Today
Amanda James tells us about her journey:
I
first started writing when I was eight and never stopped. Well, I did have a
rest now and then or my hand would have dropped off. J I mostly wrote short stories and
then songs and poems particularly when I was a teenager. After that adult life
got in the way but I never stopped writing. It wasn’t until around 2002 that I
decided to try and write to get published, but even then it was a bit pie in
the sky and haphazard. I was teaching full-time and it was a triumph to just
have actually finished it.
I
completed my first novel, Severe Weather Warning – now published as Dancing in the Rain and sent it off to
agents expecting to get signed within the week! Yes, I was that naive and
unprepared. Needless to say I was rejected many times and looking back at that
first draft I can totally see why. It was awful. I wrote another and had the
same response, but by now I was beginning to take the whole thing more
seriously and thought perhaps short stories might be the way forward. In 2010 I
had my first short story published in an anthology to raise awareness for the Born
Free Foundation and read an extract to an audience of a thousand people on stage
next to Virginia McKenna at the Hay Festival. I decided I could get used to
that!
In
terms of genre I hadn’t really thought of where I fitted in. My writing hero is
Dean Koontz and Dancing in the Rain
is a thriller/mystery/romance with supernatural elements as many of his are. My
second novel, Nature’s Grace, still
unpublished, followed this trend as did my third – Righteous Exposure. For this, I did have the help of a fantastic
editor who told me about ‘show, don’t tell’ and something just clicked. I was
over the moon when Crooked Cat Publishing took it on at the end of 2011.
My
fourth novel was still a romance but a big departure from the others as it was
time travel. I had the idea and then wrote it within six weeks – never wrote one
as quickly before or since! I adored writing it as I could travel back in time
with Sarah (a time travelling history teacher) to all my favourite bits of
history. At the time I too was a history teacher so the whole thing was a bit
surreal. A Stitch in Time was requested
by four agents but then ultimately it wasn’t for them. I had also sent it to
publishers and I was beside thrilled to bits when Choc Lit took it on in 2012.
After that I went back to romantic suspense with Somewhere Beyond the Sea, but returned to time travel with my
latest, Cross
Stitch, the sequel to A
Stitch in Time. Readers have already asked for a third! I have no plans to
write one as yet, but you never know. Watch this space J
About Amanda:
Amanda left her teaching job in Bristol to write full time and now lives
in Cornwall with her husband and two cats.
When she's not writing, she enjoys singing in the local choir, spending
time with her family and two lively grand-children, and walking along the
windswept clifftops plotting new stories.
Links:
Thank
you for joining us today, Amanda.
The RNA Blog is brought to you by
Elaine Everest
and Natalie Kleinman.
If you would like to write about the craft of writing or
perhaps be interviewed about your writing life please contact us at
elaineeverest@aol.com
3 comments:
Interesting to read about the writer behind the story and Cornwall can never fail to be inspiring!
Love your description of early writing experiences - very familiar to many of us I am sure.x
I loved Righteous Exposure - an exciting, yet thoughtful read.
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