Elle Hill

Cover art for the fabulously spooky Hunted Dreams has arrived! It’s always a proud and exciting moment for us authors, kinda like seeing a sonogram for the first time of one’s bio-bun baking gently in the ol’ oven-womb! Well, except for less creepy verbiage. But ANYway, it’s a harbinger of things to come and the first bit authors can make publicly available about our prenatal literary babies. Here, my beloveds, in all its glory, is the official cover of Hunted Dreams . Snazzy, right? As my editor pointed out, after rejecting several prior drafts, this one is marketable and purty. Being a not-so-enthusiastic supporter of the manipulative power of advertising, I admit I cringe at words like “marketable,” but I have to face it: Elle Hill™ and her little works are all commodities, baby. Step right up and buy a little piece of me. Truly, I find this cover very visually compelling. I love the colors, the ratio of light to dark, the fonts, the inclusion of the katana and ...

Happy first birthday to South Dakota’s anti-bullying law! In March 2012, South Dakota became the forty-ninth state to pass anti-bullying legislation. Until then, according to Rapid City Journal newswriter David Montgomery, “the U.S. Department of Education identified South Dakota as the only state in the country that doesn't have either legislation or statewide policy dealing with bullying ” ( 1 , emphasis added). Sometimes it’s good to be number one. Sometimes. Senate Bill No. 130, now a South Dakota law, identifies bullying as “repeated conduct that causes physical hurt or psychological distress” or “property damage” ( 2 ). It provides a model that individual school districts can adopt and amend as needed. According to the Associated Press, “The bill's model prohibits bullying, sets a procedure for reporting and investigating it and addresses ‘cyber’ or electronic harassment” ( 3 ). No one likes kids being bullied. So everyone is happy now, right? ...