Then her husband suggested looking at the sender’s domain.
“It checked out,” Amanda said.
She sent in a copy and on Christmas Eve morning, she woke to find her book was recommended on American television.
First came a sales spike.
Then came a newspaper feature in her native country, Finland, interest from publishers and a literary agency offering to organise an auction.
Amanda has since signed eight-book deals with Finland’s Gummerus and Britain’s Atlantic Books, alongside further international rights agreements.
She moved from Finland to New Zealand in early 2006 and later studied at South Seas Film and Television School.
After independently publishing 10 books, she recently celebrated her first launch at Rototuna Library.
But in an interview, the conversation moves easily from international publishing to the merits of a man who wears elbow patches.
Amanda’s romantic lead is a grumpy bookshop owner. She wanted someone well-read, a departure from the firefighters and action heroes who often get the girl.
Elbow patches, she said, deserve more appreciation.
The Christmas romantic comedy takes place in a fictional Maine town, with Finnish culture woven through it.
Amanda developed the setting with an author friend in Britain, then invited other writers to contribute stories.
They mapped the town before they began writing. Amanda said, closing her eyes, she could imagine the town and walking down its streets.
Then the characters moved in and made themselves comfortable.
“They’re like people you can hear talking in your head. Sometimes they don’t shut up,” Amanda said.
To her, that opportunity to step into somebody else’s life is part of writing’s appeal.
“I really enjoy living someone else’s life vicariously.”
She wrote her first book at 11 and wanted to become an author.
For a while, she added professor of literature to the ambition, thinking it sounded more substantial in her academic family.
Instead, her working life took her through graphic design, film school, acting and screenwriting.
She moved from Finland to New Zealand in early 2006 and later studied at Auckland’s South Seas Film and Television School.
Amanda fondly recalled her time at the school, including co-founder Gerben Cath and his familiar opening line “Believe you me”.
While she loved writing and directing, getting productions off the ground was difficult. Plenty of scripts went into a drawer.
In 2018, pregnant with her second child, she returned to novel-writing, treating the approaching birth as a deadline.
Then the baby arrived, the baby grew, and Amanda kept writing.
Hamilton entered the story unexpectedly.
After about a decade in Auckland, where she worked as a graphic designer, the prospect of commuting from West Auckland to the North Shore for work prompted a search for a life elsewhere.
Enni Amanda’s novel The Holiday Grump caught international attention after a recommendation on American television.
Hamilton was not initially on the list, but a job brought her here. The city gradually grew on her.
She liked the river. The lifestyle suited her. The region eventually became material for a series, Hideaway Harbor, now being prepared for release through a publisher.
International deals have brought contracts, deadlines, and decisions she no longer makes alone.
Letting go of cover design for her own books is particularly difficult, Amanda said.
But she now illustrates covers for other authors through her design business.
Looking ahead, there are more manuscripts to deliver, including a Holiday Grump sequel and a Minnesota series drawing on Finnish cultural connections.
Amanda wanted to retain a Finnish flavour while appealing to American readers.
“They [Americans] do not read anything that’s not set on US soil.”
Between commitments, she also wrote a murder-mystery romantic comedy set in the Pacific.
She thought she might publish it independently, but her agent had other ideas.
For now, Amanda is happy to return to writing after her launches.
The Auckland event was on Sunday morning, October 18, which suited her. Nobody was too tired, and the light was good.
The film-maker in her still notices.
Having a publishing representative in person mattered, too. From New Zealand, so many professional relationships exist mostly through email.
But anyone hoping she can teach others how to reproduce her breakthrough may be disappointed.
“No, I’m not gonna go online and start selling a course.”
Tom Eley is a multimedia journalist at the Waikato Herald. Before he joined the Hamilton-based team, he worked for the Weekend Sun and Sunlive. He previously worked as a journalist at Black Press Media in Canada and won a fellowship with the Vancouver Sun.