Interview: Graduate & YPO Instructor E. C. Ambrose

Your Personal Odyssey instructor and Odyssey graduate E. C. Ambrose writes knowledge-inspired adventure fiction, including the five-volume Dark Apostle series about medieval surgery, The Singer’s Legacy fantasy series as Elaine Isaak, and the Bone Guard international thrillers as E. Chris Ambrose. The Dark Apostle started with Elisha Barber (DAW, 2013), described in a starred Library Journal review as, “beautifully told, painfully elegant.” Her historical fantasy novel, Drakemaster, about a clockwork doomsday device in medieval China, launched with Guardbridge Books in April 2022.

Her short stories have appeared in Fireside, Warrior Women, and Horror for the Throne, among many others, and she has edited several volumes of New Hampshire Pulp Fiction. In addition to fiction, she has written how-to articles for The Writer magazine, nonfiction at Clarkesworld, and authored the Lady Blade fantasy writing column at AlienSkin magazine for three years. Her speaking engagements have included local chapters of Romance Writers of America as well as other writing groups and the World Science Fiction and World Fantasy Conventions.

Elaine attended the Rhode Island School of Design for three years and studied speculative fiction at the Odyssey Writing Workshop, where she is pleased to return as an instructor. A former animal mascot designer and adventure guide, Elaine lives in New Hampshire with her family where she felts, dyes and weaves as she devises her plots. Visit www.RocinanteBooks.com to find out more about Elaine’s many guises.

You’ve been an instructor for Odyssey Online classes, a guest lecturer for Odyssey, and a critiquer for the Odyssey Critique Service. Now you’re an instructor for some of the 2025-2026 students in Your Personal Odyssey (YPO). How would you describe your teaching style? How do you approach critiques? What experience do you hope to provide for writers during YPO?

The fantastic thing about Your Personal Odyssey is the opportunity to really invest in individual students and work with them on their unique writing goals. I like to dig into the details of crafting a great story. My hope is always to give the writer a toolkit of specific options that will enable them to open up their prose and bring the story they’re trying to write to the next level, making it the best story it can be. To that end, I want to know what the writer’s vision is for the piece and how I can support them in achieving it. 

Your Personal Odyssey sprang from the pivot from an in-person workshop to an online workshop during the height of the COVID pandemic. What do you see as the strengths in the Your Personal Odyssey approach to writing workshops?

YPO is very much a mentorship alongside a more traditional workshop. Students have access to hundreds of hours of lectures from amazing instructors, plus exercises and activities to hone their skills, and also an instructor to give them personalized feedback and guidance to develop a plan to make progress toward their goals over the course of the workshop. So we cover all the elements of the writing craft, but enable the student to work at the pace appropriate to them, including delving deeper into the areas where they need the most development or are most eager to shine.

What has you most excited about being an instructor for YPO?

I’m excited to guide students along this very personalized pathway, from their statement about what they need as a writer, to making a plan, to taking the steps to make that happen. Because I review their work before, during, and at the end, I can witness their progress, cheer them along, and give them new ideas to move forward when they get stuck.

In one of your previous interviews on the Odyssey blog, you mentioned that you had moved from being a pantser to a plotter. What convinced you to make this change? What are some other lightbulb moments that have changed your writing process, and how have you helped other writers make changes in their approach to writing?

Having an editor interested in buying a series—if I can just strengthen the story arc—worked wonders for my ability to craft an outline! Or, at least, my willingness to try. But seriously, it’s a lot faster and easier to move around some ideas on notecards or a spreadsheet than to have to remove or revise a few thousand words of prose. Other tactics that make a big difference include developing character outside the manuscript. Working back and forth between brainstorming techniques like mind-mapping and voice journals alongside the novel or story draft can really open up a character and make it easier to deliver the character’s perspective on the page, coloring every line.

I encourage writers to think about their narrator’s attitude or mindset at the opening of the scene. What do they want? What’s their mood? What has just happened? How do they feel about the place and the people in this scene? Then allow that to influence everything the reader will experience from what details you describe to what metaphors the character might think of.

How has in-depth critiquing and teaching helped you with your own writing?

Critiquing, and teaching by extension, are a huge help with writing. In order to provide good feedback, or quality instruction, you must articulate the principles of fiction. What works on the page, why do authors make the choices we do or use the techniques we do. What purpose do the “rules” of fiction serve—when and how can they be broken? If I can explain all of that to an emerging writer, the better I am able to implement it in my own work.

Is there anything you want applicants to Your Personal Odyssey to know about your teaching style or what to expect from you that you haven’t already covered?

I don’t bite! Usually. My goal is always to help the author to improve their skills. To make the good parts shine, and to make the weak parts stronger. I strive to be detailed and specific because I want to see you on the book shelf, too.