Hi Ellen. Thank for you taking time out of your busy schedule to chat with me.

No problem! Thanks for the opportunity to be featured on A Romance Review. It's a great site!

Ellen, can you tell us a little about yourself?

I was born in Virginia and went to college at the College of William and Mary, where I majored in history. After I graduated, I became an insurance underwriter and earned my CPCU (Chartered Property Casualty Underwriter) designation before I retired to have kids. I'm now a stay-at-home mom with three kids, eight, five, and two, and I still live in Virginia, which the English poet Michael Drayton described as "Earth's only paradise." Truer words were never spoken!

How and when did you know that you wanted to become a writer?

I've wanted to be a writer for as long as I can remember. My mom freelanced for the local newspaper, and I remember watching her type stories on her old, clacking Royal manual typewriter. I wrote all sorts of "books" when I was a kid. In college I wrote a full romantic novel. It was horrible, but I nonetheless loved the main characters, so they showed up as secondary characters in my first published romance, THE LIGHT IN THE DARKNESS.

To date you have two stories published, one with a print publisher and the other with an e-publisher. Can you tell us the experience you have had in dealing with both publishers?

E-publishers are very different from the big New York publishers. When Bantam bought my book, they scheduled it for publication over a year after they bought it. (A friend of mine who's recently sold a book to a major New York publisher was scheduled eighteen months later.) NCP, on the other hand, scheduled the release of my book for only six months after they bought it. I know of at least one e-publisher that releases books only a couple of months after they contract on them!

Another difference is the editing. Bantam sent me edits on the book almost right away. NCP, on the other hand, doesn't edit until close to the book's release date. It's important for writers to remember that most e-publishers are very small businesses with few employees. They get to everything as fast as they can, but a writer has to be patient when dealing with them. Despite this, most of them get to unsolicited manuscripts a lot faster than most New York publishers-NCP bought LOVE REMEMBERED in only six weeks!

A very distinct difference for some e-publishers is that the covers don't look too impressive. I'm lucky to write for New Concepts, which employs some extraordinarily talented cover artists. I'm every bit as thrilled about my upcoming Eliza Black cover as I was with the Pino cover on my first book.

THE LIGHT IN THE DARKNESS was your first published novel. How did you feel when you received the call? Was there someone you just had to tell right away and if so, who?

Naturally I was thrilled. My editor called me late on Friday, so I resisted my urge to call my husband and waited till he got home. I told him about it with tears running down my face (I'm not usually the teary sort, honest) and he was so thrilled he picked me up and spun me around. (I was a lot lighter back then. If he tried this now he'd throw his back out, and I'd have to use my royalties to pay his hospital bills!)

LOVE REMEMBERED is a wonderful story. Can you tell us how the story came about?

Thanks! I'm glad to hear you liked it. I wanted to write two characters that were very different from the hero and heroine of my first book, so I deliberately set out to write a sharp-tongued, witchy heroine. There have been lots of cold spinsters in romance, but very few of them are quite as ill-tempered as Cordelia Ashton! I also wanted to create a very unusual hero, and I think I was successful. My hero suffers from what today would be diagnosed as claustrophobia and panic attacks. Panic attacks are a serious problem for many people- I watched a member of my own family suffer from them and was struck by the very real terror she experienced. A lot of writers don't like their heroes to be so vulnerable. I love vulnerable heroes… but not wimps. Despite his problems, Gwaltney is a very courageous man.

The hero's name is Gwaltney Harris, from your website it was your grandfather's name. Do you plan on using other family names as the hero or even the heroine of your stories?

For some reason, my granddad, who's been dead for years, keeps showing up in my novels. My first hero bore his given name (Edward). Gwaltney Harris was actually a pen name my granddad used. Everybody called Granddad Max (after his last name, which was Maxwell) and the hero of my upcoming contemporary romance, ALL I EVER WANTED, is named Max (although in his case it's short for Maxfield). And the contemporary novella I just completed, ISN'T IT ROMANTIC?, stars a hero named Kipling… Granddad's favorite writer. I'm sure there's something really Freudian about all this, LOL.

I also used my grandmom's name (Gladys) for an incidental character in LOVE REMEMBERED. But basically I just take interesting names whenever I find them. I think Gwaltney is a fascinating name because it's a historic Virginia surname… the first Gwaltney came to Virginia in the 1650s. And because it's Welsh, it looks very unusual and exotic to American eyes. I very much doubt that there's ever been another hero in a romantic novel named Gwaltney!

There are several years between THE LIGHT IN THE DARKESS and LOVE REMEMBERED. During that time, did you continue to write? And if so, will they be published in future?

I always write, although not necessarily in a disciplined or consistent way. While I was trying to find a home for LOVE REMEMBERED, I decided to write something lighter. After two heavy, serious historicals I was ready to try something a little different. In my reading I switch back and forth between angsty historicals and light, humorous contemporaries, and I discovered I like to do the same thing in my writing. While I was shopping LOVE REMEMBERED around to publishers, I wrote a contemporary romantic comedy, ALL I EVER WANTED, which will be available from New Concepts Publishing in February, 2004. I also wrote a couple of hundred pages of my time travel romance, NEVER LOVE A STRANGER, which will be available from NCP sometime in 2004.

How much research went into the both of your historicals? Did you do a lot of research for your upcoming releases as well?

I did tons of research for my historicals. I have a notebook full of information on colonial Virginia (want to know all about harpsichords, various styles of sterling candlesticks, or the patterns in which the colonists laid brick? I'm your girl). I have a shelf full of books on the subject, some left over from college and some more recent. I also have a pile of newspaper clippings my mother collected from the local newspaper (and lots of those articles were written by Mom). Many of those clippings are pretty old, but there are still useful tidbits of information in them (did you know you could use pennyroyal or Queen Anne's lace as contraceptives?) and I consult them every so often.

I am in the middle of writing my time travel romance, which is basically a sci-fi romance, and I'm doing a lot of research on it, too. (Thank heavens for the Internet. When I first started writing, I didn't have access to it. I love Google almost as much as I love my children!) I have zero background in science, so learning about underground cities and time travel theories is slow and painful going for me. But I don't want to weight my romance down excessively with science, any more than I want my historical romances to collapse under the weight of my historical research, so much of what I've learned I'll probably never use!

Can you give us a little glimpse of your future releases?

I currently have four books under contract with NCP. The first, of course, is LOVE REMEMBERED. Next comes ALL I EVER WANTED (February 2004), a romantic comedy starring Maxfield Sinclair, a writer of a popular science fiction series that's been made into a popular TV series, who meets Drew Cooper, a professor of literature who thinks science fiction is junk food for the brain. After that are two more, which haven't been put on NCP's schedule yet. ISN'T IT ROMANTIC? is a romantic comedy novella about Kipling Stanton, a famous actor who's trying to live a normal life and finds himself falling for Cody Lang, the pretty (but slightly loopy) girl next door. NEVER LOVE A STRANGER is a more serious science fiction romance. When Annie Simpson finds a naked man on her kitchen table, she doesn't believe his ridiculous statement that he's from the future. Not only is James really from the future, but he's an escaped slave on the run. He convinces Annie his life is on the line, but soon Annie's in danger as well. Will he and Annie find a way to change the future before fifty million people die?

From your upcoming releases as well as your current one, which sub-genre was easier to write? I mean; you have an historical, romantic comedy and a time-travel. Was one of these harder than another?

The easiest for me is definitely romantic comedy. I never thought of myself as a funny person, but for some reason I find it really easy to write comedy. My characters say funny things without any real effort on my part. Historicals are a little harder because I have to work in the historical details without overdoing it. The time travel is causing me to nibble my nails to the quick, so I guess that's the toughest for me! It's also not easy to switch back and forth between sub genres (I use a different writer's voice for historicals and contemporaries), but with practice it isn't as hard as you might think.

Ellen, the next two releases are from e-publishers as well as LOVE REMEMBERED. Do you think you will try to have another story published by a print publisher? Do think you will give the New York market another go? Or are you happy with the e-publisher you have now and can't think of going back to mass-market publisher?

I love New Concepts Publishing. They turn out a terrific product, they have a lot of really fabulous authors, and their cover art is better than a lot of what New York turns out. I also think e-publishing is the wave of the future… my kids will probably think nothing of reading books on a screen when they're older. So I don't ever want to leave e-publishing entirely. That being said, there's no doubt that New York publishers have better distribution right now. So yes, I'd like to go back to mass market eventually. Ideally I'd like to do both… perhaps write one genre for a New York publisher and another for New Concepts, or perhaps write novellas for e-publication. (One of the many fabulous things about e-publishing is that they've made novellas very popular!) Either way, I don't want to turn my back on e-publishing. They've created a terrific market for writers who write something a little different, and that's something that, both as a reader and a writer, I'm grateful for.

Is there anything you would like to share, that I didn't ask you?

I'd like to invite your readers to stop by my website, www.erols.com/ellenfisher. I have excerpts from most of my upcoming novels posted. My website is a family effort-my husband designed it, and the gorgeous picture on the front page was drawn by my sixteen-year-old niece, who's quite an artist.

Thank you again. I am looking forward to your next book.

Thanks so much for taking the time to interview me!