Please start by telling us a little about yourself (education,
jobs, significant other, children, pets, etc.)
Hmm. Me. In a nutshell, I’m a
Southern girl with Northern roots. I met my husband when we were seventeen and we
have been together an astonishing seventeen years and married for 10. I know,
right? He’s a drummer. I’m a writer. And my ridiculously awesome five year old
son is a painter.
Tell us about your latest New Adult book and what inspired
you to write it.
Beatless is a story about getting
left behind and learning to find your own voice and place in life. I started to
write it as a sort of letter to a younger generation. I was thinking about life
after high school and how scary it is to suddenly be without that security of
the world you’ve always known. How, sometimes, the people that we give our all
to are just not the ones who will last the test of time.
The New Adult genre is fairly new. What's your definition
of it? How does it differ from Young Adult or just regular Adult books?
One
word: sex. I think a lot of times writers of YA feel like they have to fade to
black and make everything insinuated in order to not be slammed by the general
public. With New Adult you can delve into the lives of people who are right in
the middle of finding out who they are. Who they want to be. And you can be a
little more heavy-handed in the smut department, ifyouknowwhatImean.
Do you belong to any critique groups and/or do you have
other people read your work as you're writing it? Who's brutally honest and
who's a cheerleader? Which do you prefer?
Oh,
yeah. I find it imperative to have people read your work who are going to guide
you through the process. I have a cheerleader who tells me I’m awesome even
when I’m probably not. I have another who asks a lot of questions and gives
very dry, straight forward answers. Another who makes sure that all of the
medical stuff I talk about is legit. I think most people prefer a cheerleader,
but every writer needs someone that will tell them when they’re acting like a
lunatic.
What are your all-time favorite authors/books?
I must confess that I loved The
Fault in Our Stars, The Sea of Tranquility and Warm Bodies. I only recently
started really reading fiction that’s directed at a younger audience. Sometimes
I get really bogged down in it, though. Up until a few years ago, the only
books I ever read on a consistent basis were true crime and books about serial
killers. It’s been a big leap.
Do you outline before you write or just dive head-first
into a manuscript? Do you maintain a schedule for writing, or is it
more haphazard?It always starts with a scene and
a conversation. Dialogue drives me. Beatless began a few years ago as a pretty
different story. I sat on it for a while and one night, right before I fell
asleep, I saw the entire scene in my head of Mallory and Tucker in the car
while he asks her to describe the
bass line of a song to him. This happened a few days into Nano where I had been
working on another book. I pushed the other one aside and wrote Beatless in 27
days. I worked my way up to that scene and then got out of bed at 2am to
outline the rest of the book and finished it in about a week.
Where do you
do your best writing? (Ex: desk in your office, public library, under a tree in
the park, in front of a Real Housewives
TV marathon, etc.) Do you like music or some other background noise, or do you
need quiet?
I have to have a quiet house and
music in my headphones. Period. Otherwise I will LOSE IT.
What are the best and worst parts of writing a book?
The best part is seeing that
you’ve actually accomplished something that huge. Finishing a book is a HUGE
deal. The worst parts are looking back and wondering what the hell you were
thinking with that sentence or scene.
When you're
driving and you have a sudden, brilliant idea for the new manuscript you're
working on, what do you do? (Ex: pull over and fire up the laptop, keep driving
while scribbling on a McDonald's bag, tell Siri, etc.)
I’ve usually got a notebook with me, but a lot of the time I
will send myself an email from my phone. I get the best emails from myself!
Imagine you have a whole day free for shopping. Where do
you go? (Mall, unique boutiques, flea market, antique shops, bookstore, home
improvement store, etc.)
I’m not even lying when I tell you
that I buy 90% of my clothes from Goodwill. So, I’d probably be there.
What are the
top 5 titles in your Netflix queue? (Be honest.) Or if you don't have a Netflix
queue, which books are on your bedside table? (Again, be honest.)
*checking my phone for my Netflix
queue* Hold please…
Crap. Is it the five at the
beginning or the five at the end? I’ll just go with this:
Not Fade Away
Kitchen Nightmares
Geography Club
The Great Outdoors
Jobs
Do you prefer
to read ebooks or print?
Nothing is better than holding a book in my hands. And
smelling it.
Where is your
favorite place in the world?
Austin, TX
Do you have any advice for people who want to write a book?
Do it. Start and see where it
takes you. But, OMG, please have someone read it and pay for an editor. The
biggest complaints I see in reviews on people’s books are about the lack of
editing. It’s worth it. I promise.
Links!
Website: www.Amberlynnejohnson.com
Twitter: @WhereIsJakeRyan
Facebook author page: https://www.facebook.com/amberlynnejohnson
And you can find Beatless on
amazon here: Link to buy
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