About the Writer
My Story
Hi, I’m Ilene Rogue, a full-time writer from New York with a bachelor’s degree in English Creative Writing. But my writing journey started long before college.
I’ve been creating stories since I was four years old. I was a chronic daydreamer of a child, growing up in homes crowded with people, music that never shut off, and a television always playing somewhere in the background. I moved through different parts of the city, surrounded by cultures, personalities, emotion, humor, and constant conversation. All of it swept into my imagination and helped create the story-machine mind I have today: a beast that lives for the writing rush.
Still, my writing journey was not linear. I was an artist first, and for a long time, the stage called louder than the page. Writing was what I studied in school, but performance was where I first learned how to tell stories with my whole body.
After college, instead of stepping into publishing, I became a full-time belly dancer in New York. I had grown up dancing, but belly dance felt like a second skin. I built my own dance company and spent more than twenty years performing with swords, veils, fire, giant wings, and zills. I taught classes and workshops, collaborated with incredible dancers, won a dance competition, and lived a full, colorful life on and off the stage.
Eventually, I paused to enter family life. Motherhood was special to me, and like everything I love, I gave myself fully to it. I didn’t have much time to write in those days. Mom brain is real. But even then, the stories never left. They only kept gathering.
By 2023, I had a sudden realization: I still hadn’t written the novels I had carried for years. Those decade-long stories needed daylight. I knew since I was nine that I would become an author one day, but life had drifted me sideways longer than I expected.
So I sat down and told myself, “It’s now or never.” I had written many things before, but a real novel was the thing I knew I was built for. My first serious attempt had been back in 2013. I wrote for months, reached the middle, and realized the story had tangled itself into a knot so tight I had to leave it alone.
In 2023, I started again. Seven months later, I finished my first full-fledged book: a science-fantasy novel I never imagined writing. And once the gates opened, there was no stopping it. Eventually, I returned to that 2013 novel and finally untangled it enough to finish.
I think writers need to age like wine. The stories deepen with every passing year.
And so here I am, in all my wild glory, still living a full life with friends, family, and a second world running through my head. Music fuels my stories, so I listen constantly, and I often weave songs into my novels as little easter eggs for readers to find.
When I’m not at the computer writing, I’m usually dancing in a studio, working out at the gym, taking a walk, watching movies, reading books, or researching whatever topic has decided to hijack my attention that week.
Nowadays, I’m also learning how to survive social media, which feels like its own strange stage. You can find me on TikTok being colorful, awkward, and very much myself, because talking to a camera still feels unnatural. But if it helps readers hear my voice and get curious about the stories I write, I’ll take the weird little victory.