I write about comics, entrepreneurship and various other topics. My bylines include NPR, Inc., the Los Angeles Times, Money, The New York Times and Self. Here you can learn more about me and check out samples of my work.
To get in touch, email me at el@etelkawrites.com.
“The main obligation is to amuse yourself.” – S. J. Perelman
There are a couple of reasons I’m kicking off my bio with this quote by S. J. Perelman. For one, I just love the guy. He’s not that well known today, but from the ’20s to the ’70s he wrote humorous essays, short stories, plays, screenplays – you name it. He even wrote for the Marx Brothers! Without him, Monkey Business wouldn’t exist – or, at least, it wouldn’t be the same.
The other reason is that Perelman is talking about being true to yourself. There are only so many ways to express this idea – so ubiquitous and yet so elusive – and I really like this one. (more…)
It’s nice to see Farel Dalrymple flying again. Pop Gun War, the serial comic he wrote back in the early 2000s, revolved around Sinclair, a young boy who got a pair of wings that let him soar through an urban dreamscape — a city known only as “The City.” Though grungy and often sad, The City was full of quirky possibilities. A dwarf in a tux and top hat grew taller than the skyscrapers. A large, floating, bespectacled goldfish hung around. A lonely man labeled everything in his apartment, even his own pants, “because people don’t always know what things are.”
It’s risky to incorporate fads into your fiction. It can be a lot like planting a delicate spring garden next to a busy sidewalk. At first the commuters, skateboarders and dog joggers marvel at the blooms, but soon the garden becomes a familiar sight — “NBD.” By the time July rolls around, nobody cares that the blistering summer heat has shriveled the fragile flowers. It’s all very depressing.
Unless, that is, you’re artist Jillian Tamaki. She’s familiar with the complicated business of writing about trendy topics — 2015’s hilarious, Eisner Award-winning SuperMutant Magic Academy was one long riff on Harry Potter — but she insouciantly shrugs off trepidation. (more…)
In a tight job market, these tactics can make your tech workers want to stay.
When Anastasia Leng quit Google to start Hatch.co, a shopping site for handmade goods, in 2012, one of the skills she’d developed at the tech giant proved crucial. Managing some of the world’s best IT talent gave the marketing specialist deep insight into how their values and priorities are different from those of other business people. “I was like a fish out of water my first six months,” she recalls. “I needed to earn the engineers’ respect by understanding the things they were saying at a philosophical and logical level.”
I’ve written about a huge number of subjects in my 10+ years as a freelancer. Lately I focus on covering small business for such outlets as Inc. magazine and reviewing comics for NPR. I also write sponsored content for a range of clients.
–Here are some of my business and personal finance stories.
