7 Questions I Always Ask +1 with Amanda Hocking, author of ICE KISSED and the Trylle series
It’s very exciting for me today to have Amanda Hocking on the blog for 7Q+1! She’s the sweetheart of self publishing and a prolific author, now publishing both traditionally and on her own. Check out her wonderful writerly insights below!
E. Kristin Anderson: What was the first spark of inspiration for your latest novel?
Amanda Hocking: Since it’s a spinoff series, the very initial spark began six years ago, when I was driving through the bluffs along the Mississippi River, and I thought, “I bet something magical could be happening up there, and we wouldn’t even know it.”
For this particular book – the second in a trilogy – the first scene I saw clearly in the book was the last scene of the book, but I don’t want to spoil that for you.
St. Martin’s Griffin, May 2015.
EKA: What kind of planning do you do before you start writing?
AH: My books always start the same way – with a pen to paper. I begin taking notes, doodling, scratching out ideas. Then I move on to outline, and with the Kanin Chronicles I did most extensive outlining, characters descriptions, and notes to date. I get all my character names figured out.
It’s after the outlining, I begin doing researching and gathering all the information I think I might need. Then once that’s finished, I get my playlist that I listen to writing picked out, and then I begin the actual writing.
EKA: If you could have lunch with any writer living or dead, who would it be? Or if you could get moderately tipsy with any writer living or dead, who would it be?
AH: I would have to be pick the moderately tipsy, since I would be too nervous to say much otherwise, and I would pick Kurt Vonnegut. He’s one of my favorite writers, and I just think he’d be a lot of fun to talk to over drinks.
EKA: What is the first book you remember reading and enjoying as a young reader?
Golden Books, Reprint Edition, January 2004.
AH: My very first favorite book when I was a kid was “The Golden Egg Book” by Margaret Wise Brown, which I eventually memorized and could recite on my own. The first book I remember by was a copy of Jaws by Peter Benchley from a garage sale for a nickel when I was eight, and I loved it.
EKA: If you could go back and time and tell your teen self ONE THING AND ONE THING ONLY, what would it be?
AH: There are so many things I would tell myself. I guess what I would have to say would be, “Nobody cares how you live your life, so live your life how you want.”
I mean, of course my mom and my friends cared about me, but I was so obsessed with what strangers might think of me, when I am now absolutely certain that none of them thought of me at all. (Which is okay. Most people are far too busy dealing with their own life to worry about what you’re doing with yours).
EKA: If you haven’t had a book challenged or banned, would you want this to happen to you? Why or why not?
AH: As far as I know, I’ve never had a book challenged or banned. I have had a couple messages from teachers saying that they would’ve liked to have their books in my classroom, but they won’t now because of the language and sexual content.
It doesn’t make me happy, exactly, but I understand in their cases where they’re coming from. It’s a choice I accept when I choose to include those things in my books, but I do that because that’s what I read as a young adult and that’s what I wanted to read. I swore more as a teenager than I do now, so for me, it feels unrealistic to have teens who are vanquishing monsters but never swear.
In my experience, banning a book only makes people want to read it more. However, I don’t approve of the practice of “banning” a book. A more population benefits everyone, and reading books of all varieties and flavors leads to a more information population.
EKA: What kind of book do you really want to try to write, but haven’t ever attempted? And what do you think is holding you back?
AH: I’ve always wanted to write a true crime novel, ala Ann Rule. There a lot of real injustices in the world that could benefit from having more light shed on them, and that’s a big part of what makes me so nervous to tackle something like that. It’s real lives I’d be talking about, and I just don’t feel qualified to write about it.
St. Martin’s Griffin, January 2012.
EKA: How has your approach to writing changed since you published your first book? Or, how has it not, and why do you think that is?
AH: In a lot of ways, I write the same – I write what interests me, I outline beforehand (although my outlines and notes have gotten more extensive as I go along), and I tend to write a lot in a relatively short amount of time.
The biggest difference for me is that now along with the characters, I have the readers in my head as well. I’m more conscious of how my words effect readers, and I’m more deliberate with my characters and the actions they take.
It’s been over five years since I first started publishing, and in that time, my life has changed dramatically, and I’ve grown and changed a lot as a person. I’m more aware of the fact that I’m writing for young adults, primarily girls and women, and the fact that my characters can potentially be role models for them. Now it has become important to me to showcase romance in a more egalitarian way.
Amanda Hocking.
Amanda Hocking is The New York Times bestselling author of the Trylle trilogy and a lifelong Minnesotan. After selling over a million copies of her books, primarily in eBook format, she became the exemplar of self-publishing success in the digital age.
Website: http://smarturl.it/AHWebsite
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