August 2020 Group Read with Guest Author, Gemma Amor

[Kenneth]

This is the thread for the August 2020 Group Read with Guest Author, Gemma Amor. This month, Gemma will be joining us as we’ll be reading her folk horror tale, WHITE PINES. You can grab yourself a copy at the link below. Please help me welcome to HA, Gemma Amor!

https://www.amazon.com/White-Pines-Ge...

[Paul]

Nice! I recently picked this up and would love to join in. I have only read Cruel Works of Nature but I have the others and just need to get to them

[Latasha]

Welcome Gemma and thank you for joining us.

[Kasia]

Hi Gemma, welcome! Your book looks phenomenal!

[Krystal]

Welcome Gemma! The book looks great!

[Michael]

I'm halfway through and it's great. Can't wait for this one.

[Montzalee]

Thanks for coming Gemma and for having a book that is on Kindle Unlimited! Yeah!!!

[Gemma]

Hi guys, thank you for having me! I'm extremely new to this so apologies while I figure out the how-tos! Thrilled to be here.

[Gemma]

Kenneth wrote: "This is the thread for the August 2020 Group Read with Guest Author, Gemma Amor. This month, Gemma will be joining us as we’ll be reading her folk horror tale, WHITE PINES. You can grab yourself a ..."

Kasia wrote: "Hi Gemma, welcome! Your book looks phenomenal!"

This is very exciting! Thank you for having me :)

[Kimberly]

Welcome Gemma, thank you for joining us!

[Kenneth]

Gemma, can you tell us a little about how you became a writer and who your influences were?

[Gemma]

Kenneth wrote: "Gemma, can you tell us a little about how you became a writer and who your influences were?"

Sure Kenneth! I've been writing for most of my life, but lacked the confidence and time to really throw myself into it the way I wanted. Instead, I spent ten years in a soul-destroying career in digital marketing, which involved selling business telephone systems and writing articles about stainless steel urinals. Which was every bit as awful as it sounds.

Thankfully, in a stroke of luck, I was made redundant, and finally found I had the time to really focus on what made me happy: creating new worlds, characters, and stories. I was however very rusty, and my writing 'voice' wasn't quite as clear as I wanted it to be, so I went back to basics. I abandoned the novel I was working on and decided to focus on short stories. It is much easier to focus on the mechanics of writing with a word count of less than 10k, and I rediscovered the joy of writing for pleasure by doing this.

I then stumbled across a well-known horror anthology podcast called the NoSleep Podcast. They accepted the first story I submitted, and I was lucky enough to build a great rapport with their editorial team. Soon I had several stories adapted into audio dramas by them, and through the show I met a small indie publisher who took all my short stories and helped me to publish my first collection, Cruel Works of Nature. My career gathered pace steadily after that and I'm now almost three years in, have five books out, work on multiple podcasts and and working on my first screenplay for a short horror movie.

My influences are really varied. I adore King, but am very drawn to the classics, mostly because I studied them at university, So Carter, Shelley, and Perkins Gilman all have special places in my heart and their influence definitely pops up in my work. I'm also a huge Atwood nerd, adore Christie, Du Maurier, McCarthy, Thomas Harris and Robert Jordan- basically, anyone with a fierce writing 'voice' that strikes a chord with me. I'm a book junkie and can barely move for books in my house, but I also look to podcasts a lot for inspiration, especially true crime and horror shows.

[Ctgt]

Started chapter 24 and am really enjoying the story so far. Gemma can I ask about the genesis of this story? I've always been a fan of folk horror and this is hitting a sweet spot for me, so I'm interested to hear how this story came about.