Amanda Hocking | |
|---|---|
| Born | July 12, 1984 Austin, Minnesota, U.S. |
| Occupation | Author |
| Genre | Young adult fiction Paranormal romance |
| Notable works | Watersong series, Trylle Trilogy |
| Website | |
| hockingbooks | |
Amanda Hocking (born July 12, 1984)[1] is an American writer of paranormal romance young adult fiction.[2]
Hocking was born and raised in Austin, Minnesota. After high school, she studied human services while working in a group home for people with disabilities.
While employed as a group home worker, she wrote 17 novels in her free time.[3] Hocking left her employment as a group home worker and started self-publishing her novels as e-books in April 2010, at the age of 25.[1] By March 2011, she had sold more than a million copies of her first nine books and earned two million dollars from sales, previously unheard of for self-published authors.[4] In early 2011, Hocking averaged 9,000 book sales each day.[2] She's since published more than twenty novels, several of which have made the New York Times Best Seller list.[5]
Hocking's published work, originally self-published, consists of My Blood Approves, a vampire romance series; the Trylle Trilogy, which covers a teenage girl's journey of self-discovery[3] in an urban fantasy setting; and Hollowland, a zombie novel.[3] The New York Times characterized her novels as "part quirky girl-like-Hocking characters, part breakneck pacing, part Hollywood-style action, and part bodice-ripping romance—they are literature as candy, a mash-up of creativity and commerce."
In March 2011, Hocking signed her first conventional publishing contract for four books, for two million dollars, with St. Martin's Press, [6] for her young-adult paranormal series Watersong. Book one, Wake, was released in August 2012.[7] All three books in her previously self-published Trylle Trilogy were also sold to St. Martin's Press and were re-released from January–April 2012. In 2015, Hocking announced she had signed a new three-book deal with St. Martin's and revealed that the books would be a standalone and a duology, respectively. The standalone, called Freeks and set around a traveling circus in the 1980s, was published in January 2017,[8] while the duology to be based on valkyries of Norse mythology was set for a 2017 release.[9]
In February 2011, the Trylle Trilogy was optioned for a film, with Terri Tatchell writing the screenplay.[4] As of 2015 the rights have reverted to Hocking, with no prospects for future development.[14]
Hocking lives in Rochester, Minnesota[15] with her husband and step-son.
