Amelia Atwater-Rhodes
When I was thirteen years old, I really liked to write. My friend, Gretchen, and I had been writing half-finished books for two years about whatever we were interested in whether it was witches, vampires, teens with super-powers, fairies... If it came into our sphere of interest, we were writing about it and researching it. I even wrote outlines for a couple of Dungeons & Dragons-based stories independent of Gretchen.
My big dream was to be a published author with people my age reading the books and loving them. For the young teenage me, that was the best thing ever. I wasn't popular or known to other people. I could't sing. I couldn't act. I had barely any talent at drawing or any art like that. However, I could write and so could my friend, Gretchen, and someday we were going to be famous authors.
This was before J.K. Rowling and the Harry Potter series really mattered to me. As far as I was concerned, it was just a stupid fad like Pokemon and it'd blow over eventually. This was when I still loved vampires.
And then, one day, I was in the library, looking at the bookshelves, running my fingers along the spines hoping to find a title that interested me, when my fingers touched In the Forests of the Night by Amelia Atwater-Rhodes. I'd like to say that I picked it up and I read it right away, but I didn't. I read the jacket cover description of the book and then put it down, instead probably selecting a book by Christopher Pike, L.J. Smith, or Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants. However, I saw it the next time I went to the library. And the next time. And eventually, I couldn't help myself any longer and I borrowed the book.
I read the book in a day and a half. I loved it.
Reading it these days, I know the book has it's flaws. I understand it intellectually that the book isn't that good and there's a lot of hopelessness and pointlessness in it, but the part of me that's still young doesn't give a shit. The books captured my imagination. Here was a girl who was THIRTEEN years old with a book published and that book spoke to me. I was... in heaven. All I could think of was the very idea that if I dedicated myself to writing one story and finished it, I could be like her. I wanted to be her so bad.
Then I read Demon in My View and... it happened again. I was in vampire heaven. True, the vampires were the same as most books, but the way they thought and did things was sufficiently alien that I didn't mind. After the first two books, I was an official Amelia Atwater-Rhodes fangirl. I still own all her books even thought I haven't read Token of Darkness and I'm pretty sure I don't intend to.
Why not?
Well, it's like this, as a teenager, I really needed Amelia Atwater-Rhodes' books. They got me through life. They gave me lessons on hate and the fact that sometimes the world doesn't turn out the way you think it should. I mean, in the Kiesha'ra series, you learn that the people who started a war didn't just have a good reason for doing something that killed thousands of people, but, even though they were terrible beings, they actually had the right idea. That was a pretty tough concept for me to swallow when I was younger, that the people who make decisions and do horrible things might be doing the wrong thing for the right reasons.
However, once I understood it, I looked at the world in a new way and all the unfair expectations my mom seemed to have for me in respect to the lack of expectations my friends didn't have to deal with suddenly made sense. My mom wasn't doing things that felt to me like she was destroying my dreams because she was stupid and didn't understand me at all, and all the other bullshit things you come up with when your thirteen and think you know more than you do. Instead she was doing those things because she really, genuinely cared for me and wanted me to succeed in life. That's a pretty profound realization for a teenager. I'm twenty-three and I still occasionally struggle with it.
...And it all comes back to Amelia Atwater-Rhodes and her novels about vampires, were-creatures, and the supernatural. I'm not saying everyone should pick up her books and read them this very second. Hell, I can't even read her second-to-last book, Token of Darkness for some weird reason. What I am saying is that, for someone published so young, her books do have an appeal and, despite their flaws, they can reach people. Even if they're weird people like me. What I am saying is that, at least Kiesha'ra, is surprisingly deep and people should pick up Hawksong if they have the time.
Sweet Dreams
My big dream was to be a published author with people my age reading the books and loving them. For the young teenage me, that was the best thing ever. I wasn't popular or known to other people. I could't sing. I couldn't act. I had barely any talent at drawing or any art like that. However, I could write and so could my friend, Gretchen, and someday we were going to be famous authors.
This was before J.K. Rowling and the Harry Potter series really mattered to me. As far as I was concerned, it was just a stupid fad like Pokemon and it'd blow over eventually. This was when I still loved vampires.
And then, one day, I was in the library, looking at the bookshelves, running my fingers along the spines hoping to find a title that interested me, when my fingers touched In the Forests of the Night by Amelia Atwater-Rhodes. I'd like to say that I picked it up and I read it right away, but I didn't. I read the jacket cover description of the book and then put it down, instead probably selecting a book by Christopher Pike, L.J. Smith, or Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants. However, I saw it the next time I went to the library. And the next time. And eventually, I couldn't help myself any longer and I borrowed the book.
I read the book in a day and a half. I loved it.
Reading it these days, I know the book has it's flaws. I understand it intellectually that the book isn't that good and there's a lot of hopelessness and pointlessness in it, but the part of me that's still young doesn't give a shit. The books captured my imagination. Here was a girl who was THIRTEEN years old with a book published and that book spoke to me. I was... in heaven. All I could think of was the very idea that if I dedicated myself to writing one story and finished it, I could be like her. I wanted to be her so bad.
Then I read Demon in My View and... it happened again. I was in vampire heaven. True, the vampires were the same as most books, but the way they thought and did things was sufficiently alien that I didn't mind. After the first two books, I was an official Amelia Atwater-Rhodes fangirl. I still own all her books even thought I haven't read Token of Darkness and I'm pretty sure I don't intend to.
Why not?
Well, it's like this, as a teenager, I really needed Amelia Atwater-Rhodes' books. They got me through life. They gave me lessons on hate and the fact that sometimes the world doesn't turn out the way you think it should. I mean, in the Kiesha'ra series, you learn that the people who started a war didn't just have a good reason for doing something that killed thousands of people, but, even though they were terrible beings, they actually had the right idea. That was a pretty tough concept for me to swallow when I was younger, that the people who make decisions and do horrible things might be doing the wrong thing for the right reasons.
However, once I understood it, I looked at the world in a new way and all the unfair expectations my mom seemed to have for me in respect to the lack of expectations my friends didn't have to deal with suddenly made sense. My mom wasn't doing things that felt to me like she was destroying my dreams because she was stupid and didn't understand me at all, and all the other bullshit things you come up with when your thirteen and think you know more than you do. Instead she was doing those things because she really, genuinely cared for me and wanted me to succeed in life. That's a pretty profound realization for a teenager. I'm twenty-three and I still occasionally struggle with it.
...And it all comes back to Amelia Atwater-Rhodes and her novels about vampires, were-creatures, and the supernatural. I'm not saying everyone should pick up her books and read them this very second. Hell, I can't even read her second-to-last book, Token of Darkness for some weird reason. What I am saying is that, for someone published so young, her books do have an appeal and, despite their flaws, they can reach people. Even if they're weird people like me. What I am saying is that, at least Kiesha'ra, is surprisingly deep and people should pick up Hawksong if they have the time.
Sweet Dreams
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