Interview with Amanda Wen

Hello, friends, it is I, Erin! Welcome to the first interview in our Authors series! Today, I have the privilege of interviewing author Amanda Wen, who is an amazing author. I read her first book, Roots of Wood and Stone, perhaps a year or more ago, and it was amazing! I bought it, and she signed it for me. Then, for my seventeenth birthday, my grandmother bought her other two books, O Little Town and The Songs that Could Have Been and had them signed for me! One day, I hope to meet her in person, as she doesn’t live far from where my family is moving to.

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Q: When did you start writing, and what inspired you to start?

A: I can’t remember what first inspired me to start writing because I’ve been writing basically since I was old enough to hold a pen! My earliest stories revolved around princesses and imaginary kingdoms, but my adult writing is definitely set in the real world.

Q: My first stories revolved around princesses and imaginary kingdoms, too! Who has encouraged you most in your writing journey?

A: I honestly could fill a book with all the people who’ve encouraged me along the way, but I definitely want to give a shout out to my editor, Janyre Tromp. Janyre and I were introduced by a mutual writing friend, and for a while I didn’t even know where she was living! She has championed my writing both in a professional capacity as an acquisitions and developmental editor for Kregel Publications and a personal one as my dear friend. We’ve even co-written a novella collection together! Janyre has gone to bat for me so many times, and it is such a blessing to know she’s got my back.

I also want to recognize my BFF, Theresa St. Romain; she and I were besties in middle school, lost touch when we went to different high schools and colleges, and then reunited fourteen years ago when I moved back to Wichita. She is a multi-published mass-market romance author (writing under a pen name), and it took me a while to get up the courage to tell her I’d been writing stories, too. However, I figured if she knew me in my brick wall bangs stage way back in the early 90s, I could trust her with my writing, and she indeed proved trustworthy! She pointed out all my newbie writer mistakes, but she did say I had promise as a storyteller and that the writing was excellent quality. She has read, and continues to read, everything I write, and her feedback and friendship are priceless.

Q: That’s a similar friendship I have with Charity! We’re currently coauthoring a Christmas novella collection together (which was, in fact, inspired by your Christmas novella collection you and Janyre coauthored). How many books did you write before seeking publication?

A: I have three full-length finished novels in the proverbial desk drawer that will never see the light of day, at least not in their current form. However, the last of those three was the one that attracted my agent’s attention and ultimately led to me signing with her, so it will always have a special place in my heart. I’ve also lifted a couple characters from unpublished novels and plan to give them life in my finished ones!

Q: That’s a brilliant idea! I may have to put my favorite characters in my books I will either self publish or traditionally publish. What inspired Roots of Woods and Stone and The Songs that Could Have Been? Where did those titles come from?

A: Both RoWaS and Songs, as I call them, were inspired by my family history. My mom is a genealogist and has learned SO many stories of our ancestors and what they went through, and those stories have always inspired me. One such story involves an immigrant from Ireland who came to the US in 1861 and eventually settled in Sedgwick County, Kansas, not far from where I grew up and only a couple miles from my current house! His house, though abandoned for over a decade, is still standing, and is the inspiration for the farmhouse that links the past and present stories in RoWaS. My contemporary hero, Garrett, needs to sell that farmhouse to help finance his grandmother’s medical care, but his perfect plan butts up against my historian heroine, Sloane, who wants to preserve the house for both its historical value and its personal significance to her. While writing RoWaS, I got to know a couple of the supporting characters pretty well, namely Garrett’s snarky sister Lauren and his sweetheart of a grandma, Rosie. I knew about halfway through the book that I wanted to explore their stories more, so that’s what I did with Songs! Rosie in particular was a very personal story for me; her section of the book uncovers an interracial romance at a time in US history when that was very taboo. My husband and I are a mixed-race couple and were blessed with love and acceptance from both sides of the family, but I knew that wasn’t always the case for couples like us! As for the titles? Those came from my publisher, and I am grateful, because they are MUCH better than the working titles I gave them. In fact, I never even gave my third book (coming February 2024 from Kregel) a title; I literally handed in a manuscript titled “Book Three.” Despite the inherent charm of that title, my publishers gave it a new name: The Rhythm of Fractured Grace.

Q: Wow! I‘m so excited! And that title is simply gorgeous; it might be my favorite yet. How did the publication process work?

A: Everyone’s got a different how-I-got-published story, and most of those are long and rambly. Mine is no exception, although I’ll try to keep it as brief as possible! After I’d worked on writing craft with my friend Theresa for a few years, she suggested I enter a writing contest. The one I chose was the First Impressions Contest through American Christian Fiction Writers, which requires the entry of the first five pages of your manuscript. Figuring that even if the judges tore my entry to shreds in their comments, it was only five pages, so I chucked it in and pretty much forgot about it. No one was more surprised than I was when I was named the winner of my category! One of the final round judges, literary agent Tamela Hancock Murray, was impressed enough to request the full manuscript, so I sent that to her, and after a few months she offered representation! Huzzah! I had an agent! Publication was just around the corner! Except. None of the publishers we submitted my story to were interested. But while I was waiting to hear back on that book, I’d started working on a new one. It was in a slightly different genre (split-time rather than contemporary romance), and one my agent was a little leery of taking on, but she told me she’d try to sell anything I wrote, so I went for it and finished it. We submitted that, and over a year later (seriously; be prepared to WAIT) my editor friend Janyre was able to tell us the good news: that manuscript was about to become my debut novel! One last tidbit about my publication story that I dearly love: when I got the call from my agent that I was going to be published, my parents were in Ireland celebrating their 50th anniversary. In fact, when I called them to share the news, they were eating lunch in a café in Aghadrumsee, northern Ireland: the hometown of the immigrant who inspired the book.

Q: Oh my goodness, that’s incredible! I am impatient, though, so waiting must be hard. If and when I traditionally publish, I don’t know how I will be able to wait! Do you have a piece of advice for young writers?

A: Again, I could fill a book, but here are the things that have been the most helpful for me to know in my writing journey. 1. Find your tribe. Writing can be a lonely endeavor, and publishing—whether independent or traditional—is not for the faint of heart. Find other writers who get what you’re going through, who will encourage you, who will uplift you when you need it most, and who will pray for you, and for whom you can do the same! A great place to get connected with other writers is through American Christian Fiction Writers; that organization has a ton of resources, writing courses, and online critique groups, as well as an annual conference each year! Almost all my writing friends are people I met through ACFW. Although the conference can be pretty pricey, membership itself is pretty reasonable; I think I pay $50 a year, and it was well worth it for me when I was first starting out! 2. Trust God’s timing. My agent submitted my first project (the one that didn’t sell) in early 2017, and I was pretty devastated when we realized nobody wanted it. However, had I gotten a contract on that first book, I’d have been committed to the contemporary romance genre. Nothing wrong with that, but it wasn’t quite where God wanted me. Split-time, however, is my absolute sweet spot; it is my genre home and it feels right for me in a way contemporary romance never did. He knew what books I’d need to write, and he knew when they’d need to come out!

Thank you so much, Ms. Wen! It relieves me to think that joining the Young Writer’s Workshop (a paid online community I am in) was a good choice because it allowed me to ‘find my tribe,’ as you put it. And God’s timing is far better than our own; imagine if we tried to rush Him! We just can’t. Thank you for your time, and have an amazing day!

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Amanda Wen is an amazing author! Her books, Roots of Wood and Stone, The Songs that Could Have Been, and O Little Town can be found anywhere, although I bought my copy of RoWaS on Amazon.

Have you read any of her books? Let us know in the comments below!