Double Rita nominee Amy Andrews

Amy is an award-winning, USA Today best-selling Aussie author who has written seventy contemporary romances in both the traditional and digital markets. Her books bring all the feels from sass and quirk and laughter to emotional grit to panty-melting heat.

Transcript:

Sarah Williams:            Today I’m chatting to Amy Andrews. Thanks for joining me, Amy.

Amy Andrews:              Thanks for having me, Sarah.

Sarah Williams:            So, you have written over 70 books and sold over 2 million copies. So, first off, congratulations.

Amy Andrews:              Thank you, thank you very much.

Sarah Williams:            So, tell us about your journey so far and how you got into writing.

Amy Andrews:              Well, I was never one of those people that you often meet in writing circles who just knew, from the second that they stapled paper together, that they were gonna be a writer. It never occurred to me to be a writer at all, really. I was very good at english, I loved creative writing, but it never occurred to me that people did that as an actual job, which is stupid ’cause clearly there are books, so people must do it, but, I don’t know, it was not in my realm of things I could do.

Amy Andrews:              And then we moved to the UK after I first got married, where I was temporarily unemployed for about six weeks, and it was our first winter in the UK and it was freezing cold. One week it didn’t get above zero and there were frozen cobwebs in our house, and it was just really cold. And I thought “What can I do that involves me not getting off my electric blanket?” And I thought “I’ll write that book that’s in my head.”

Amy Andrews:              And that was an epiphany, ’cause I was like “I have a book in my head?” And it was then that I realized [inaudible 00:02:11] so then I wrote long hand, a chapter a day for ten days, 50 000 words, and it just flew out of me, just fell out of me. And I’d written a book and that’s when I realized … Then you open that portal, when you do that you open almost a like portal and I realized then that actually I had always had thoughts in my head, I just never really realized that’s what they were, I just thought it was a bit of an active imagination. And so, it took me till I was 22 to really realize they weren’t really people talking in my head, they were actually plots. So, that was a relief in lots of ways.

Amy Andrews:              This was back in the days before we had PC, everybody had a computer in the house, so I had to pay somebody to type it [inaudible 00:02:59], it cost me a hundred pounds, out of my scribbled notes, and sent it off to the somebody in the UK, so I sent it to Harlequin, and nine months later got a rejection.

Amy Andrews:              And that was … So, I always feel that was my moment when I knew I wanted to become a writer, because I thought “Alright well, I’m gonna show you, I’m gonna teach you a lesson. I’m gonna show you that I can write a book that you will publish, if it kills me.” So, I always say that rejection made me bloody minded.

Amy Andrews:              And so, I kinda went on from there and when we got back to Australia, I thought to myself “Well, clearly I’m not as good as I thought I was, clearly I’m not going to have a millions of dollar advance and get a movie deal straight off the bat, so, okay, what can I do, I’ve gotta learn.” So I looked around to whoever could help me, so I rang [inaudible 00:03:58] and asked if there was a romance writing group anywhere in Brisbane and I found BRISROM, from there I found RWA, I went to conferences and workshops and I bought how-to books, and I always say I feel like I just spent years learning the craft and writing and getting rejected.

Amy Andrews:              So it took me 12 years before I finally got the call from London to say that they were accepting my first book. Although, that was really on my third full novel in that time. ‘Cause I was working as a nurse and I had babies and I wasn’t very productive in that 12 years. I really wish that I had been more productive, ’cause maybe I might have been picked up earlier. Well, you never know, maybe that’s just … that was just the way my journey was.

Sarah Williams:            That’s it.

Amy Andrews:              I do get a bit cranky thinking I should’ve been a bit more focused in those 12 years.

Amy Andrews:              So yeah, 2004 I got the phone call, and my first book was published in 2005.

Sarah Williams:            Wow so … Yeah, we’re not talking decades or anything, you’ve done 60 books in 12 years.

Amy Andrews:              70 books, yeah.

Sarah Williams:            70 books, sorry.

Amy Andrews:              Please don’t take those ten books away from me.

Sarah Williams:            No! You need every single one.

Amy Andrews:              Yeah.

Sarah Williams:            So, wow, that’s really impressive. So yeah, you really must’ve just worked your socks off for the last few years.

Amy Andrews:              Yeah, I guess I’ve been putting out between … I suppose I’ve averaged about four to six books a year, but there have been some years, like a couple of years ago, I had 11 books out in one year. Although, that was not quite the way it was meant to work out, I just had books that were carried over from the previous year that weren’t supposed to. But yes, I did have a crazy year a few years back. I am prolific, not as prolific as some. I’ve retired from nursing a few years ago now and I write full time and it’s my job.

Sarah Williams:            Oh wow. So what kind of word count are we talking about here?

Amy Andrews:              Well today, not that many. When I’m writing or working on a book, I try to do two to three thousand … I’d like to two thousand words a day, but usually I’m running behind on schedule so I have to get to three thousand words a day.

Amy Andrews:              I went for a lot of years with much bigger word counts and that, five thousand words a day was quite common for me. Sometimes up to eight. But the mere thought of writing those word counts now makes me want to vomit. If I have to write anything more than three thousand words a day, it’s daunting to even think about. So, I don’t know what happened there, but … I mean, I can and do occasionally do five to eight K days, but I’m literally exhausted after them, I feel like I can’t write for another week. So I would say between two and three thousand words when I’m writing on a book.

Amy Andrews:              Today I’m praying that I’m gonna get to two thousand by the end of the day. Fingers crossed.

Sarah Williams:            A few more wines, you’ll be alright.

Amy Andrews:              Yeah sure, I always write drinking champagne. Not really. I’d never get anything finished. [crosstalk 00:07:05] thing, you’re supposed to write drunk, edit sober?

Sarah Williams:            Yeah.

Amy Andrews:              Yeah. I like that one.

Sarah Williams:            Yeah, yeah, that’s awesome. And in the books themselves, are we talking 50 000 word books or even longer?

Amy Andrews:              Yeah, most of them are 70 000. I guess in the category romance, some of them between 50 to 60 000.

Sarah Williams:            Yeah.

Amy Andrews:              I’ve had quite a few single titles in there though. I don’t know how many, maybe 10, so they’re 80 to 100 000, and there’s a couple of novellas in there as well, 20, 30, 35 000 words. But mostly 50, 60 000, yeah.

Sarah Williams:            Brilliant. So, when you were picked up by Harlequin or Mills & Boon, what sort of a book was that to start with? So I know you’ve got a background in nursing, so was that a medical book?

Amy Andrews:              It was. My first book that was picked up was a medical book. The first book I wrote wasn’t a medical. That book that I wrote in ten days was not a medical, although it did have a doctor as a hero. I have a medical background, so it was easier. But I hadn’t planned on writing medical, so I didn’t really even know the medical line existed until, in my apprenticeship I was reading widely in the Harlequin lines, and I stumbled across it and I read a few of the books.

Amy Andrews:              And I read a particular book that had some inaccurate medical information in it and I thought … Actually, there was a scene where a doctor gave a bedpan to a patient and I was like “Well, okay. If only that were true.” And so I thought at least I can get my medical content right, so that’s what actually put me on the path of writing medicals, that’s how I ended up … And as I switched, I changed to writing medicals from then on.

Amy Andrews:              Later on I did write for the Harlequin Kiss line, for those three or four years that it was operational, and I loved writing those books, it broke my heart when the line shut down. But I was lucky, I actually had another line that I could still write for as well.

Sarah Williams:            Yeah, fantastic.

Sarah Williams:            So you’ve got lots of different genres that you do write for, you’ve got your medical, your small town, urban family, mystery, sexy, and sport.

Amy Andrews:              Yeah.

Sarah Williams:            So a little bit of everything.

Amy Andrews:              A little bit of everything, yeah. The mystery one is … I’ve only got one book that I did in that sub-genre. I’ve got two more coming out in that series, in the Limbo series, The Joy Valentine Mysteries. And that was a weird book that came from nowhere. Joy had been in my head for a couple of years, she was this weird character that landed fully formed. It doesn’t often happen that way, I just knew Joy straight away. But she was like a ex hillbilly, punk rocker, [cadana 00:09:59] makeup artist person who sees ghosts, and I was like “I don’t know how to write that book. I can’t write you. You need to go away ’cause I’m busy writing the stuff I know how to write.”

Amy Andrews:              But she just persisted and persisted and persisted, and after a couple of years I just knew, I had finished my book and I knew that she had to be written, so I wrote her. And I love her, I love that book and I love … There’s a new cover on, Escape recently re-covered it, the one with the goldfish bowl on the front. And I love that book, it just didn’t sell very well. So, people, go buy, it’s really good! And there’s gonna two more out as well.

Sarah Williams:            Excellent. Oh brilliant. So, you’ve had your books translated into 12 languages as well, as well as having Manga?

Amy Andrews:              Manga, yes.

Sarah Williams:            Manga-

Amy Andrews:              Yeah, these are my … I’ve got a few, just to show you my lovely, beautiful, Manga translations. And they have these beautiful, gorgeous pictures … Here I’m upside down, pictures in them that are … They’re the most prized translation, as a Harlequin author, that you get. And I didn’t … Everybody else I knew, practically, at Harlequin had Manga translations and I didn’t. And when I got my first one, I almost peed my pants, I was so excited.

Amy Andrews:              And they’re quite beautiful, ’cause their covers are really glossy, they’re very beautiful. Obviously I can’t read Japanese at all, but when you know what the story is and you look through the pictures there’s actually … You go “Oh, I know what that scene is,” you can tell from the pictures what scenes they are, they seem to be a very accurate representation of what you wrote. So, yeah. Lovely.

Sarah Williams:            Yeah. That’s fantastic.

Amy Andrews:              [crosstalk 00:12:03] of signing things and one of the reasons why people say “Well, you know, why do you write for Harlequin when you could go Indie and …” because they have such an amazingly huge … For lots of reasons, ’cause I’ve been a Harlequin reader, I love them.

Sarah Williams:            Yeah.

Amy Andrews:              But they have such a huge market share and they have a massive translation market. And I got the Japanese translation the other day and it’s just such a thrill to know that all over the world people are reading, hopefully, [crosstalk 00:12:36]

Sarah Williams:            So, they are definitely one of those really good ones.

Sarah Williams:            So, as well as Harlequin, Mills & Boon, are you published with anyone else?

Amy Andrews:              Yes. Actually I’ve had quite a few books published through Escape, Harlequin Escape Australia, which is a digital line for Harlequin in Australia. Limbo was published through them. And I’ve had a couple of books out with Harlequin Mirror here in Australia which is a [inaudible 00:13:05]. Mostly now I write for Entangled Publishing, I’ve done 12 books or something for them and they’ve the sports, the Sydney Smoke Rugby series with them. And I also write for Tule Publishing, which is another independent digital publishing house out of the U.S.

Sarah Williams:            Yeah, brilliant. So, with your Tule ones, I’ve read Tule published books which have been really like cowboys and western. Is that what you’re writing for them as well, or is it something different?

Amy Andrews:              I’ve written a few things for them and that’s what I really love about writing for Tule, is that there’s a lot of creative freedom. The first book I wrote for them was a collaboration with three other authors and it was set in New York, a modern, contemporary romance [inaudible 00:13:57] sisters … Sister? No, friends, all set in New York.

Amy Andrews:              I’ve written a series I was gonna self-publish, but they said that they were interested so I gave it to them, which is a small town Australian. They’re not cowboys exactly, but sort of a family [inaudible 00:14:14] a small town. And the one that’s up for the RITA this year is also a Tule one and it’s a cowboy one, it’s an Australian cowboy on the American bull riding circuit, so it is. So I’ve written a variety of things for them.

Sarah Williams:            Yeah, excellent. So let’s talk about the RITA nomination, congratulations!

Amy Andrews:              [inaudible 00:14:36]

Sarah Williams:            And that’s fantastic, you were saying that it is an Australian character-

Amy Andrews:              [inaudible 00:14:43] with two books in the same category, so Troy was one and A Christmas Miracle, which was that Harlequin medical.

Sarah Williams:            Brilliant. And this is the first time you’ve got a nomination for a RITA?

Amy Andrews:              It is. I actually didn’t enter last year, ’cause I thought “I’ve been doing this for 12 years [crosstalk 00:15:03] getting anywhere.” And it costs money and you have to … I actually didn’t do it last year, but you usually have to mail them a copy, so it’s expensive. Thought “Ah, I’ll do another year.”

Amy Andrews:              So that ended up being quite fortuitous as it was, and then … ‘Cause what happens with the RITA is, you get rung by them to say your book’s finaled in the RITA competition. And because I [inaudible 00:15:33] Australia, because we just moved house and I had a different phone now, to the one that was on the form I entered, I wasn’t rung. And I didn’t even know that they were being announced over night, I’d rather not know those things because it’s better to be surprised than to be sitting there by the phone thinking “Is it gonna ring, is it gonna ring, is it gonna ring?”

Amy Andrews:              So, I didn’t even know, so I went to bed and I woke up at half seven to a text from Claire Connelly, it said “Good morning RITA queen.” And I reckon there’s never been a [inaudible 00:16:09] on the face of the planet that had done a sit-up faster than I did [crosstalk 00:16:12] got that message. I just bolted upright in bed and said to my husband “Oh my God! Oh my God, I finaled in the RITA!”

Amy Andrews:              And then I noticed that I had all these tweets and I just ignored all of them, because I knew I didn’t get a phone call, so I went straight to my email, I knew I must’ve been emailed. And so I was desperately searching through my email, it was my fan email, from Damon Suede by the way, who you are gonna be interviewing-

Sarah Williams:            Excellent.

Amy Andrews:              … and that’s when I found out that it wasn’t one book, it was two books.

Sarah Williams:            Wow. That’s awesome.

Amy Andrews:              ‘Cause she hadn’t said two books, I hadn’t even responded to her, I just flew straight to my email and then I found out I had two books. So it was a very exciting day. I think I cried, I don’t think I wrote for a week after that, I was too busy celebrating everywhere.

Sarah Williams:            That’s just so exciting. Are you going over to Denver to be there?

Amy Andrews:              I’m definitely going to Denver. It’s so funny, because last year I had planned on going to Denver because I’m writing some books set in Colorado. I’m writing a series for Entangled, well, Macmillan in the U.S., set in Colorado and I thought “Well, that’s good, I’ll be able to go, I’ll be able to do some research.” And then we sold our house, we moved and we … And my husband, we kind of closed up his business and I said to him “Look, I won’t go to Denver, because money’s gonna be tight. Unless I final in the RITA and then, of course, I’ll have to go.” And we both had a laugh about that [crosstalk 00:17:38]

Amy Andrews:              And so, then when I finaled I said to him “Well, I’m going to the RITA now.” [inaudible 00:17:45] get off and get on again bus. So we’re going up, [inaudible 00:17:47] my airfare, I’ve booked the hotel.

Amy Andrews:              I’m up against eight other authors in that category and I’ve read all their books and they’re all great, so whoever wins, good on them, because they’re awesome books. It’s just gonna be great to be there on the night and be a part of that whole thing. ‘Cause I’ve been to RITA ceremonies before, but I’ve never been one of the ones that’ve been up on the screen with their book, so that’ll be exciting.

Sarah Williams:            Ah, that’s fantastic. Well, all the best for that one, I can’t wait to hear [inaudible 00:18:18]. I hope they stream it or something.

Amy Andrews:              They do stream it, you can watch it online, yeah.

Sarah Williams:            Oh, fantastic. So we’ll all be-

Amy Andrews:              [crosstalk 00:18:27] Oscars, red carpets. Yeah, it’s good.

Sarah Williams:            It’s so exciting.

Sarah Williams:            Well, so what have you got that’s coming out next that we should all be keeping our eyes peeled for?

Amy Andrews:              Oh, I’ve got Rugby book number six, which is Playing Dirty, it’s coming out the second week in July. Probably should know the exact date, but I [crosstalk 00:18:49] Yeah, so that’s coming out and then I’ve got another medical coming out in October, there’s my book after that. And the seventh Rugby book should be out, I think it’s in October or November. I don’t have it ready yet, I need to do that, that’s what I’ll be working on next.

Amy Andrews:              So yeah, it should be out this year as well. So yeah.

Sarah Williams:            Yeah, that’s fantastic. So there’s always something coming out.

Amy Andrews:              Usually four or five books a year, yeah.

Sarah Williams:            Yeah, that’s absolutely fantastic.

Sarah Williams:            Oh well, again, congratulations on the RITA nomination. So where can we find you online?

Amy Andrews:              Oh, I’m all over social media, I’m on Twitter and Facebook and all those kind of things. Probably the best place to go is my website, amyandrews.com.au, and it’s got all my social media links there. People can also click to join my newsletter where they can find out about things that are coming up and all that kind of things as well.

Sarah Williams:            Yeah. That’s great. Well, thank you so much for today, Amy, I really enjoyed it.

Amy Andrews:              No worries, thank you very much.

Sarah Williams:            Thanks for joining me today, I hope you enjoyed the show. Jump onto my website, sarahwilliamsauthor.com, and join my mailing list to receive a free preview of my books and lots of other inspiration.

Sarah Williams:            If you like the show and want it to continue, you can become a sponsor for just a couple of dollars a month. Go to patreon.com/sarahwilliamsauthor and remember to follow me on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. And don’t forget to subscribe to my YouTube channel and leave a review of the Podcast.

Sarah Williams:            I’ll be back next week with another loved up episode. Bye!