Interview: CE Huntington
Author’s and Illustrator’s names:
CE (Christopher and Ellen) Huntington
Publishing Credits:
Our books include A Simple Thought of Sanity (2021, dystopian sci-fi) and Ellen in Puzantium (2025, comedic cozy fantasy).
How do you feel about the statement, A picture is worth a thousand words?
We feel rather strongly about it, especially since Ellen in Puzantium has over a hundred hand-drawn illustrations.
From an illustrator’s perspective, a picture allows you to tell a story in a frozen moment of time. You can capture all the details you want the viewer to see: the perfectly placed nose hair, the right expression on a horrified candlestick’s face, the detailed pattern of a snail’s shell.
As writers, though, we get to wander beneath the surface. We can stretch time, explore thoughts, and leave space for the imagination to fill in the gaps.
We feel very privileged that we’re able to both write out our thoughts as well as illustrate them, and it’s telling a story through that blended medium that we find most rewarding.
So, how do we feel about a picture being worth a thousand words? We know for sure it’s worth at least a page, so probably just five-hundred.
Why should anybody read your books when there are so many others written by famous authors?
Our favorite thing about books is that there’s room for every kind of voice. We love discovering new voices, and we hope readers feel the same when they stumble across ours.
We know time is a precious commodity, and honestly, anyone who spends theirs reading something we’ve written has given us the biggest compliment imaginable.
As for why someone should read our books, each one offers a different experience. A Simple Thought of Sanity is thoughtful and introspective; though we honestly don’t exactly recommend it unless you’re feeling sad and want to feel sadder.
On the other hand, Ellen in Puzantium was written as the accidental antidote to that. It’s a cozy fantasy meant to be read by the fire, or in bed, or anywhere you just need a gentle laugh and a reminder that everyday life can still feel fun. And if you’re not in the mood to read, there are lots and lots of pictures. So really, it’s a win-win.
Most authors believe they have original ideas that no one else has used. Can you give us an example of one of your original ideas?
Thankfully, both of our books are based on our own life experiences, with our newest book more specifically based around Ellen’s childhood. With that inspiration to draw from, the nonsense kind of writes itself through lived experiences. Whether it’s made up words from childhood like “Frumpledink,” an excessive adoption of inanimate objects, or the experience of growing up in a coastal retirement community, we’re able to draw ideas that are relatable while also being unique experiences we hope to entertain our readers with.
We think that’s where the real originality in writing lives—not in having a brand-new idea, but in how you express it. Every story taps into the same universal human themes: love, loss, hope, despair, and the side adventure while getting lost on the way to the bathroom. What makes a story memorable is how an author filters those familiar experiences through their own lens; how the same old human condition gets dressed up in a new coat.
So while our ideas might not be the first of their kind, the way we tell them, we like to think that the blend of humor, heart, and lived absurdity is something only we could write.
What are the best and worst things about writing books and creating comics?
The best thing is probably making ourselves smile. We really started writing after Christopher was diagnosed with fibromyalgia and POTS, which left him laid up in bed for a few years. Most of what we used to love doing together was suddenly off the table, so writing became a lifeline; a way to feel accomplished again, to laugh, and to make something together that existed outside the daily pain.
Even now, writing and illustrating are what we turn to when we need joy. There’s nothing better than making each other laugh at something ridiculous we just wrote or some absurd picture sketched out.
The worst thing? Definitely, how long it takes us to finish anything. We have so many ideas for all the things we’d love to write, but we are very slow writers. We once read Stephen King’s advice that a writer should finish their novel in four months, and we both cringed as we looked at the four-year gap between our first and second books. Perhaps it’s just the nature of being co-authors, or the fact that paying work has to come first. In a perfect world, we’d be past our tenth book now instead of writing our third. On the flip side, at least we know we’ll have content far past our inevitable demise.
Are you a plotter or a pantser?
We’re going to be annoying and say both. For our first book, our process was pretty much just pulling thoughts out of the ether as we went. We did research where we needed to, but we really didn’t know where our dystopian city was going, or how the heroes and villains would win or lose. We just poured our thoughts onto the page and shuffled our way toward a semi-coherent plot—which somehow all converged quite nicely!
With Ellen in Puzantium, we’ve become much more structured. We now plot our books out by chapter, and when we reach a chapter, we plot that out, too. It sounds organized in theory… but it’s really more of a defense mechanism against our constant flood of new ideas for Ellen and her wacky adventures. We’ll outline something carefully, and then—like Terry Pratchett—we end up writing a compilation of favorite scenes, jokes, and vignettes, which we later attempt to stitch together.
So, despite our best efforts to be responsible plotters, the old pantser in us always sneaks back in.
.
Do you have any favorite authors and illustrators?
For authors, we would have to say Frank Herbert, and more specifically, his first Dune novel. It’s a magical story, and we particularly love how he blended the characters’ thoughts so fluidly into the narration. As residents of Florence, Oregon, we also have a bit of a bias, as it’s supposedly our dunes that inspired the groundbreaking sci-fi—and yes, we do walk like idiots in the sand to avoid the worms. It makes us smile.
Robert E Howard. We don’t think he gets nearly enough praise for his work. Conan has said some of the most insightful and inspiring things we’ve ever read and Solomon Kane is like pilgrim Batman!
For illustrators, Beatrix Potter has long been a comfort favorite. Not only are her animals adorable, but her attention to detail from her time as a nature artist provide a beautiful insight to all of her works.
On the opposite side of cozy rabbits in little coats, Harry Clarke’s work is phenomenal. His intricate patterns and unique character designs make his work instantly stand out. Check out his illustrated edition of Poe for some extra chilling and exceptional work.
What events have made you into the person you are today?
Living in Japan probably shaped us more than anything else. Spending four years abroad taught us how to see the world from new angles. Tokyo gave us lifelong friends, a deep respect for punctual trains, and an unshakable love of convenience store food that we still mourn daily.
Ellen’s background in art—and her rather ironic career in the financial industry—has also shaped how we approach storytelling. It’s a balance between creativity and practicality. Her experience taught us that even the most artistic ideas benefit from some level of structure, and that even the humdrum of office life has its own flair of absurdity.
Christopher’s time working in hospice, and later, living with chronic illness and disability, changed how we view the world entirely. It gave us a deep sense of empathy, patience, and perspective. Writing became a way to stay connected, to find humor in hardship, and to translate difficult experiences into something meaningful, though most of the time, just something mildly amusing.
Our other “ah-ha!” moment came a bit later, when Ellen was diagnosed with ADHD and Christopher realized he was in the same boat. Looking at our creative process through a neurodivergent lens has changed everything. It’s helped us understand how we work, pour more joy into it, and, honestly… explains a lot.
Is there an underlying theme in your writing?
Our motto as writers has always been: “Strangers in strange lands tell strange tales.”
We spent four years attending college in Japan, and it left us constantly amazed by what we saw. So much of it is so culturally and technologically different as to make one feel they are on a different planet at times. When we’d return home to our small town and share the fantastical things we’d seen and done, it almost seemed made-up half the time. That sense of wonder, and occasional disbelief, found its way into everything we write.
A Simple Thought of Sanity was shaped by that experience. The main character, Brutus, is a cog in the every day and shaped by stringent rules of society until a stranger shares their new ideas which encourages him to seek out what he didn’t realize he was missing. Beneath its dystopian surface, it’s really a meditation on slowing down and remembering what it means to be human in a world that’s always hurrying forward.
In Ellen in Puzantium, on the other hand, Ellen is very much the stranger in a strange land who forces change on people’s perspective and brings joy to the mundane of everyday life.
What do you want readers to get out of your books and comics?
We’re always thrilled when someone chooses to give our work their time, because honestly, that’s the most valuable thing anyone can offer. Every reader could be doing a thousand other things, and the fact that they’ve decided to spend a few hours in our strange little worlds means everything to us.
With Ellen in Puzantium, our biggest hope is simple: to make people smile. To give someone a little laugh, a small moment of calm, or a reason to feel lighter than when they started reading.
If a reader walks away feeling a little less stressed and a little more comforted, or even just quietly amused, then we’ve done what we set out to do.
What are you working on now?
Right now, we’re working on the sequel to Ellen in Puzantium, Ellen in Puzantium and the Magician’s Second Cousin.
After successfully surviving the first half of winter at Geriatris Abbey, Ellen—now a full-fledged monk—finds herself tangled in the many peculiar duties of abbey life. Whether she’s attending the annual “Midwinter Not Dead Yet Still Living Festival,” suffering through a “Cursetesy” Party with the inventor of stretchy stirrup pants, or discovering a mysterious orb, she somehow manages to stumble into far more responsibility than any self-respecting bowl cut heroine should.
Between writing and editing, Ellen (the author, not the character—though sometimes it’s hard to tell the difference) has been exploring new art styles and sharpening her illustration skills for the sequel. We’re hoping to push the artwork in fresh directions—still cozy and hand-drawn, but with a few surprises along the way.
If someone wants to purchase something you’ve written, how can they do this?
We’ve done our best to make our books as easy to find as possible. Both Ellen in Puzantium and A Simple Thought of Sanity are available in paperback and digital formats through Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and most major online retailers.
What advice do you have for people who want to become professional authors?
The best advice we can give is something we read somewhere, and promptly forgot who said it. But the gist of it—and the simplified form from what we remember—is this:
A single page of writing is five hundred words, and if you write one page a day, you’ll have a three-hundred and sixty-five-page book by the end of the year.
That perspective changed everything for us. The idea of “being authors” felt intimidating at first—like it was something reserved for people with special pens and Victorian accents. But when we were in college, we realized we’d already been doing it all along. Between essays, research papers, and rambling late-night projects, we were each writing forty to sixty pages a semester, sometimes more. By the time we graduated, we had hundreds of pages between us.