Em’s creative career has waffled between art and writing for decades. Her talent for irony started early in life, “after I had a chance to look around.” When she was seven a teacher said her cursive was a joke.  She responded that it wasn't as funny as the teacher's girdle, got big laughs, and was sent to solitary confinement in the cloakroom.   This pattern of one-liners/detention continued throughout school, where her humor evolved into a talent that started to pay off in print - small print - mostly obscure print - but she earned money.   Over the years her satire morphed into humor columns, editorial and public service cartoons and "Donna Quixote," a panel cartoon series in The National Museum of Women in the Arts magazine.  

When she wasn’t writing and painting, she created recipes - fun, delicious, fattening recipes. Sometime after her “Big 50” birthday, her doctor told her she was borderline diabetic. She needed to make serious lifestyle changes but it was difficult and time consuming finding products that didn’t have hidden sugars and other unhealthful ingredients. Thus began a new career, developing and publishing three cookbooks of her low carb, gluten free recipes, a combination many considered an oxymoron. But with the determination of Edison she invented light bread to support her love of butter. 

After decades of using variations of her name, from maiden to married to re-married, she decided to combine her initials, MLS, into her pseudonym, Em Elless, beginning with  her cookbooks and now her debut novel ”Love With Imperfect Strangers.”  She has come full circle with the return to her first love, humor writing.