Author Archives: Ilsa Rey

Unknown's avatar

About Ilsa Rey

Mother, martial artist, author of the forthcoming novel, Wish I Was Here (December 2025).
Apr28

Deadline Dithering? (IDK. I just like alliteration.)

Posted on by
Standard
Deadline Dithering? (IDK. I just like alliteration.)

First, thanks to those who offered their editing opinions in response to my last post. Most significantly, I amended that troublesome sentence to: “One way or another, we would’ve wound up The Crazy Freshmen, aka Space Cadet, me, and Beaker Brain, Isaac.” That takes care of that, yes?

I had combined short paragraphs, as instructed by the editor, but most of you agreed they were better separate. Later, I went back and looked at the combined sentences, and it just didn’t feel right. So, I separated them back a little more.

The comma after “Hopefully” will come over my cold, dead body!!! Okay, fine, maybe not, but what about here: “Hopefully Ben could avoid being named publicly.” I need a comma after that one? Really? I might point out that my blog editor friend didn’t flag either of these on his read… I might point that out, but I won’t because that would be rude.

I have until August 16 to turn in my final draft of Wish YOU Were Here. Shouldn’t be a problem. But do you know what I AM seeing as a problem?

Friggin’ Book 3!

I sent this to HRH, commenting that these were the only appropriate socks to wear while writing. They were a birthday gift from her. Laptop in foreground if you’re struggling to work out that brain teaser.

Read the rest of this entry →

Apr21

More editing brouhaha!

Posted on by
Standard
More editing brouhaha!

Book 2, Wish YOU Were Here (Not to be confused with book 1, Wish *I* Was Here), came back with edits for the first 20 pages. Remember when I went through this last time? You writers came out of the woodwork to offer your expertise.

I loved it. So let’s do it again, shall we?

The main thing this editor said was that I had too many one-sentence paragraphs, which weakens the impact when I want those quick grafs to really stand out. I get that. The challenge then was finding which short paragraphs to combine. For instance:

“How much money is it?”

“Seven thousand five hundred and eighty dollars.”

My mouth fell open.

“It’s a start anyway.” He jogged across the parking lot.

I stared after him, dumbfounded.

He gestured for me to follow. “Ana, come on.”

I shook the bewilderment off and joined him. “Keep a look out, will you?” He dropped to his knees and opened another compartment of his bag.

Everything after “How much money is it?” could be combined into one paragraph, really. But should it? I combined a few in the middle. What would you do?

Read the rest of this entry →

Apr8

A post about food! And flowers–not all of them edible.

Posted on by
Standard
A post about food! And flowers–not all of them edible.
This flower looks like it wants to eat ME. Any guesses?

Y’all remember how I used to frequently find zucchini on my windshield after Taekwondo? There was also that one library incident.

Since I don’t see Sensei any more, the zucchini well has dried.

Or has it?

Read the rest of this entry →

Mar25

Where my mojo at? And some book stuff.

Posted on by
Standard
Where my mojo at? And some book stuff.

I’ve been back at Jiu-Jitsu for three months but am still discouraged by the slow climb to where I was before my foot broke.

Sometimes I wonder if I should stay home, watch TV, and eat garbage with Hubby instead of go to class.

Sometimes I’m just tired and not feeling it.

Sometimes I go anyway.

Then I find myself smiling and fist bumping the friendly students who greet me and ask how I’m doing.

Class begins and Her Royal Highness and I get the giggles over our inability to properly execute the moves. I’m grateful that, rather than be annoyed, Instructor laughs with us. I consider whether he’d be so amiable if it had been me with someone other than his wife.

I had somehow managed to throw her on her back while flipping myself over on my head rather than over my shoulder. It’s a wonder I didn’t hurt my neck, but since that’s not a lower extremity, it was fine. Later squashing my toe and needing to ice it after class is par for the course, however.

Bruises on upper extremities are still fair game.

Read the rest of this entry →

Mar7

“Want me to shoot you?” “Yes, please.”

Posted on by
Standard
“Want me to shoot you?” “Yes, please.”

A title like that can only mean one thing: more weird Jiu-Jitu sh*t. (Sorry.)

A recent class was front attack defenses: guns, knives, and, I guess realistically it would be a baseball bat? Whatever. Rubber guns, knives, and big sticks were tossed in the center of the mat for us to practice with.

HRH and I got turns with the knives and sticks, but the guns were in short supply. When class ended, I lamented not getting much gun defense practice, so HRH, face full of compassion, asked, “Want me to shoot you?”

Naturally, “Yes, please,” was the response because #OnlyInJiuJitsu.

At one point earlier, I was looking at a 45 degree angle, talking to Instructor when HRH tried to overhand stab me with the fake knife. With zero hesitation, I stepped in and forearm blocked without looking.

Instructor said, “Daaaangg. That was instinct!” and walked over to fist bump me.

I didn’t want to tell him that was the first Taekwondo defense you learn as a white belt. I’ve done it a million times and have been teaching it to my son and others at his school as part of an after school TKD program.

I’m glad I had the opportunity to discover it had become instinctual.

And now for something literary!

Read the rest of this entry →

Feb22

Her Royal Highness’s Birthday

Posted on by
Standard

As Her Royal Highness wishes.

HRH and I had already made a coffee date for her birthday when we learned Pink’s birthday was only two days away. We last-minute traded our coffee plans for dinner with the three of us.

I had a gift for HRH–some random goofball items only she could [pretend] to appreciate, including the most obnoxious children’s card I could find, one that sang loud, boisterous music when opened–but not a gift for Pink. I hoped I’d be able to sneak the gift to HRH without Pink seeing.

Pink wound up parking right next to me at the restaurant, but HRH was farther down the street. After dinner, I said to HRH, “Let me drive you to your car.”

“It’s not that far. I can walk.”

I tried to catch her eye, “HRH! Let me DRIVE you to your CAR.” But she wasn’t picking up what I was putting down. And I wasn’t actually being that obvious.

Read the rest of this entry →

Feb11

I make people lose sleep.

Posted on by
Standard
I make people lose sleep.

I gambled with sending Herb an early pdf of Wish I Was Here so he could review it.

Herb: “I will give you a review that will be fair and honest.”

Me: “I really, really hope you like my book, or I may regret this!”

Fortunately, the bet paid off.

TWO DAYS after I sent him a pdf, he responded: “Okay, that was worth doing. I will definitely have good things to say in a review when the time comes. It was a great concept and well-written, even though I don’t know that I’m the target demographic for it. It held my interest and kept me turning pages right to the end, so much so that I stayed up late to read it.”

I was so relieved. Here’s his review:

Read the rest of this entry →

Feb1

How is this my life?

Posted on by
Standard
How is this my life?

Another post already?! Yep! A rare “double header” from Ilsa.

I wanted to touch on that other half of my blog’s title for those of you who care more about news from the writing front.

Listening to a draft for my AUDIOBOOK!!!

Let’s just take a moment to let the fact that there will be an audio version of Wish I Was Here in the world, and how cool that is, sink in.

Okay. Now continuing…

Read the rest of this entry →

Jan31

Will she or won’t she?

Posted on by
Standard
Will she or won’t she?

I had had two short nights of sleep in a row, finally falling into bed late Friday night after this cool candlelight concert of 90s music performed by a string quartet.

They took the candlelight thing very seriously. This isn’t even half of them. They were everywhere.
You can sort of see the chairs where the four musicians sat. The show was great. I’ll never hear “Smells Like Teen Spirit” by Nirvana or “Enter Sandman” by Metallica quite the same again.

So back to crashing into bed Friday night: Hubby asked if he should wake me for 8:30 Jiu-Jitsu class the next morning.

“I don’t know,” I said. “Maybe my body needs sleep. If I don’t wake up in time, leave me be.”

Did I wake up in time?

Read the rest of this entry →

Jan22

Big news! New cover!

Posted on by
Standard

I’ll tell you right now that the moral of this story is it pays to complain advocate for yourself.

I was told ads for my book were running. I had paid for those ads, so I asked the new orders lady I had befriended if she could get a hold of them to send me.

She did. One ad was just a “Quote Card” with my book cover and a reviewer’s blurb. That was fine, I guess.

The other two had good wording, but the AI images of the people looked like children, not 18-year-olds. I felt this was misleading and confusing to the viewer.

I pondered. I waited. Then I acted. I harnessed my newfound friendship with Orders Lady to see if she would advocate on my behalf. This morning she reported that my ads were on the docket for the company’s weekly meeting. They discussed it at length, and it was now in their hands.

I thanked her and let it go for the time being. Then maybe an hour later, I got an email from the publisher himself informing me that they’d run a full audit on my ads, which hadn’t done well [shocker] and the Amazon page. He believed the problem was the cover, so he sent me a new design he’d like to start using immediately.

“Let me know what you think!” he said.

Read the rest of this entry →