Author Amanda Taylor Wants The Rock

Here’s another set of responses to my Cool Author Questions series from Amanda Taylor, author of  Neiko’s Five Land Adventure .   Amanda is the hardest working indie-author I know.  She is always trying and experimenting with new book marketing techniques.  I’m proud of her and her accomplishments.  Any author who wants to learn what marketing an indie book is really like needs to contact her.  Her website is BackwoodsAuthor.com

1. If you could have any famous person post an Amazon review for your book, who would it be and why? Does it have to be just one? It’s a tie between Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson and Vin Diesel because they are my favorite “bad boy” action actors with attitude. Just for fun, I have visualized them as characters in Neiko’s Five Land Adventure its accompanying books that aren’t out yet.
2. If you could have lunch with any character in your book, who would it be and why? I guess I would pick Quickstrike, one of the main characters. He’s easy-going and funny, but he’s not human. He’s part scorpion and part cobra; he looks like a scorpion with a cobra for a tail. He’s not little, and he talks. Lunch would be interesting, indeed. He does eat human food, but he also likes eating bugs and grubs (I’ll pass). It would just be fun to watch people freak out. I like animals that most people don’t like; snakes and scorpions are at the top of the list. I guess if we went to a restaurant we would have to get it to go since they may say “no pets” even though he isn’t my pet.
3. Do you recall the moment that the idea for your book, first popped into your head?  If so, tell me about it. There are several ideas that lead to the creation of Neiko’s Five Land Adventure and the saga it started. When I was a kid, I always wondered if I found out my imaginary worlds were real what would I do. When I was 15 years old, I was a skating ring and skating by myself on my roller blades and thought, “What would happen if some of the bad guys from the Five Lands came into this place with an explosive entrance?” I also imagined the panic and chaos, and I would freak out, too. This idea is a scene in the book toward the end. I always dreamed of secret societies hidden in plain sight. Instead of cults, assassin groups, and the like, how about a whole Native American civilization hidden in plain sight that spans three countries (US, Canada, and Mexico) called ‘Hawote’? When I turned 16,  I decided to dump all these ideas into my parents’ old computer and write about my worlds and the imaginary adventures I had embarked on since I was 4 years old.
4. What was the most enjoyable part of writing your book? What was the most challenging? The most enjoyable part of writing the book was being able to use my imagination in a new way. I didn’t have to pack it all into one book, and it was impossible anyway. After writing Neiko’s Five Land Adventure, other books were born and waiting to be published and more need to be written. At the time of this writing, I have 15 awaiting edits and rewrites and will be starting another one soon. I also have drawn maps, characters, and made sketches of talismans, clothes, and other things that will go into covers and illustrations. I also put in many parts of myself and my many interests. The most challenging part of writing Neiko’s
   Five Land Adventure was putting all of this stuff into writing. I was only teenager, and I didn’t have access to writer workshops and such since I lived in the middle of nowhere in Georgia.
   I had to teach myself how to do it by studying ahead in language arts books and looking at how other books did it. After I got the basics down, I went to town and have been writing ever since.
5. There are thousands of novels out there.  Why should a reader choose your book? Neiko’sFive Land Adventure one of the few of a lot of things. It is one of the few books written by a teenager that makes it to the market and that wasn’t entombed by the author (for whatever reason) where it won’t see the light of day. That is not to say I didn’t make improvements over the years and during editing. It is one of the few truly unique and original books that don’t follow what’s in style at the time. I focus on imagination rather than literary perfection, but I do make sure the story makes sense and has a direction. This book is also one of the few full-length novels with illustrations in them where readers can see the characters and places. Readers love seeing the characters with the descriptions and the maps. These make it more real. Also the illustrations and cover were designed by me and put together by an illustrator. Readers and reviewers wonder how everything is dead on. Readers and reviewers mentioned the depth and quality of imagination and that it takes them back to their own childhood adventures. If a reader has created their own worlds and gone on adventures in these worlds and ever dreamed of them becoming real, this is thebook for them. However this is just the beginning of many adventures to come…