My journey is not like some other authors you hear from, who’ve dreamed of being a writer since they were a child.
I think when I was a child, I probably did say I wanted to write a book someday… but it was never really a deeply held dream of mine.
In fact, when I was a very little kid (in Kindergarten) my dream was to become a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle. Barring that, I wanted to be the person who pumped gas for you (sadly… the dream died as attendant stations were replaced with self-serve ones…). 😂
Since becoming a turtle or a gas station attendant didn’t pan out, my life took a different course.
College was where it started
In college, I had a hard time deciding what I wanted to major in. It felt like a very serious decision I had to make at a time in my life when I honestly had no idea what I wanted to do on my weekends, let alone what my career should be.
My mom gave me the advice to choose a major based on something in my life I truly loved.
And a true love I’d always had in my life were books.
Anytime I had some extra cash, I was buying books. The subject didn’t matter, I read everything. As a result, my shelves ranged from classic literature, philosophy, and poetry to nonfiction tomes exploring the history of whole countries, essays on any number of topics, languages… chances were, if you had a book on a topic or idea you wanted to read, I probably had it on my shelves.
By the time I was a freshman in college, I had close to 1,000 books in my collection. Moving that book collection once my husband and I got married was… a chore, to say the least!
So, taking my mom’s advice, I decided to be an English Literature major. A year later, I added on History as a secondary major because it was truly my other passion. When I graduated from college in 2006, I held 2 Baccalaureate degrees: English Literature and History, and 1 Associates degree in Art History.
You’d think with that experience, it would have awakened a desire to write a novel. Nope.
I wanted to be a college professor! My college sweetheart and I married about a year after graduating from college. Shortly after that, I enrolled in a local university’s masters program to pursue a masters in English Literature.
… then we got pregnant. 😅 And we had to move into a bigger home.
…but then we started a family!
I dropped out of the program, telling myself I’d be back well before the time expired for me to be able to complete my degree without re-applying.
But. A few years later, baby #2 arrived. We moved again. A few years after that, we moved to be closer to family and things really took a drastic change.
During those times, I worked as a freelance writer for small businesses publishing online content. I wrote on a lot of different topics ranging from tea, to lawn care, to healthy eating… And I also had a ​blog​ I regularly wrote content for.
Around 2015, I saw a job posting from a popular online blogger that they needed someone who could help with SEO, email marketing, lead generation, etc. These were all topics I was vaguely familiar with from the random projects I’d taken on, but I had no real, solid experience with it. I didn’t let that stop me though and I applied for the job.
Imagine my surprise when I was the one selected! It honestly felt like a dream come true: a fully virtual position for a legit business that had flexible hours, where I could learn about this thing called online marketing.
Ultimately that job led me down what became a career path. In 2019, I really felt I’d made it when I found myself accepting what I thought was my dream job.
Yep, I’d managed to climb from being a contractor for a blogger in 2015 to a paid employee in 2019 working for Oil of Olay — all without a marketing degree of any kind.
Long story short, as is often the case in the corporate world, that job was many things… most of which were nothing I expected. I began that job and shortly afterward got pregnant with baby #3. By the time she was born, I realized I was not fit for corporate world. I left about a year later, and worked various other contractor jobs, but all in the world of online marketing.
Fast forward to 2021: I took all my prior experience and used it to become an online business owner. And (not to toot my own horn) I was very successful with it.
So successful that I couldn’t quite believe it was real. The bad part? I hated it. It drained me. It was honestly MORE work than when I was with Proctor & Gamble… and that’s saying something.
My body was falling apart physically, mentally and emotionally — to the point that one of my clients (also a dear friend) who is a medical professional offered to run a few tests on me. What those tests revealed about my physical health was eye opening. Long story short? If I didn’t make some drastic changes to my life to better manage stress… I was going to collapse because my body couldn’t handle it anymore.
This was my breaking point. I had to walk away from everything I’d built just so I could recover. It an easy decision in some ways (I hated my work), but hard in others (losing that income meant a drastic lifestyle change).
During that time throughout the end of 2021 and into 2022, I did a lot of introspection.
In fact, I specifically remember having multiple revelations… most which happened in the shower because let’s be real that’s the perfect deep thinking spot… that led to me accepting I did not want the career the world told me I should have.
What I actually wanted out of my life was very simple: I want time with my children before they’re old and graduated from high school. I want to sit on my front porch and drink wine, listening to my kids and their friends play outside. I want to open my home to my neighbors, family and friends and spend time together. I want to read again. I want to knit. I want to bake and cook.
Even now as I type those things… it brings tears to my eyes because I’d realized I had denied myself those things for so long, believing I’d have time later to live the life I wanted.
Now, I can hear you: “What in the world does all this have to do with writing a book, Amanda?!”
In the process of coming to these many realizations, and beginning to restructure how I spent my time so I could actually make my life look how I wanted, I watched Hamilton the musical on Disney+. 😂 Yes, it really is this simple.
I watched the musical one night with my husband and, like most of America, was instantly hooked. Obsessed. Could not get enough.
Remember, I’m an English Lit & History nerd at heart. So this was 100% absolutely my jam.
What I ended up focusing on mainly was Lin-Manuel Miranda’s treatment of Aaron Burr and the exploration of his psyche: growing up, the best glimpse into Aaron Burr I got was in the milk commercial where the guy tries to phone in to the radio station and say who shot Alexander Hamilton in the famous duel… but his mouth is glued shut from peanut butter and he can’t answer for the grand prize.
In other words… Aaron Burr was a murderer. End of story.
Except, that is not the end of the story. I ended up going down a rabbit hole, exploring Aaron Burr’s insane life and all the things he did after he shot Hamilton. Which led me to wondering what happened to his wife? His daughter?
I could not get enough of this family – specifically of Theodosia Burr (his daughter).
One thing led to another and I remember turning to Alex (my husband) and saying… I want to write her story. And he told me I should just do it. Just try.
So I did.
Long story (not so) short: teaching yourself how to write a novel is not easy! I never took creative writing courses in college so I was starting from scratch. That self-education led me down a path of purchasing a course (that I don’t recommend so I am not linking to it) which led me to a Facebook group, which led me to posting in said Facebook group asking for resources of editors who specialize in historical fiction.
That little post connected me to a publisher who replied that he specialized in historical fiction. He wasn’t taking on any authors, but he would read what I had and give me feedback for free.
At that time, I had a couple chapters so I sent them his way. This was May 2023. I didn’t think anything would come of it. I didn’t even believe I knew what I was doing at that time.
About four weeks later, the publisher reached back out to me and asked if I’d be willing to get on a call. I figured this was to give me feedback and I said sure.
The call was actually an offer to sign with his independent publishing house, Lineage Publishing.
He saw the potential and believed in what I could do… so he offered me a contract. I could not believe it! I still can’t, to be honest with you.
I said yes. And that’s the story of how I went from dreaming of being a college professor, to actually becoming an online marketer, to then burning out in a horrible way… to playing around with writing a novel, and landing a publishing contract before completing the manuscript.
You’re all caught up!
Now that I’ve shared all that…. I’d love to hear from you. What’s your story? What journey are you on? Hit reply and let me know.
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