A “military brat,” Elle was born in Germany and spent her childhood in such far-flung places as Puerto Rico, Charleston, S.C., Italy, and Washington D.C. Sadly, the only language she ever became semi-fluent in is English.
Elle’s first self-published romantic comedy, The Frog Prince, became an Amazon bestseller in December 2010–a distinction it kept through the summer of 2012, when it peaked at #1 on Amazon’s Top 100 List for Humor ahead of both Tina Fey and Janet Evanovich. She was one of the first authors to sign on to Amazon’s KDP Select and to take advantage of that program’s “free promo days,” which she used on Valentine’s Day 2012 to giveaway 45,000 copies of her novels, catapulting her second novel, Sleeping Beauty, to the besteller list.
Elle’s appearance on the Digital Book World’s (DBW) Successful Self-Published Authors panel in January 2012 alongside New York Times bestsellers Bob Mayer and Bella Andre was noted in Publishers Weekly. In February 2012, she was named to Expert Messaging Group’s “25 Self-Published Authors to Watch.” She is considered a “reluctant expert” on the topic of self-publishing and consumer purchasing psychology, and she is well-known for taking advantage of her full creative control by pushing the envelope–and advising other independently published authors to do the same.
In March of 2012, Elle published an alternate ending version of her contemporary romance Sleeping Beauty called Sleeping Beauty Wakes Up! in response to fan feedback. Both books would go on to be named to Kindles & Wine “Best Reads of 2012.” That same month, she was invited to give a two-hour self-publishing workshop at the annual Left Coast Crime conference to a standing room-only crowd of (mostly) traditionally published authors.
In April 2012, Elle was invited to blog for Digital Book World’s Expert Publishing Blog, an industry blog with 25,000 subscribers. She almost immediately created a firestorm of controversy by suggesting that authors should respond to negative reader reviews. That blog was named to the Top 10 Digital Publishing Stories of 2012.
Elle was a featured Author Speaker at the DBW Discoverability and Marketing Conference in New York City in September 2012 alongside John Fine from Amazon, Sasha Norkin from Barnes & Noble and Patrick Brown from GoodReads.
Elle has been interviewed for and contributed to articles on self-publishing for TIME Magazine (Andrew Rice) and Writers Digest (Porter Anderson). Her interviews have appeared in USA Today’s Happy Ever After (Joyce Lamb) and GoodEReader (Mercy Pilkington). She’s appeared on Author’s on the Air with Pam Stack Trash Talk Show with Barb Tobias, Your Book Is Your Hook with Jennifer Wilkov, as well as Denver’s 9News.
Her fourth contemporary romance, Alice in Wonderland, was released in November 2012; it will be followed by Rapunzel spring 2013, Goldilocks and the Three Bears by summer 2013, and Jack and the Beanstalk fall 2013. She is currently developing “enhanced content” for her novels, starting with Alice in Wonderland and Sleeping Beauty. She will be hosting her own radio show, “Dear Digital Diva,” beginning in August 2013 on the new Authors on the Air Global Network.
Elle lives in Denver, Colorado, and keeps a miniature dachshund named Bacon around the house to provide comic relief.
