General

Formerly known as Ethelle Llorak on Fanfiction.net, and still known on deviantArt as Ethelle ( Dutch, female, born in November 1986, BSc in Biology and working on becoming MSc in Neuroscience. Happened to have a decent talent for the English language and started writing for no other reason than to entertain herself.

Writing

You will find mostly Elder Scrolls fanfiction here. As a teenager, I always aspired to write original Fantasy and/or Science Fiction. As you can imagine, however, it is very difficult to come up with something that is still refreshing and exciting in this genre. Creating a whole, elaborate Fantasy world wasn't easy either, and I was never really satisfied. As such, I eventually rolled into Fanfiction, as so many people do. I started writing stories set in worlds created by Terry Pratchett, Robin Hobb, Martin Scott, Mickey Zucker Reichert and the like, but I never felt comfortable doing this. I just felt I wasn't doing the original authors justice with my fangirlish tales.

Around that time, I discovered Morrowind, which is in my opinion one of the greatest in-depth RPG's ever created. Morrowind's rich world and elaborate lore inspired me to no end. It took away the uncomfortable feeling of breaking into someone else's world, because as I played the game, I felt like my character was actually a genuine part of the world.

Throughout the course of time, I have uploaded and deleted many TES fanfictions on a variety of sites. The only one of those fanfictions that might possibly ring any bells is Mist & Mysticism, which I wrote under the name of Ethelle. Several years have passed since I actively worked on M&M, and the story has been removed from most sites now. I never let go of the general idea of the story, however, and I am now writing a new, hopefully much improved version with a different title, The Meaning of Death. Since my spelling and grammar has improved over the years, and since I have learned from the horrible mistakes I made in my previous fanfictions, I hope MoD will prove to be a Fantasy Epic worthy of the Elder Scrolls series.

Interests/Inspiration/Influences

TV/Film - What I enjoy writing most is dialogue, and you'll probably find that dialogue is indeed the strongest part of my fictions. When it comes to dialogue, but also writing in general, I believe I am very much influenced by British comedy series (Blackadder, Fawlty Towers etc) and British detective series (Bergerac, Frost, Midsomer Murders, Taggart etc). I love the British black humour and way of acting. However, I am also heavily influenced by Clint Eastwood's rough-and-tough anti-hero roles in his westerns and Dirty Harry films.

Books - I'm very easy to please when it comes to books. I like practically everything, as long as it's Fantasy, Science Fiction or Historical. As such, it is rather difficult for a writer to leave a truly lasting impression on me. There are only two writers that I adore and idolize above all others, and those are Terry Pratchett and George R.R. Martin. You probably won't see much of their influence in my stories, though, as that would be far beyond my level of skill.

Music - Music is always a great source of inspiration. When speaking of contemporary music, I love heavy metal (Iron Maiden), trash metal (Megadeth), power/progressive metal (Virgin Steele, Blind Guardian, Iced Earth, Gamma Ray, Seventh Wonder etc), and folk/pagan/viking metal (Ensiferum, Falconer, Heidevolk etc). Above all, though, I love the 80's. I hate contemporary pop/rock music, but the pop and rock music from the 80's is awesome. I like Blondie, Genesis/Phil Collins, The Police, Simple Minds, Foreigner, A-ha, Bon Jovi, Van Halen, Aerosmith and Billy Idol, just to name a few. I am aware that they're horribly cliché and wrong on many levels, but I can't help but love them.

Games - Obviously, I'm inspired by games from the Elder Scrolls series, since that's the predominant fandom I'm writing for. I'm also a fervent D&D tabletop roleplayer, so naturally I love games like Baldur's Gate, Icewind Dale and Neverwinter Nights. Drawing inspirations from these Wizards of the Coast games is usually not a good idea though, since it's high fantasy and therefore very much cliché. I try to minimize the influence, but I can't really prevent some of it from creeping in.