Effie the Outrageous Elf

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Effie the Outrageous Elf- 2010 (post 206) 

Effie the Outrageous Elf is #5 in the Little Horrors series. The covers, as you can see from this example, are interesting in that the figures are black and white while the rest of the cover has one strong focus colour. The colours are yellow-orange, pink, green, red and purple and the six books together look quite startlingly bright. Effie is a lively elf child whose laid-back brother Om annoys her by being exceedingly zen and smug with it. Effie takes off to join a circus. In the course of her story she bothers everyone, including the Polly-Fae, the parrot fairy assigned by the Hags to assist her in her bid for a Badge of Badness and subsequent entry into the Abademy. The story, as with the others, was fun to write, but the title caused me a few problems. Having dealth with Flax the feral fairy, Mal the mischievous mermaid, Nanda the naughty gnome and Tikki the tricky pixie, I had established a style of title which used either alliteration or assonance or a bit of both. The word Elf didn't lend itself to either, really. The publishers didn't fancy "evil", and anyway, the "e" sound is wrong. I thought of Excitable and Extravagant, but neither was quite right. In the end I went with Outrageous which, somehow, works even if it doesn't really fit the mould. The Polly-Fae joined the Dog-Fae, the Gull-Fae, the Fox-Fae and the Filly-Fae, and was again a slight departure from tradition... but "Polly" is strongly associated with parrots, so I thought it would be okay.

About the Blog 

Sally is Sally Odgers; author, manuscript assessor, editor, anthologist and reader. She runs http://www.affordablemanuscriptassessments.com and Prints Charming Books. (Sally is me, by the way, and I am lots of other things too, but these are the relevant ones for now.)

The goal for 2017 is to write a post a day profiling the background behind one of my books; how it came to be written, what it's about, and any things of note that happened along the way. If you're an author, an aspiring author, a reader or just someone who enjoys windows into worlds, you might find this fun. The books are not in any special order, but will be assigned approximate dates, and pictures, where they exist. If you enjoyed a post, or want to ask about any of my books or my manuscript assessment