choice Series will have a third book, although I don’t want to reveal the name just yet… I have written the first draft, although it will need a lot of revisions before I can start the dreaded editing stage! I can reveal that it will be about Kyra, the third roommate in Ali and Lena’s tales. I have several other projects, namely my 30,000 word WIP, but I also have several other short stories that I have written. These are completed, and are just waiting for editing, which is why they have not been published yet, because I will put editing off for as long as possible!

Where did you get the inspiration when it comes to the characters in your books? 
With my characters, I tend to just make them up as I go! There was no plan behind Ali, she just materialised as I wrote. Lena was based loosely on myself, and was created before I realised I wanted to write a series, and have a book from her perspective. It was a little strange, writing a book about someone I had based off myself, although it did give me a strange new understanding about myself. Kyra also just materialised, as a young woman with a tough exterior, but who can’t help but steal a few of her boyfriends hoodies to wear because they’re comfy and smell like him.

What difference did you see in your writing style after the second book of theseries? 
The main difference, between the first and second books, I didn’t really find in the writing style. My editing routine had changed, it was a lot more streamlined, but before that, there was less of a plan with the writing. I wasn’t sure what Lena’s story was until I started writing it. After I figured it out, though, I wrote half the book in a day.

Was promoting the second book easier since you have readers who are already reading your first book and must be intrigued by the sequel? 
Promoting my second book was easier, but mainly because I was running a free promotion for book 1 as book 2 came out. So I was shouting on Twitter about how book 1 was free, and casually mentioning that book 2 was also out now!

What kind of changes did you see in yourself, personally, after writing these two books? 
I wish I could say I was more motivated to write daily, and get more of my ideas out into the world! Even if the world was going to end if I didn’t write for an hour each day, I think I would end up letting the world down. I think I learnt more about myself after writing book 2, as the main character was technically based on myself. Lena has my social awkwardness, and writing about it has helped me to come to terms with the fact that it’s not just me who prefers not to be around people!

As the author itself, is there something you would like to say about your books to our readers?
My books, at least, the ones I have out at the moment, are about trying to find the right way in life, no matter what obstacles may stand in your way. Ali has to try and figure out if she can keep both Oliver and Noah in her life, or if she must give one up, and Lena struggles through shyness and an unbelievable amount of awkward situations to spend more time with the guy she likes. I must apologise to Lena, for I did put her in those situations. As an outsider, I found them hilarious, although she absolutely did not!

Is there anything that you would like to add or share in this interview?
I would love to give a link to my blog, Reading All Night, so anyone interested in my plethora of short stories and reviews can check them out: https://readingallnightuk.blogspot.com/
I would also like to share the buy links for my books. Again, they do not have to be read in order, so if you fancy reading one, but not the other, that is fine!Escape the Choice: https://books2read.com/u/bQyzleEmbrace the Choice: https://books2read.com/u/br1gyz
And if anyone wants to keep up with me after reading this, although I paint myself as a pretty scatter-brained individual, so I’m not sure anyone will, you can follow me on Twitterhere: ReadingAlNight

Thank you for having me! I really enjoyed answering these questions!

~ Thank you for reading & happy blogging ~