What inspired you to write Life as a Teenage Vampire?
Several real life stories from my own teenage years are in this book. It’s also set in a small town in Minnesota, just like where I’m from. But the real inspirations came from several pieces of fiction that have meant something to me over the years – more recently the first two seasons of MTV's Teen Wolf, the Rainbow Boys book series I first read in high school, the 80s movie My Best Friend is a Vampire which I rented constantly as a little girl, and a little bit of Bucky Barnes, AKA The Winter Soldier.
How long did it take you to write your book?
About a year. I start last summer, pushed to get 50k written during NaNoWriMo 2015, and then finished the rest by the start of 2016. Then I began the process of editing, and was ready to begin compilation and typesetting in August.
How long have you been publishing your work?
Since 2012, when my first novelette, The Collector, debuted.
What does your writing environment look like?
If I’m at home, I tend to write in my office upstairs, which has a desk, a shelf of comics, two shelves filled with anime and movies, another shelf with action figures on it, and then walls covered in posters from comics and other things I love, including one wall that is dedicated to Poison Ivy. If I’m writing at work, my little honey badger plush is ever nearby.
Do you have any routines to help you write?
Get out every thought I have even if I get distracted from normal narrative flow to write a slew of dialogue for a different scene. If it comes to me, I have to stop and write it. I can always figure out where it goes later, but if I wait, I’ll easily forget the genius that just came to mind. My biggest routine is to try to write sometime after dinner every night for at least an hour.
Author Bio:
Amanda has a Bachelor of Arts in a personally designed major from St. Olaf College in Creative Writing, and has been posting content online for many years, including maintaining the blog for the digital marketing company Outsell. She spent a summer writing screenplay script coverages for a company in L.A., and is an avid consumer of fiction through film, prose, and video games. Amanda lives in Minneapolis, MN, with her husband, John, and their cats, Helga and Sasha (no connection to the incubus of the same name).
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The author is giving one lucky reader a signed paperback of Life as a Teenage Vampire!
I really appreciate this great interview for this tour, and the chance to stop here at all to help promote my new title. I am so excited to continue seeing reader response, as this book has a special place in my heart, filled with real life stories woven into a fun supernatural world. Thank you so much again for letting me stop by.
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