Have you ever had your dog go missing and thought, maybe he’s just become a god?
Okay, maybe not. But that’s what Ellen, our unlikely two-foot-four bespectacled heroine with a lisp, discovers in the land of Puzantium. A land where cats run buffets, snails are Saints, and prophecy is oddly kicked off by massive bowl cuts. Already struggling with everyday life—like putting her clothes on straight, enunciating “Yeth,” and fitting in in general—Ellen is reluctantly thrust into a quest to save a land plagued by world-ending famine.
Plunged into monastic life, sinister forces in the form of a doubting Abbot—who’s convinced Ellen is a sentient mushroom, or worse, an imposter—threaten to derail Ellen’s efforts with a campaign of unpleasantness. The elderly Brothers of Geriatris Abbey, however, are more than willing to stay up past their bedtime to save her. With opening salvos that include the theft of the Abbot’s pens, prank calls, and friendly-fire laxatives, Ellen is left to wonder if she even wants to give this prophecy business a try. Though maybe with some dumb luck and a few old geezers, Puzantium might just have the savior it’s been waiting for after all.
Oh, and all of this narrated by a talking dog, because... why not?
With over 100 illustrations, Ellen in Puzantium is a manic ADHD fueled romp through everyday fantasy life. A lofi adventure where rebellion brews over ancillary broom closets, friendships blossom in the absurd, and the mundane is anything but ordinary.
About the Authors
Co-author / Illustrator
Ellen
Ellen is award-winning and an author. When she was 10 she entered the Sandpines Junior Golf Tournament and won first place for being the only person in her age bracket to compete that day with a respectable 204. She would later write a book unrelated to the event. Born on the Oregon Coast, in a small community where over 60% of the population is over 60, Ellen was introduced to the fine art of complaining about aches, pains, joints, and doctors at an early age. An awkward child from birth, she filled her days hanging out with pets who lacked the capacity to make disparaging remarks about her in a language she understood. Whenever there was a free moment, Ellen would take to the forest with her loyal dog and a machete stolen from her father’s workshop, happily losing herself in the woods surrounding her home. An avid catapilloger (someone who logs caterpillars), Ellen’s imagination thrived in the constant discovery of things other people had already written down, but were new to her. Somehow—much to the dismay of her family, who remained ever hopeful her life insurance payout might finally come through—Ellen always managed to make it back with life and limb intact. Growing up to be an abhorrent know-it-all, Ellen enjoyed a prestigious academic career with straight A’s—and the odd B from a professor who was less than keen to engage in a rousing debate on the fine line between modern art and mental health crisis. This rigorous adherence to the painful medium of studiousness endowed Ellen with a passion for writing—mostly after realizing her accumulation of college essays was the equivalent of several books, which, when she tried to stitch them together, didn’t make any sense, so she figured she should make a new one. Finding a need to actually eat, though, Ellen pursued a career in local banking (which is like regular banking, just local), despite being incredibly bad at math and having famously once asked her father, a prestigious accountant, “What’s half of two eggs?” Aside from having to actually work for a living, Ellen found that life would continue to throw speed bumps at her, such as a needy husband and a late-in-life diagnosis of ADHD, all things she happily floored right over. With a new superpower of being unable to focus and forgetting things, Ellen conquered her first book in 2021, much to the renown of the three critics who wrote nice things about her book. Oh, and her mother-in-law too. Glad to have proven that she could do what she first suspected in college, she continues her writing adventures to this day, oblivious to the many dead plants and dust bunnies which have accumulated since her free time is now spent happily writing and illustrating.
Co-author / Mischief-maker
Christopher
Having completed the same feats, though in remarkably less grandiose ways with far inferior grades—amusedly arriving at the same end destination all the same—Christopher has faithfully been by Ellen’s side since before he could drive, vote, drink, or legally move into any gated retirement community. Which is nearly twenty years, if you aren’t fluent in flowery prose. A living support plushie, Christopher enjoys spending his time rooting his wife on and nudging her back onto the sidewalk whenever an errant butterfly flutters on through in an attempt to lure her into oncoming traffic, since nature likes her much less than she does it. Unable to take compliments, Christopher spends his time making self-deprecating remarks, but even those he’s not very good at. Christopher enjoys a buffet of life’s sweeter annoyances such as dsylexia, Fibromyalgia, POTS, and yes, ADHD as well. Though having lost life’s genetic lottery, he enjoys appreciating what he does have, a second edition holographic charizard. Life is sweet, but as it likes to remind him, not sweet enough to give him a first edition. Being an expert at complaining and more like the elderly Ellen grew up around, Christopher enjoys the quieter aspects of life, such as sitting, and sitting for longer. Though inevitably and by strange means (an endearing term for Ellen), often finds himself in some obscure forest surrounded by wetness and its better known cousin, damp. Not a writer by trade or training, as his work shows, Christopher all the same enjoys sharing in the creation of the fantastical worlds which Ellen has inspired through her many years of unsupervised machete play.
