Meet the Girl Who Published Her First 

Vampire Book Aged 14

Meet Amelia Atwater- Rhodes. I've never read her books but I remember her name from when I started reading and writing vampire fiction when I was a teenager. I remembered her tonight and I plan to see what her writing is like this week while I still have some summer days free to read!

So who was she?

Amelia Atwater-Rhodes (born April 16, 1984) is an American author of fantasy and young adult literature.

What was her first book?

Her debut novel, In the Forests of the Night, was published in 1999, when she was 14 YEARS OLD!!!! She has published a new young adult novel every year since her first. 

Tell us more about that first book.

According to Amelia's official site, In the Forests of the Night (original title "White Wine") is one of a series of 7 novels and is the first she ever published. 

Where did she get inspiration from?

The inspiration for the novel came from an assignment she received in the 7th grade when her best friend Jessica chose "The Tyger" for the assignment. The character of Risika was taken from the brief mention in Amelia's unpublished novel, Red Wine. 

She began working on the novel in 1997, under the title White Wine, and during the writing process with the novel, two incidents had an affect in the final product. First, Amelia got writer's block and then her computer crashed from a virus during the summer. The crash meant she had to re-write the story. While she was doing that, she changed the antagonist from Ather to Aubrey (another character). She spent 4 months editing the story and sent it to agents on December 31, 1997 but kept getting rejected. In mid-February 1998 she met her agent, Tom Hart, who later called her and informed her that Random House would publish the novel on her fourteenth birthday; however, the novel was pushed back and released a little over a year later in May 1999.

Does she only write about vampires?

No. In 2003, Amelia took a break from vampires and published Hawksong, the first of a five book series about shapeshifters, “The Kiesha’ra Series”. 

Personal details

At school she loved singing and drama (though was too shy to perform). She also knew fencing. Amelia was married to a lady partner for 5 years but got divorced. She has a two-year-old daughter. Amelia is Jewish.

What is Amelia doing now?

She's been teaching English for 8 years to students with language-based learning disabilities.

One of her many tips for authors:

"I love creating characters, but sometimes as a writer you must kill what you love.

Sometimes a book simply has too many characters. Taking one out leaves a hole that can be filled by other characters, giving them more space to stretch, develop, exercise their agency and just generally get to know the reader.

On the other hand, sometimes a character is vitally important but too often working behind the scenes or summarized in exposition or "while you were out" discussions. In those cases, it's better to add. If that character is important but absent, then there's *already* a hole in your story somewhere.

It's up to you, the storyteller, to decide which is which."

Quote from one of her books:

Find 24 of her books on goodreads.com