Hi, I’m Ellie! I’m a 29-year-old writer, virtual assistant, and postgraduate historian. I split my time between Merseyside – where I live with my parents and my younger brother, Sam – and South London, where my fiancée Rebecca and our cats (Fergus and Ness) currently live. If you’re here then I presume you’re interested in learning a little more about me, so here goes nothing!
I have a BA in History, and at the moment I’m (slowly!) writing my MRes thesis. I’m researching and writing about cultural depictions of the Weimar Republic, which is a subject I’ve been passionate about for well over a decade now. That very much includes Cabaret, as well as Christopher Isherwood’s work. If you love them too (or Babylon Berlin!) then I’d love to be your friend!
A big reason why I started Ginge & Tonic is that, while I’ve been a writer for as long as I can remember, I’ve always hated people reading my work. That’s one hell of a contradiction, right? Let me explain.
I was the kid who’d carry around notebooks full of stories. My response to ‘what do you want to be when you grow up?’ would always be the same: a writer. But I’d be too embarrassed to let other people read anything I came up with, hiding the page whenever someone peeked over my shoulder to see what I was up to.
While I’m still yet to feel comfortable with letting anyone read my fiction, those previous attempts at blogging have at least let me become more comfortable with sharing everything else!
A few other things you need to know about me:
• I’m queer
• I have multiple chronic illnesses
• I’m neurodivergent
I say that you need to know these things because they play a big part in the content that I create. I write about my health and experiences as a queer person, but I also write about my favourite things: theatre, travel, books, and tea.
Most of what I do – from starting a blog to starting a business – has come from seeking a community. But I think that’s a shared trait of a lot of LGBTQ+ and chronically ill people, isn’t it? We can’t always find a community that shares our struggles and values on our doorstep, but we can almost invariably build one with a bit of help from the internet!
If you’re reading here, then I hope you stick around and become part of mine.
Where to find me (& my cats):
• The platform formerly known as Twitter
• Instagram
• TikTok
• Pinterest
• Ko-fi
• Misc: GoodReads, StoryGraph, Bookshop, Letterboxd, Serializd, Stats.fm, NaNoWriMo
Important links:
• Privacy Policy
• Disclosing Ads & Brand Relationships