About

Open Linethe divorce dietTrip Sheets

I’ve published five novels: A Decent World (Swift Press), Other People Manage (Swift Press, 2021), The Divorce Diet (Kensington, 2015), Open Line (Coffee House Press, 2008) and Trip Sheets (Milkweed Editions, 1998). I’d embed links but I don’t know what country you live in, do I? If you’re clever enough to have found me here, you’re clever enough to find them online if you want to buy them (she said with great subtlety).

If you’re not tired of me yet, you can look on the What Else? page and find links to articles I’ve written elsewhere on the web.

We’ll keep the bio brief: I was born and raised in New York, lived in Minnesota for many long, cold years, and now live in Cornwall.

Copyright

© All Rights Reserved. Any content reblogged must adhere to the terms of international copyright law. You’ve memorized every clause of it, right? Excerpts of 75 words or less can be quoted as long as a link back to the source page is provided and the author is credited. In general, behave yourself. Go write your own stuff. It’ll be wonderful.

228 thoughts on “About”

    • Good question. I’m not sure what the answer is, though. The Divorce Diet‘s about food, dieting, motherhood, and breakups. It’s a light read and (if I do say so myself) a lot of fun. Open Line‘s a political satire. Trip Sheets is about a woman trying to figure out her place in the world. It was my first novel, and I’m less sure that, as a whole, it holds together as strongly as the other two. So I’d say whichever topic or tone draws you would be the one to start with.

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  4. Hello fellow Yankee. Just read your tale of Immigration woes
    My husband my beagle and I are going through the same hell with ukvi. Wondered of you had any advice on how your case went? We actually ended up homeless not being ae work and experiencing multiple tragedies in our families. Grid. It has been but we have nothing left in the us. Any help appreciated. Best raine

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    • Sounds truly awful. We were lucky in that we were able to afford a lawyer, who filed an appeal, but I believe a lot of people file without representation. The grounds we won on were that the E.U. mandates that immigrants have a right to a family life–article 8 of the Human Rights Act. The link will give you a place to start. The interpretation of family life was a generous one, since we don’t have relatives here. But we’d established a life here, and yes, we as a couple are a family.

      One more word about appeals: The government uses the appeal as a way to weed people out. Many people assume they’ve been defeated and don’t appeal–they either leave or they stay illegally. The government did send a lawyer, but he didn’t even bother to make an argument. I don’t know that they’re as passive when people mount their own defense, but the right to a family life is a powerful argument.

      I wish you luck. Let me know how it goes, will you?

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  5. Hi Ellen I am residing in Somerset England, the Cornwall you live in … is it this one next door to me? I have to ask as three quaters of America it seems has – as you’d expect, The same town and village names. 😇

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  6. Hi Ellen … I “stumble” in your space/blog when I found the story about “Gay marriage, romance, and village life”. I love the story .. and I wrote a comment about it asking if this was your story. I hope you don’t mind.
    I have to re-read your post one more time. I was on the cell phone when I first read it.
    The reason I ask it because it resonates with me ….
    Have a wonderful day … Peace .. __/l\__

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  7. At a certain age, being called ‘interesting’ is almost as insulting as ‘nice’. Happily, I’ve reached an age where ‘interesting’ is cool and merits more than ‘nice.’ So, Ellen, having read a brace of your blogs, I’d like to say, without any negative connotation, that you and your writing are interesting, intriguing and amusing.

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  8. That coastline in the header shot looks familiar.
    Anyway, just passing back by on the ‘Who was that pressing the Like button?’ exploratory trip and much enjoyed what I found here, so I have Followed so that I can read more when you publish it. Thanks for reading my effort.

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    • I can’t remember exactly where I was standing when I shot it, but it’s Cornwall’s north coast–south of Bude, north of Port Isaac. That covers a lot of territory, but it was a few years back and the details have faded. Thanks for stopping by.

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  10. Well, hello, Ellen! So nice to “meet” you….which only happened because you “liked” some of my posts. Thank you so much for that. I’m not sure how you found me, but I really appreciate that you took the time to connect. I’m going to read/comment on a post or two…and, I’m following you, now :)

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  11. Hello Ellen. I love reading your blog, it cheers me up and makes me laugh. One problem, which seems unique to your blog and you may not even know the answer, but I follow your blog via the follow button on wordpress. You are on my reader list and yet your blog posts are the only posts that NEVER show up in my wordpress reader. This is really annoying because I forget to look for your posts so end up missing out. Any ideas why yours is the only one in the whole wordpress blogosphere that seems averse to appearing in the reader? Maybe I should ask the WordPress helper people.

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    • WordPress helpers are the people to ask, because I haven’t a clue. But whatever’s wrong, it might explain why so few people follow the blog on WordPress. I’ve always assumed that not many people use the reader–I don’t myself. If WP can’t (or doesn’t) help, you can hit the Follow Blog Via Email button, which should bypass the WordPress reader. If, on the other hand, they do help, let me know, will you? And if you keep having trouble, let me know, will you? I’m not sure what I’ll do, but I’ll run in circles for a while and at least make an effort.

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    • It’s great to find a blog in common, and I enjoyed my visit to yours. My life’s overloaded just now (doesn’t that make it sound as if it’s about to change? fat chance), so I don’t read as much of other blogs as I’d like to, but yours is one I hope to return to.

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    • Thanks for your interest. I’m not sure about Australia/New Zealand, and I hate to recommend Amazon but that would be your best bet. I recently used them to buy, in Britain, a copy of a friend’s book that was published in the US. It was shipped from Britain, so no extra import taxes.

      I really need to update that page.

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    • I haven’t found the earlier comment yet–they come in backwards and that sort of suits the insanity of life, so who am I to upset the feng shui of my inbox? But I’ll look foward to getting snarled at by someone who’s already made peace. Glad you found me–and of course I’m curious about how you came to be looking.

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      • You popped out on a recent return to Senior Salon. I hadn’t been there for awhile (and still not there this week as only old, closed ones seem to show up on my phone) and had some time. My blog also focuses on cultural differences (world wide, but also in our own backyard) but I seem to have lost my sense of humor these past two years. Alas. I enjoy smiling, so am enjoying your posts.

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  20. Pingback: #SeniSal ROUNDUP: March 4 -March 8, 2019 ~ Esme Salon

  21. Ellen, because of our four years living in Norfolk, my husband and I are true Anglophiles and some of our fondest memories are from our lives there. I scanned several articles and was truly surprised with I found you were not British. The UK today is very different today than when we were there but all things change. I look forward to reading your posts in future. When we were there, Maggie Thatcher was PM, popular TV shows were To The Manor Born, Are You Being Served and Good Neighbors. The biggest controversies Maggie selling off council housing and the endless political wars between Labour Unions/the Labour Party and the Tories. .If you enjoy living in the UK only half as much as we did, you are a happy woman.

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      • If there were a typo competition, you’d be a long way down the list, so don’t worry. Something about the comment form encourages us–or at least me–not to proofread before hitting Send.

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    • I’ve been ridiculously happy here. And yes, a lot has changed–much of it for the worse. The government now is trying things even Thatcher wouldn’t have dared touch, from selling off a big chunk of the Royal Mail to chopping up the NHS. Britain’s now joined the U.S. in needing food banks, and you can find donation bins in most supermarkets. When I first moved here, I was impressed that no one seemed to need them. But in spite of the problems, it’s a wonderful place. It’s good to hear that you feel the same.

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  24. Dear Ellen,

    I hope that you have been reasonably well and upbeat in the first quarter of 2021 overall. Having read some of your posts and judging by the number of posts that you have published as well as the number of comments and replies that you have composed, it is all too obvious that you have been astoundingly prolific over the first quarter of 2021.

    In the spirit of Easter, I would like to wish you, albeit belatedly, “Joyeuses Pâques!”

    Yes, I agree with you that some Easter eggs are far too expensive. I hope that you have had a lovely Easter weekend. Did you manage to do something special or unusual? Perhaps you have taken the chance to do something very worthwhile or read some unusual articles. Perhaps you have had the opportunity to make and consume some Easter cakes or memorable meals.

    Speaking of what I have got myself occupied in, I have stayed up till very late in the last few days to complete some new graphics and eye-catching animations plus more pertinent information for my special Easter post entitled “Easter in Modern Multimedia Perspective“, which you can easily find at the Home Page of my blog, as it is currently the Featured Post. You can also access the post directly at https://soundeagle.wordpress.com/2015/04/11/easter-in-modern-multimedia-perspective/

    You are very welcome to peruse the extended and updated post at your earliest convenience. I would be delighted if you could kindly submit your feedback to my said post, as I am very keen and curious to know what you think or make of it.

    I would like to inform you that these animations will only be visible when you visit my blog and view its contents in situ. Hence, it is prudent to refrain from viewing my blog in the WordPress Reader, which tends to ignore or strip away some styling and formatting components, and also fails to display animations, all of which are aplenty in my posts and pages, which will look very different and even improper or amiss in the WordPress Reader.

    In particular, scroll down to the end of my said post entitled “Easter in Modern Multimedia Perspective” to watch the complex animations under the heading “Related Articles 📰 with Animations“. Please enjoy!

    May you find April very much to your liking and highly conducive to your writing, reading, thinking and blogging about whatever topics that take your intellectual fancy, seduce your gustatory pleasure or tickle your spiritual delight!

    Yours sincerely,
    ჱܓSoundEagle🦅

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    • Hi Sound Eagle, I’ll stop by the post when I get a chance. Easter isn’t a holiday I do anything about normally, but we have a village produce stall that I work with, and during lockdown it’s been particularly important–the one time people have a chance to see each other, outdoors and safely. So we had a kids’ contests and games on Easter, and it was great. (The Easter egg contest was won by the only kid who remembered to put his name on his egg. There’s a lesson about contests and success in life buried in there somewhere, I’m just sure.)

      Stay well. Be careful. Get through this mess.

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  25. I am enjoying reading your blog. I too live (survive) in Minnesota. Originally from Bristol. Thinking about coming back to the U.K. one of these days. I am waiting for Bo Jo to vacate No.10. When things return to normal I’ll grace the rest of my family with my presence. I’ve been gone so long however, they probably won’t recognize me any more. Keep up the great writing.

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  26. I’d embed links but I don’t know what country you’re in, do I?

    A word to the wise: check out booklinker.net; it will allow you to make (free!) ‘genius links’ that automagically transport the clicker to the <spit> amazon site in their neck of the woods (VPNs notwithstanding). Here’s an example that I just made: http://mybook.to/OtherPeopleManage

    (I use booklinker.net to keep a list of all the books I want to read. And so one of yours is now on that list… really clever of you to get me to do that, kudos!)

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    • That was my plan all along. Devious, don’t you think?

      I should probably do that, although I do my best not to promote Amazon. They’re jerks. But even I will admit that I haven’t brought them to their knees yet, so maybe I should indulge in a moment of commercial impurity.

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  27. At age of 17 years I was employed by an ancestor of people who worked for East India Corporation…the vast sums made from dealing in trade of Opium…has filtered down through the family generation and the expensive house, with silk wallpaper and Persian rugs where I was employed as a live in Mothers helper. My room did not have a lock on the door for privacy and security..reason being..ifitting a lock on my room door would have spoiled the woodwork and paint work. My privacy and security was not important.

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    • My friend, you’ve clearly got a story here that needs to be told. Can I suggest that you start your own blog to explore ways to tell it, and to get it out into the world? If you can put up with some advertising at the bottom, you can do one for free through WordPress.

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