The Official Blog of A. E. Costello

On Story Ideas: The “What If”

Story ideas. One of the main questions writers get asked or they ask themselves is “how do I get a story idea?” Watching different writers in interviews or sitting in the audience at a book signing, they all say something different. Some writers get their ideas from dreams. Others get hit with an idea by…

A. E. Costello’s “Zippy Mae and the Seven Kingdoms” The Setting “New Greenwood”

I’m A. E. Costello, welcome to my blog. Be prepared for a slight history lesson today but it’ll all make sense and is relevant to the topic. Today’s post is about the setting of my new novel, Zippy Mae and the Seven Kingdoms, which is the first out of a series I’m currently writing. I…

Personal Piece: A. E.’s Journey to Japan in 2015 Study Abroad Trip

In June and July of 2015, I went on a study aboard trip to Japan as a transient student through Valdosta State University. I thought since it’s been five years, and my Facebook timeline is plying me with memories to the day, I’d upload a few stories about my time traveling in Osaka, Kyoto, Nara,…

On Starting: Get the Writing Done

I’ll start with the plainest fact about writing possible. It’ll never get written if you don’t write it. There. Simple and clean and fact. If you don’t write it, no one will. No one else can write the short story or poems or novels that are in your head but you. God won’t reach down…

Blackness in Disney’s the Princess and the Frog: Introducing the Zippy Mae series by A. E. Costello

I know that Disney’s the Princess and the Frog came out over ten years ago at the time of this post. But that doesn’t necessarily make it old news either. People still talk about Cinderella and The Little Mermaid, and they came out in 1950 and 1989 respectively. There’s a reason I’m bringing up that…

The World Needs Stories: Why Stories Matter

Stories matter. Stories are as old as time. We’ve been telling stories before we knew how to write, and passed stories down through oral traditions. Telling stories is an innately human tradition, and there’s a reason why in all cultures all over the words humans tell each other stories. We tell stories all the time….