AfterNoona Delight Podcast
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Meet a Host (Amy)
🕑 Added 2021-10-26 15:43:24 +0000 UTCHi everyone! I'm going to follow Lea's lead and introduce myself as well.
So...hi! I'm Amy. I hail from the northwest suburbs of Chicago, but it's probably easiest to just tell y'all I live in Chicago. But I'm actually about an hour outside the city. I have two kids who are in middle and high school and three ahole cats. I mean, I love them, but cats are aholes, right? It's all about them.
I have worked in education for a lot of years. I taught high school English for a little over a decade. I LOVED it, but the grading load was rough, especially after having kids. So once I became a mama (and writing kind of entered my life), I got my Masters in Library Science and transitioned out of the classroom and into the library at a new high school. Fast forward a few years to this lovely pandemic we're all in, and my district (which is a K-12 district) temporarily moved me to one of our elementary schools for the year, but for a long list of reasons I won't get into, I decided I liked it better at the elementary level and requested to stay. So today I am an elementary librarian teaching five one-hour classes a day, but no more grading! Have I found that work/life balance yet, though? Not entirely.
I have always, always, ALWAYS been a reader, but the writing gig came a little bit later in life for me. Every time I finished a book that made me feel ALL. THE. THINGS...I always thought to myself, "I wish I could do that." Thanks to the high school I taught at for 13 years, I was inspired by a writing program we had there to try my hand at writing my first book. I happened to have another teacher friend who was doing the same thing, and we became each other's cheerleaders and critique partners. She wrote a YA vampire novel, and I wrote a YA dystopian book, and NEITHER of us got those books published. LOL.
Then in library school I read a YA contemporary romance called ANNA AND THE FRENCH KISS by Stephanie Perkins, and everything fell into place. ROMANCE was what I wanted/needed to write. Through a blog contest, I won a chance to have an editor read my next manuscript, which was a contemporary college romance, and landed my first publishing deal with that story, which became my first book, IF ONLY. From there I got my first agent (I'm now with my second one), and 16 books later, I'm still at it, writing contemporary cowboy romance (that's a whole other story how that ended up happening) and contemporary women's fiction. I was in my 30s when this happened, folks, so no matter where you are in your writing journey (since I know some of you are), It can and will happen when it's right. I'm still working in education, parenting, and attempting to date (because divorced) so--yeah, still trying to find that work/life balance. ;)
I'm a fangirl. My kids and all share a deep love for the MCU (Marvel Cinematic Universe), so it's no surprise when about a year ago when Lea told me I HAD to watch this Kdrama called CRASH LANDING ON YOU, that my fangirl powers kicked in, and I was an official Kdrama stan for life. Kdramas are my happy place, my self care, my connection to friends I can only see via screens as well as my connection to a wonderful community that includes all of you!
Wow. That was a LOT. TLDR, I'm a mom, librarian, author, and fangirl. So happy to be here and so grateful you are too! :)
Comments
Megan Erickson
No way! NEVER too late! So excited for you, Sarah! Please keep us posted on the competition! :)
Sarah @afternoonaasks
Yay love hearing about how you came to be writers, and for those of us contemplating it (i have entered a competition with Harlequin!!) - heartening to hear it's never too late!
Megan Erickson
Thanks, Hayley! It is truly the best of both worlds for me. I'm still teaching, and my teaching revolves around books, but I don't have to fill out report cards! :)
Hayley Haun
Love it! Thanks for sharing ❤ I've always wanted to be a librarian ever since I was a kid. I think that is so cool you get to do that 😄
