Abby Elissa's Writings

2020 was probably the biggest year of my life for changes. And not all bad changes, either. Actually, there were more good than bad.      And, despite the fact that I'm not always an optimist, I'm going to focus on just the good changes here. 😊 I met my best friend. 💙💙 Actually, I met a ton of new friends. My two closest friends (not sure how I would have survived 2020 without you two! 💙), my writing support group, my email buddies . . . All online. I'm not sure I've ever been so grateful for technology! In March, I started my own NaNoWriMo writing group. From there, I joined The King's Daughters' Writing Camp. And . . . wow. That has been so amazing! 🤩 Actually, I'm chatting and "word crawling" (I'm not even going to try to explain that, but it works 😂) with them as I write this! I can't even describe how amazing it is to connect with writers all around the world. I discovered that I am an INFJ and I've become obsessed with MBTI ...

    ONE OF MY FAVORITE BOOKS RELEASES TOMORROW!!!!!!!!  Okay, now that we have that out of the way. 😅 I met Kassie at The King's Daughters' Writing Camp back in July. And, through that, I got the chance to beta read her newest book, Stop the Rain . And . . . wow. Y'all need to read this. And, tomorrow, y'all finally can! Now, enough of my rambling—let's get to the good stuff! Kindle | Paperback | Goodreads | Blog He left his entire world in Iraq. So why did the war follow him home? Harley Keane and his best friend Nigel were just kids when 9/11 rocked their world and changed their lives forever. When they're finally old enough to join the Army, all their childhood dreams seem about to come true. But war wasn't supposed to be like this. A kid's dream isn't supposed to become a living nightmare. Fellow soldiers aren't supposed to bleed out in front of your eyes. Back home, safe and unwounded, Harley feels anything but. Why would God spare him w...

Hi!!! First off, I wanna apologize - I should have made this post a week or two ago. *winces* But, I'm doing it now! I've been having a pretty rough time lately, for several reasons. And stressing over my never-ending to-do list was one issue. So, I've been making a lot of changes in my life recently—including temporarily pausing a lot of online stuff. I still keep in contact with my two closest friends (We all live in separate time zones, so it's not like we get to go visit each other's houses when we want to talk. 🙄) and my Bible study group, but that's about the extent of my online "social life" for a bit.  Hopefully I'll be back into the blogging sphere before long, though! When I do, I should have some powerful new posts!! Keep me in your prayers and I'll see you soon! P.S. I'm signed up for a blog tour of one my favorite books, so that'll still be coming really soon! I'll pop back into the blogging world for a few days there,...

  Welcome! Today, I'm here with a fun tag, The Avid Readers Award Tag! Here are the rules: Display the blog award logo in your blog. Thank the blogger(s) who nominated you. Thank you so much, Katja! Do not forget to link to their blogging website. Link here . List your favourite 5 books.  Answer all the questions they have given you. Nominate 4 bloggers of your choice. Ask them 10 questions. Five Favorite Books Oh my. You're asking for it! These aren't in any particular order, and I left off two of my all-time favorites that aren't published yet (the joys of beta reading! 😁). And series count, right???? Lion of Babylon  by Davis Bunn The Accidental Cases of Emily Abbott  (series) by Perry Elisabeth Kirkpatrick The Girl Who Could See  by Kara Swanson Do Hard Things  by Alex and Brett Harris If I Run  (series) by Terri Blackstock Questions Katja, you come up with some great questions!! And, yes, I'm leaving your Canadian spelling of "favorite" for ...

Well, as you (should have) gathered from the title, I don't have just one thing I'm posting about today. 😊 Instead, I have a—well, a bunch of random announcements. Let's begin, shall we? My New Work-in-Progress I'm excited to announce my new WIP! It's called Edge of the Shadows , and, if things go as planned, it might turn out to be a good bit longer than Warrior . Though I LOVE the dystopian genre (dystopian stories: futuristic stories set in a society that's pretty screwed-up; aka, probably just about every futuristic story you've heard of), I've never written much in it. The idea for Shadows  came to me one night, and I figured it would be just one more of those stories I thought about for a few weeks and then tossed aside. But I made the "mistake" of telling a couple of my friends and writing buddies about it . . . and one of them, especially, was crazy supportive of the idea (and she's still this story's biggest fan and has read h...

  Here we are! Last day of "Book Cover Design Crash Course." I hope it's been helpful to you so far! I know I've had a lot of fun designing the covers for this and sharing my random tips with y'all. 😊 And . . . now here are the last four tips, and these are even more random than before. As in, I didn't even try to give them a single theme. Now, let's dive in! *Note: All of the covers were designed by me on the free Canva website, my favorite place to create book covers and other graphics. Unless otherwise noted, all of the stories and authors are completely imaginary; I made them all up. Please don't use any of the covers in this post without my permission.* Color Scheme Remember when you were a little kid (or maybe you still do it 😏), and you would color with bright crayons without worrying about how the colors looked together? All you cared was that you made a pretty picture. Well, we can't do that with book covers. Yes, we want to make sure th...

  Welcome to our third character interview!!!  Today, I'm interviewing Hawke, Briannon's brother and — at times — Maverek's nemeses. Yep. Just leaving that right there. Here we go! Abby: Hey, Hawke! Thanks for letting me interview you! Hawke: Hello. *shifts in seat* Please tell me this isn't going to take too long? Abby: Nope, I'll keep it short! Hawke: *smiles* Short like Bree and Maverek's? Abby: Fine. *rolls eyes* I'll keep yours even shorter, so long as you give me good answers to the questions I do ask. Hawke: Deal. Abby: What's your name mean? Hawke: You expect me to know? It's a bird. Just a bird. Abby: *smiles* Okay, we'll go with that. Theme song? Hawke: "Til the Day I Die" by TobyMac. Abby: Yeah, we're going to need to work on that . . . I feel like you have another theme song that you just don't want to share. Hawke: *cocks eyebrow and grins* Keeping this short, remember? We only have time for one theme song. Abby: Fi...

Welcome to Day 2 of my cover design series!  Let me preface this by saying that, more than last time, a lot of these things I'll mention are opinion. And some of these "rules" are even more breakable than the font "rules." These are opinions and tips that I've learned over the past years, but they're not set in stone. 😊 Without any further ado, let's get started! *Note: All of the covers were designed by me on the free Canva website, my favorite place to create book covers and other graphics. Unless otherwise noted, all of the stories and authors are completely imaginary; I made them all up. Please don't use any of the covers in this post without my permission.* Picture Choice Now, there are a lot of common mistakes people make when designing book covers, but one of the most common is picture choice. There are a whole lot of examples of this, and the most common one might be cheesy stock pictures. Now, aside from the fact that you might want to ...

 Hi, y'all! I'm sorry - I meant to have the second post in the book cover series up today. But . . . life happened, and I just couldn't get it done on time without stressing myself out badly.  Hopefully it'll be up Friday, though! If not, you can count it being posted by Tuesday evening! Once again, I'm sorry about that! See y'all on Friday, hopefully!!

Welcome to day one in my new three-part series!  For three Tuesdays in a row, I want to share some tips about the incredible art of designing book covers. I've spent hours and hours researching, observing, critiquing, experimenting with, stressing over, and having fun with book cover design. And I'm still not tired of it. Matter of fact, I spent hours yesterday making sample covers for this blog post, knowing full and well that there wasn't even a story to go with any of them. However, for a lot of y'all, stressing for hours over the perfect book cover probably  isn't  your idea of fun.  But that doesn't mean you get to skip doing it. I know that a lot of people will tell you that you should always  hire a professional to create your cover. And I'm not saying that isn't a good idea.  But I know that professional book covers are expensive, and that a lot of indie authors don't have a couple hundred dollars lying around to buy one. So, hopefully, I can...