Amelia Atwater-Rhodes
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Amelia Atwater-Rhodes (April 16, 1984) is an American author of fantasy and young adult literature. She was born in Silver Spring, Maryland and lived most of her life in Concord, Massachusetts. Her debut novel, In the Forests of the Night, was published in 1999, when she was just fifteen years old. She has published a new young adult novel every subsequent year since her first and has moved from her family's Sudbury home to a nearby Massachusetts town.
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[edit] Biography
Often dubbed "the goth princess" in her early years and as the "teen successor to Anne Rice", Atwater-Rhodes wrote her first bloody novel at the age of thirteen. At the time, she said she had over a dozen stories in various stages sitting on her shelves.
In middle school, Atwater-Rhodes was being questioned by an English teacher who remembered her older sister when a girl she knew proceeded to brag that Atwater-Rhodes was trying to get a book published. As it turns out the English teacher was also a literary agent and asked to read some of her work and later to represent her.[1]
Two months later, on her fourteenth birthday, Amelia received a phone call telling her that Bantam Doubleday Dell had accepted her manuscript, White Wine, for publication. Her agent, Tom Hart, said it was "the easiest sale [he] ever had." White Wine would later be published when Amelia was fifteen as In the Forests of the Night.
Amelia graduated magna cum laude from the University of Massachusetts with a double-major in English and psychology. She has considered attending Northwestern University for her MAT. She has in the past said she wants to be a teacher.
On February 26, 2009, she announced on her blog that she is engaged to her partner of two years, Mandi.
She has been featured in Seventeen, JUMP* Magazine, Entertainment Weekly, USA Today, The New Yorker, The Rosie O'Donnell Show and CBS This Morning. Several of her novels have been ALA Quick Picks for Young Adults; Hawksong was The School Library Journal Best Book of the Year, and Voice of Youth Advocates Best Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror Selection.
[edit] Website
Amelia operates, codes, and participates actively in her own website, Nyeusigrube.com. The name translates in the language of her characters as "Den of Shadows." The site has a large collection of information on her world, characters, books, a blog she updates, and a message board with over 1100 users and 9000 articles (August 2007). Below is a brief history of the message board that has been found on Amelia's site since its launch in September 2004. The site still has several "Coming Soon" areas and has for several years.
TDoS was first inspired, much like my writing, by boredom. Several years ago, LJ and Kel, two friends of mine, decided - I believe while babysitting - to pass time by building me a web site. Through a great deal of hard work by those two and later by LJ and her friend Tyler, tDoS blossomed in a way I certainly had not imagined. At the time, I knew next to nothing about web site design, so a great deal of credit really must go to the love and labor that those aforementioned put into this realm.
When LJ and Tyler moved on from tDoS, I was at a first completely lost. The original code was their property, so I didn't have that to work with (not that I could read more than the basic parts of it, anyway). It probably would have been easier to leave The Den of Shadows as a memory, but I hated to take away the heart of the community that had grown around this site. I did a great deal of research and managed to throw together some HTML while LJ and Tyler were deliberating, so I had something to put up when they officially announced their resignation on September 2, 2004.
[edit] Common Themes, Endings, Characters, and Traits
- Amelia's books often have misunderstood, quiet, lonesome protaganists (Demon in My View, Persistence of Memory, Midnight Predator) who often have supernatural abilities along with a tough exterior and interior.
- Amelia's protaganists are usually not pristine and clean of all evil traits. They usually have had difficult or unpredictable pasts (Midnight Predator, Falcondance, Wolfcry, Demon in My View, Wyvernhail.)
- The antagonists are often extremely violent, and also posess supernatural powers. They are usually politically powerful in some way. They also think highly of themselves and have "short fuses." A prime example of this would be Jeshickah from Midnight Predator.
- Amelia often describes architecture and art in her work (Wolfcry, Persistence of Memory.)
- Characters are often nonchalant about death and usually end up in a complicated romance by the story's end (Demon in My View, Wolfcry, Falcondance, Persistence of Memory, Shattered Mirror.)
- In her vampire novels, there is almost always a strong-willed, independent human that becomes a vampire by the story's end and feel much better, as if they finally belong in the world.
[edit] Publications
[edit] Novels
- 1999 In the Forests of the Night
- 2000 Demon in My View
- 2001 Shattered Mirror
- 2002 Midnight Predator
- 2008 Persistence of Memory[2]
[edit] The Kiesha'ra Series
- 2003 Hawksong
- 2004 Snakecharm
- 2005 Falcondance
- 2006 Wolfcry
- 2007 Wyvernhail
[edit] References
- ^ http://nyeusigrube.com/pmwiki/pmwiki.php?n=Main.TheAuthor
- ^ "Persistence of Memory Book Review" Kidzworld.com. Retrieved 2009-04-01.
[edit] External links
- Author's Official Web Site
- Random House website
- All Info About Teen Reading - The Books of Amelia Atwater-Rhodes
- Amelia Atwater-Rhodes interview at Bildungsroman
- Amelia Atwater-Rhodes at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database
