About

Hello!

I absolutely love writing fairytale retellings. It's something I've been doing for a while and it gives me great pleasure to have the opportunity to finally share this through publishing my works. I do this while writing under the pen name, Lela Lorelle, to make it less confusing since when I first began publishing books I published children's books (picture books, chapter books, and middle grade) under my real name. Writing under a pen name seems best as it represents my fairytale retelling series which is specifically geared torward YA and up.

My first fairytale retelling started years back while I was in my eighth grade year in junior high. I had submitted my first retelling in short story format for an English class assignment. The teacher offered we could write about anything. This allowed me full creativity and so I wrote what (and still is) fascinating to me--fairytales. To my surprise, I ended up with an A and my teacher left me a posted note saying:

"Interesting story. You might want to consider entering it in a children's magazine."

I recall being excited getting an A. Reading and writing were among the subjects I struggled with in school (besides math). I was the artsy, quiet kid who hardly spoke to anyone with a preference to sit in the back, never wanting to draw any kind of attention to myself. I spent most of my time developing characters, worldbuilding, sketching out character designs and exploring storytelling.

Lacking confidence in the techinical side of writing and having ADD, I didn't think I had what it took to pursue writing seriously and wrote as a hobby. I was intimidated by my grammatical mistakes and punctuation rules and had a hard time remembering which were nouns, adjectives, adverbs, etc. My brain seemed to only hold information if I were constantly utilizing the information daily. I prefered writing for the creativity side of it. I primarily learn best visually and auditory secondary. 

Years later, I decided to pursue my dream of being a published author and dedicated a decade of studying the craft and techinical side of writing. In 2015, I revisited retelling fairytales and submitted a short story of my version of Red Riding Hood, to an anothology of children's fairytales. It was accepted and published the same year.

Being an author of children's books, I felt limited because word count is shortened down ideally to 500 words or less. I love illustrating, but I also enjoy expanding a story into a novel. This was something I craved to explore. 

In November 2017, I began exploring an entire world containing all the fairytales I love. The journey has turned this into a complex fairytale world where the characters crossover in each other's stories. I'm writing them where each story can be read as a stand-alone, but in order to gain an overall experience of the entire world, some books within the series will be best read if read in order as these are written as a continuation, bridging between a total of three books on a particular character's journey.

While I enjoy the modern setting, I prefer keeping this world in an imaginary fantasy world. I've mashed up all the things I enjoy: fantasy/dark fantasy, paranormal/supernatural, mystery/suspense, action/adventure, science fiction for some and historical for a few others.

My first book in my fairytale retelling series will be coming out spring of 2018. I'm looking forward to this journey and hope to gain interested readers who'll enjoy to follow me through these series.