Abby Elissa's Writings

First off, I'm sorry I didn't get a post out last week! It's been a crazy few weeks - or, rather, months. And it's not gonna get any better. I'm finishing up high school in the next two weeks, leaving for college in a few months, trying to balance a sometimes-frustrating job, and working to get Like a Warrior  ready to go into the world. (a few months later than intended, sadly. But I want to do this right, so I'm willing to wait a little longer) And, so, for right now, I'm going to have to step back from blogging. This isn't permanent. This is just me trying to focus on my priorities and do what God wants me to do. Goodbye for now, y'all. Without worrying about publishing posts myself, hopefully I can be more active with reading and commenting on other blogs. And, if all goes as planned, I'll be back later ready to go full-steam-ahead with launch plans for LAW. Thank everyone one of you so much - for reading, commenting, encouraging me. I love y...

Well, I've been busy and distracted lately and forgot to write a blog post earlier. *hides* But - here I am now! Mind if I ramble for a bit? Thanks. Let me warn you - this post may seem . . . different. And I have a reason for that. See, I know I haven't been very . . . honest with y'all. I tried to make my blogging style what was expected and normal. But I'm not expected or normal. And so I'm going to try to be more honest. Maybe that means stating things bluntly. Maybe that means not getting excited like I "should." Maybe that means being sporadic or over-organized. But I'm trying to be me, not who I thought I should be. (And, heads up, that means I probably won't be using exclamation marks or emojis like I used to . . . I can explain that later. But call it an INTJ thing.) As several of you probably know, the email delivery service on Blogger will be discontinuing - I haven't looked into it yet and don't know how big of a deal it is. But...

 Hello, people! Well, if you're following a lot of the blogosphere, you may have already been spammed by info about The King's Daughters' Writing Camp. Allow me to add to that spam, and give a different view of it. :D Quick facts: It's already open! But it doesn't officially start (with goals) until April 1st. So there's plenty of time (three days is plenty of time :P) for you to still sign up.  Now, I've done both Camp NaNoWriMo and KDWC. And I like KDWC a lot better. It doesn't have the cool stats tracking page like NaNo does, but that's the biggest downside. And we have a cool spreadsheet to make up for it. (Which I still need to tweak my copy of, because I always like to make things more complex.) Aside from that, though - KDWC is so much better than NaNo. It's completely different, so comparing the two isn't even the best way to go about things. KDWC is hosted on Slack, a free workspace platform that gives you the ability to make all kin...

 Hi, y'all! With everything going on in my life lately, I've prayed about it and decided that a (very short) blogging break is something I need to do. I'm planning to be back in a little over two weeks, on March 29th. Until then, though, I won't be posting much if any and I might not be very active on commenting on others' blogs. When I come back, I'll have some exciting news! In the meantime, I have started an Instagram account! I'll plan to be more active there, since it takes less time than blogging. You can find me here:  https://www.instagram.com/a_thousand_words_431/ . Thank you all so much for your support, and I'll see you again soon! Love, Abby Elissa

Well, here I am with the music post that I'd mentioned! These are songs that have helped me through tough times. I usually don't "keep" songs like this for more than a few months, just because circumstances change, and thus what I look for in a "survival song" changes. So I've developed quite a collection over this years, and this isn't a full list. :D (Now, don't think that this, by any means, represents my full spectrum of unique musical tastes. But this is a little sampling. XD Proceed with caution. All songs are perfectly clean and nearly all could be classified as Christian. But that leaves a lot of room for my love of multiple genres. XD) All This Time - Britt Nicole I don't even know how old I was when I fell in love with this song. I also don't know why I fell in love with it. XD But it's beautiful, and I still listen to it once in a while today. <3 All this time, from the first tear cry, To today's sunrise, and every s...

Some time ago, my best friend suggested that I make several wallpapers and post them on my blog for y'all. So - here you go!  I had a ton of fun making these, and I hope you enjoy them!  They're divided up into five collections - click on the collection graphic to see all of the wallpapers in a downloadable format. Just right-click (or, on mobile, touch and hold) on the image you want to download, and then hit "save image" or "download image." These are totally free for you to use and share with friends!

Welcome back, y'all! So, I have several quick announcements. Here we go! As you may have noticed, I've switched my posting days - weekly posts every Thursday, posts on some Mondays. I think Thursday posts will be a lot more manageable for me than Tuesday posts. I'm starting a new ongoing blog series called "Indie Author Spotlights." As of right now, my plans are to do a quick interview and guest post with the author on a Monday. Then, that Thursday, I would give my review of some/all of their stories (depending on how many they have and I've read). I have a list of authors to contact (or that I've already contacted) personally. However, if you would like to participate in a spotlight, let me know! Here's a Google Form with much more info and the sign-up form! The King's Daughters' Writing Camp is hosting a Mini Camp! Sign up opens on January 18th, Camp starts on January 20th, Camp ends on January 27th, and the "gates close" on Janua...

  Welcome to 2021!! I could go into the long, well-researched ramble I had started about New Year's resolutions (the statistics on those are interesting!). Or I could list out some of my goals for 2021. But, I'm not going to do either of those. Instead, I'm here for a short post: my word of the year. I don't know how exactly y'all took this word - but I don't mean trust other people. I don't mean trust myself. I sure don't mean trust everything I hear. I mean trust God .  I mean that I want to learn how to trust God with everything in me. To not worry when everyone else is worrying. To not turn away when everyone else is turning away. To not stay silent when everyone else is staying silent. To not back down when everyone else is backing down. To not be afraid when everyone else is afraid. And so, this year, I hope you'll join me. Joining me in trusting God. With everything. 💙 Love, Do you have a 2021 Word of the Year?

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 ...

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,...

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...

 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!!

 Look what showed up in my inbox!     Early next month, some amazing bloggers are starting a fun book "party," full of book recommendations and even a giveaway.     I followed this party last year, and it was awesome! I'm looking forward to it, and I hope y'all can find some fun new books there, too! ---     Also - stay tuned! I'm working on a three-part blog series that I'm hoping will be fun and helpful! The first post should be up a week from today!

 Hey! I haven't even posted since the blog tour (which was so much fun!), but I'm finally back with the next character interview and what I *hope* will be a blogging schedule I can keep up with! First off, the schedule: I'm going to try to post every Tuesday morning, with posts on Fridays sometimes. With school, writing, and life . . . who knows how often those Friday posts will come. Now, on to interviewing Maverek! He isn't overly thrilled about this, but he agreed to try. *sighs* Finally. Here goes! Abby: Hey, Maverek! I'm so glad you could come! Maverek: *smiles slightly* Only because you and Briannon begged me. Abby: Well, I appreciate it! I'll try to keep this shorter than Bree's. Maverek: Thank you. Abby: Okay, to start us off, what does your name mean? Maverek: In your time, it means "independent." I think that meaning was invented somewhat recently, though. Abby: I think so. But, hey, it fits you! Maybe too well. Maverek: I suppose it does...

Hey, y'all! I'm back!      So, I know I've been gone for almost two weeks, but that's because I was on vacation. And then I was recuperating from vacation. 😊 I'll include some pictures down below, but, in short...it was awesome. We went to the Southwest and visited four different states. And now I'm in love with Arizona...💙 💙     Also - exciting news! I finished the first read-through of my novel, and it shouldn't need too much work before I send it to my alpha readers! That'll be so nerve-racking and exciting at the same time. 😬 I'm hoping I can send it out by the end of the week! 😁     (Side note - I'm planning to start on those character interviews tomorrow, so let me know if you have any more questions for my characters!)     And, now, onto the photos! Nevada California The really neat thing about the Pacific Ocean is that these mountains (or big rocky hills, whatever you want to call them 😃 ) are just on the other side of the road ...

Welcome, y'all! I'm Abby, and I'm so glad you dropped by!      You can read more about me here . I spent a lot of time working on that page, and I don't want to go through that again...      I made this blog to mostly be about bookish stuff - book reviews, behind-the-scenes looks at my writing, blog tours for online friends, etc. And tags. Because I just love tags.       Now, to be honest, this blog wasn't even my idea - my dad suggested it. And it wouldn't have been possible without his help - and a whole lot of encouragement and suggestions from my incredible friend, SawyerMarie (she's also a great blogger - you can find her blog, Sundrop Girls, here ). Sawyer, this probably wouldn't be happening right now without you. Thanks, girl. I'm so glad God let us become friends. 💙     I'm hoping to post at least once or twice a week, but, never having done this before, I'm not making any promises. 😊     Also - this blog i...