When I started this blog on June 28, 2015, I was scared out of my wits. What would I write? Who would read it? How long could I keep it going?

Originally, I said (tongue-in-cheek!) it would “showcase my occasionally brilliant writing and editing abilities” – but would also try to teach some basics to grammatically challenged folks.

I’ve managed to publish over 700 posts, reaching more than 26,000 visitors and garnering 52,000 views. Modest numbers to be sure, in the grand scheme of blogging, but it pleased me no end to know that many pairs of eyes were looking at stuff I’d written.

By far, my most successful post (in terms of number of views) was my piece about Montreal’s long-gone amusement park, Belmont Park. It garnered 954 views – mostly in one day! – thanks to being used as a reference for a similar article that later appeared on a well-established site, mtlblog.com. My pieces never attained such giddy heights again, but I was still proud that I was reaching thousands over the years!

Some of the topics and themes I’ve covered (with links for those so inclined):

• Nostalgia & memoir
  • Off to War… and Home Again!
  • Summer in the City – Six Decades Ago
  • Windows on the Past – Motherhood pics – 1970-75
• Opinions on sensitive subjects
  • 2 Americas
  • Toddler Gun Tips
• Grammar tips (shared with a dollop of humour)
  • Friday Follies #xxx – Making Grammar Great Again, One Hyphen at a Time (This weekly series began life with a slightly different title: Friday Follies #xx – 3 mistakes that make me go “Arghhh”)
• Weekly Laughter series – e.g. Laughter: The Universal Language – #129
• My books
  • Books by Ellie Presner (the shameless promotion previously mentioned)
  • Progress report series on the writing of my first book, Surviving Hollywood North: Crew Confessions from an Insider

…and so much more. Poems, songs, travel, food, something for just about everyone. Oh, and one of my all-time faves, my Shakespearean/Browning sonnet parody titled O Computer, how do I hate thee…

If you don’t see what you want, there’s a handy-dandy search box on every page, right-hand side, just below the social-media icons. Hope you enjoy my site – I plan to keep it going for at least another five years!

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P.S. – A huge thank-you goes to my daughter, Kathryn Presner, for her invaluable help in wrangling WordPress, especially at the very beginning. Alex Ruaux assisted me with layout as well. Thank you, ladies!