Whyte Rose & Violet, Scribes is the dream of Berkeley, California author Ellen L. Ekstrom.  After five years with Central Avenue Publishing, LLC, Ellen struck out independently with a small press dedicated to fantasy, historical and literary fiction.  The dream is simple – to offer stories, stories that we like to write and share with people of like minds and interests.  

     Ellen is a native of the San Francisco Bay Area and was educated locally.  She holds a bachelor's degree in theological studies. Her area of concentration is Christian Mythos, also known as church history, with a sub-specialty in Christian Social Ethics, for both of which she took honors.   Ordained to the diaconate in 2002, she is a deacon in the Episcopal Church.   Until August of 2016, Ellen served as the parish deacon at The Episcopal Church of the Good Shepherd in Berkeley, California.  

      Fascinated by all things medieval since childhood, Ellen is now studying Late Anglo-Saxon England to prepare two forthcoming novels, Swannsaeld, and The Sometime Queen. 

     The genres Ellen prefers to work in are fantasy/historical: her first novel was The Legacy, a tale of fourteenth-century Florence and Tuscany, followed by her retelling of the St. George and the Dragon legend, Armor of Light, its sequel Ascalon, and the first in her series of Cheshire Tales, St. Edmund Wood, an homage to the stories of Thomas Hardy and the Bronte sisters.  Once in a while, she delves into matters of the modern heart, as evidenced by her novels in the Midwinter Sonata series and the WRV edition of her award-winning book,  "A Knight on Horseback," retitled What She Wished For… a Cautionary Tale.  Just as a painter has many subjects to bring to a canvas, Ellen believes that there are many stories to tell, and to limit oneself to a niche isn’t the way she lives and thinks.