Interview with Amber Gilchrist

blogtour_banner

I’ll be hosting Amber’s blog tour on my blog starting next week, and in preparation for that, I had the opportunity to ask her a few questions about her writing and upcoming work.

Lucinda- How did you start writing?  
Amber- Unlike a lot of writers, I never wrote as a young child.  Nor did I start with fan fiction or short stories.  I decided one day, I guess I was about 15, that I was going to write something, so I wrote a novel.  It was terrible, by the way.  But I guess I just decided to jump in head first and went right for the novel.  I don’t think I had a lot going on in my head, in regards to my motivation.  I just felt like writing something.

 Lucinda- What genres do you write?
Amber- I write pretty much everything.  Rom Coms, Inspy, Mysteries, Romantic Suspense, Contemporary Romances, YA, Fantasy, Speculative Fiction, Horror.  I think there’s probably nothing, except Erotica and Literary Fiction, that I haven’t written at least once.

Lucinda- Which has been your easiest book to write?
Amber- I think my easiest book to write was Glitch, actually.  It came very easily.  I wrote it during NaNoWriMo and had absolutely no trouble finishing in time.  It was just a lot of fun to write and came out more like stream of consciousness.

Lucinda- And which one was your hardest?
Amber- I‘ve had two books that have been difficult to write.  I had a romantic suspense that took me over twelve years to actually finish.  It hasn’t been published either.  But it went through this evolutionary process with me.  As I got older and my writing got more sophisticated, I’d start again and it would go through changes with me.  I did finally finish it though, after all those years.  The second is a fantasy called Age of Brass.  It was difficult just because of how many layers are involved.  I am still trying to do rewrites and fix it, but the draft was sooooo difficult.  It’s a retelling of Beauty and the Beast, in a way.  But it’s also slightly steampunk, very political, has people from different dimensions, includes magic and also practical everyday living.  It is just a very confusing book.  It has a cast of seven POV characters and the politics alone are just terribly difficult to unravel.  It’s very much about a government in collapse and the people in revolt, on their way to a revolution, and warring factions.  It’s just huge.  I have like 16 white boards with different connecting information, trying to keep it all straight. 

Lucinda- What are you working on right now?
Amber- Right this second, I have four books due.  I’m trying to balance out all my time.  But most of my efforts and energy are going into the fact that we are adopting two special needs children from China, one of whom has an urgent medical need and needs to come home much quicker than we ever anticipated. 

You can see some more info here, https://whereyouwantmetogo.blogspot.com/, along with a fundraiser that gives readers an opportunity to show up in a book, or name a character after a friend, for a gift I promise they don’t already have!

Lucinda- It sounds like this would be a great opportunity to get involved in a great cause and help this amazing family give a loving home to two special children. Thanks, Amber, for chatting about your work!

169886430