About the Author

Amanda the Writer

One of my earliest memories is making a booklet out of construction paper stapled together and writing a story. It was called The Fat Green Cat, about (you guessed it) a fat green cat living in a barn with his large farm cat family. Although I don’t illustrate my stories in crayon anymore, I have been writing stories ever since.

After years of filling notebooks and, later, word documents with first chapters and story ideas, at 11 years old, I finally finished my first novel: Dragon’s Heart, a tribute to all the books that formed me as a writer and a young girl. A stubborn princess befriending dragons and undoing enchantments to find where she truly belongs. I published it in 2011.

From there I decided to try something new: writing short stories.

I wrote my first short story, Blood Mage, at the very end of 2021. The next one, The Red Hand, placed “Finalist” in Quarter 2 of the 2022 Writers of the Future Short Story Contest. Both Rain Flight and The Mortal Archive placed “Honorable Mention” in Q3 and Q4. Together these four formed my first collection of short stories: Red Leaf Falling.

In exile from New England, I currently abide in St. Louis with my husband and two children, as well as a pet pig and too many ducks.