Then her husband suggested looking at the sender\u2019s domain. <\/p>\n
\u201cIt checked out,\u201d Amanda said.<\/p>\n
She sent in a copy and on Christmas Eve morning, she woke to find her book was recommended on American television.<\/p>\n
First came a sales spike.<\/p>\n
Then came a newspaper feature in her native country, Finland, interest from publishers and a literary agency offering to organise an auction.<\/p>\n
Amanda has since signed eight-book deals with Finland\u2019s Gummerus and Britain\u2019s Atlantic Books, alongside further international rights agreements.<\/p>\n
She moved from Finland to New Zealand in early 2006 and later studied at South Seas Film and Television School.<\/p>\n
After independently publishing 10 books, she recently celebrated her first launch at Rototuna Library.<\/p>\n
But in an interview, the conversation moves easily from international publishing to the merits of a man who wears elbow patches.<\/p>\n
Amanda\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n
Elbow patches, she said, deserve more appreciation.<\/p>\n
The Christmas romantic comedy takes place in a fictional Maine town, with Finnish culture woven through it.<\/p>\n
Amanda developed the setting with an author friend in Britain, then invited other writers to contribute stories.<\/p>\n
They mapped the town before they began writing. Amanda said, closing her eyes, she could imagine the town and walking down its streets.<\/p>\n
Then the characters moved in and made themselves comfortable.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey\u2019re like people you can hear talking in your head. Sometimes they don\u2019t shut up,\u201d Amanda said.<\/p>\n
To her, that opportunity to step into somebody else\u2019s life is part of writing\u2019s appeal.<\/p>\n
\u201cI really enjoy living someone else\u2019s life vicariously.\u201d<\/p>\n
She wrote her first book at 11 and wanted to become an author.<\/p>\n
For a while, she added professor of literature to the ambition, thinking it sounded more substantial in her academic family.<\/p>\n
Instead, her working life took her through graphic design, film school, acting and screenwriting.<\/p>\n
She moved from Finland to New Zealand in early 2006 and later studied at Auckland\u2019s South Seas Film and Television School.<\/p>\n
Amanda fondly recalled her time at the school, including co-founder Gerben Cath and his familiar opening line \u201cBelieve you me\u201d.<\/p>\n
While she loved writing and directing, getting productions off the ground was difficult. Plenty of scripts went into a drawer.<\/p>\n
In 2018, pregnant with her second child, she returned to novel-writing, treating the approaching birth as a deadline.<\/p>\n
Then the baby arrived, the baby grew, and Amanda kept writing.<\/p>\n
Hamilton entered the story unexpectedly.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
Enni Amanda\u2019s novel The Holiday Grump caught international attention after a recommendation on American television.<\/p>\n
Hamilton was not initially on the list, but a job brought her here. The city gradually grew on her.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
International deals have brought contracts, deadlines, and decisions she no longer makes alone.<\/p>\n
Letting go of cover design for her own books is particularly difficult, Amanda said.<\/p>\n
But she now illustrates covers for other authors through her design business.<\/p>\n
Looking ahead, there are more manuscripts to deliver, including a Holiday Grump sequel and a Minnesota series drawing on Finnish cultural connections.<\/p>\n
Amanda wanted to retain a Finnish flavour while appealing to American readers.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey [Americans] do not read anything that\u2019s not set on US soil.\u201d<\/p>\n
Between commitments, she also wrote a murder-mystery romantic comedy set in the Pacific.<\/p>\n
She thought she might publish it independently, but her agent had other ideas.<\/p>\n
For now, Amanda is happy to return to writing after her launches.<\/p>\n
The Auckland event was on Sunday morning, October 18, which suited her. Nobody was too tired, and the light was good.<\/p>\n
The film-maker in her still notices.<\/p>\n
Having a publishing representative in person mattered, too. From New Zealand, so many professional relationships exist mostly through email.<\/p>\n
But anyone hoping she can teach others how to reproduce her breakthrough may be disappointed.<\/p>\n
\u201cNo, I\u2019m not gonna go online and start selling a course.\u201d<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Then her husband suggested looking at the sender\u2019s domain. \u201cIt checked out,\u201d Amanda said. She sent in a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":646252,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[1665,10804,316640,13851,2108,33737,56884,1459,84246,316639,156,316638,6288,189,37441,316641,111,139,69,90,19349,75725,10715,26660,9100,1552,223,16483,1865],"class_list":["post-646251","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-advice","tag-amanda","tag-amandas","tag-author","tag-book","tag-breakthrough","tag-contained","tag-email","tag-emails","tag-enni","tag-entertainment","tag-grump","tag-hamilton","tag-holiday","tag-ignoring","tag-nbcs","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-on","tag-publishing","tag-recommended","tag-remains","tag-sound","tag-such","tag-suspicious","tag-the","tag-though","tag-today"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/646251","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=646251"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/646251\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/646252"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=646251"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=646251"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=646251"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}