March 2023 Newsletter

We've had an uptick in our newsletter subscribers, so if you are new, welcome to the Elli Twy family! A Glimpse of Color was featured in a BookFunnel promo (here's the link if you'd like to check out the other featured books). If you'd like to check out all our Elli Twy books, head on over to www.ellitwy.com!

Current Events

My memoir, Shades of Resilience, should be heading to the editor's desk sometime this week! The first draft is nearly done and I'm excited for the next phase of this project. For those who don't know, Shades will be a memoir chronicling our son's journey with heart surgeries and my own experience as a healthcare worker during COVID, particularly the first wave of the pandemic.

I am hoping to get a few beta readers and some for ARC (advanced reader copies) for reviews, so if you have any interest, please email back! I'll also start planning a book cover reveal on our Instagram page. I'm all open to any suggestions.

April is National Poetry Month, a time to celebrate the short form literary medium. Head in the Sky is a collection of poems and short stories written by me and my wife, Ashley, some of which date back to 2006! Ashley is a way better poet than I am, so check out the book! It's available in eBook, paperback, and hardcover.

Behind the Scenes: A Glimpse of Color

I began the planning phase of this book in the fall of 2017, outlining the basic structure of the story while daydreaming at work, which is where most of the creative ideas happen. In January 2018, I began the process of actually sitting down and writing with the hope of completing the first draft before our son was born in September. Unsurprisingly, I missed that target by a mile. Undeterred, that meant staying up after Elliot's 3 am bottle feed to write until he would wake up a few hours later.

His first surgery in January 2019 meant putting off writing until I picked it up again in the spring. By June that year, I had a first draft to send to my editor. Tiffany had it back to me a little over a week later, but it wouldn't be until February 2020 that I began going through all the edits. When COVID hit a month later, I put everything on hold. Working long hours at an Upstate New York hospital during the first wave meant being too physically and mentally exhausted to dedicate energy to anything else.

By the summer of 2020, things calmed down enough to finally take a breath. After seeing countless patients die or survive with significant long-term complications, I felt skirting death risking getting exposed to a novel virus in the early days was a cosmic sign to focus on my bucket list. The book was released in January 2021, less than three weeks before the birth of our daughter, Twyla.

The cover, formatting, and book design was done by a company called Ebook Launch. I wanted to showcase the setting of where the majority of the book takes place—New York City. Madison, the main character, is wearing the red dress gifted to her by Sebby, an older businessman who approaches her about a platonic relationship after an incident at a club. The contrast of the gritty New York cityscape to the elegant woman walking across is a duality that underlines the story. You have a young college student in the early 2000s trying to almost live a double life between her college classes and living it up with the 1%. The pop of color on her dress and the title is a reference to what Madison can't see—she's colorblind.

With the book being set in the early 2000s, there are tons of references scattered around the pages. I didn't want it to be too overpowering with nostalgia, so it was an exercise of restraint. From music to movies and all the cringe fashion choices in between, writing A Glimpse of Color was a fun trip down memory lane, at least until I remembered how much of an emo dork I was in high school.

Writing Inspiration

Speaking of emo, to get my head in the right space writing the characters, I built Spotify playlists based on the music preference for Madison, Priya, and Sebby, which you can find by clicking the hyperlinks. Almost every song on those playlists were released from 2000 to 2009 with the exception of one Linkin Park song, "Dedicated (demo)", which technically was released in 1999. That song was one I listened to a lot on a road trip to Disney World in Florida back in the summer of 2003. This was back when I used to make mix CDs from MP3 files obtained *cough* totally not pirated *cough*. Gosh how times have changed!

Hopefully that was an insightful newsletter and if there are any topics you'd like us to focus on or suggestions for improvement, please let us know!

Until then, Happy Writing!

~Elli Twy Publishing~