Amanda Hocking

People often ask me for writing advice, and I’ve said a number of things in the past (mostly about how you should read more than you write and you should ask better writers than me for advice).

But here’s actually the best piece of advice I have for aspiring novelists: Just get to the end. Keep putting words in front of each other, hammering out sentences the best you can, until you reach the end. There’s no real way to tell if it’s any good as you’re writing, particularly since every one of my books has been vastly improved and are sometimes dramatically different after the editing phase. (more…)

Gene Wilder is dead, but I am not.

I think about death on a daily basis, but not in a suicidal, macabre sort of way. I’ve just always been acutely aware of it’s existence, of this inevitable thing that will never stop coming for me, no matter what I do, and I have no idea what will happen when I die. I can’t fathom what it feels like to not exist inside this body, and so I can’t imagine what death will be like. (more…)

One year ago today, I adopted my dog Sawyer, so I thought I would tell the story of his first year as a part of our family.

Before we adopted Sawyer, we already had one dog – my then-two-year-old Golden Retriever Isley – and three cats. I knew that I wanted another dog, because I feel like most dogs are happier living in pairs with other dogs to go on adventures with. My husband and I had discussed getting another dog, and he was on board with it, but we didn’t have immediate plans to get a dog.

So one day, my aunt was going to the Mower County Humane Society to look at a dog she wanted for herself, and I tagged along. I was going through the dogs, and there I saw Sawyer. My mom said it was love at first sight, and really, it kinda was.

This is the first time I saw Sawyer. All the other dogs were jumping and barking, and Sawyer was just sitting there with his tongue hanging out, wagging his tail.

When I met him, Sawyer had just been surrendered by his owner. The humane society didn’t know a lot about his previous home, except that Sawyer was his real name, and he’d most likely been an outside dog. They hadn’t had a chance to properly groom him – because he had just been surrendered – and he was covered in ticks. They eventually took over thirty ticks off of him. But fortunately, the vet check showed he didn’t have any lime disease or actually anything wrong with him. Based on what little vet records his previous owners had, we estimated him to be roughly three and a half years old at the time.

Sawyer with my mom at the humane society.

After I’d fallen in love with Sawyer, I filled out an adoption form and arranged a time for both my husband and our dog Isley to meet him. That meeting went great – with Isley and Sawyer most indifferent to each other and more excited about the humans around them – and it was official. We were bringing Sawyer home.

The first few days with Sawyer weren’t bad, but they did have some hurdles. There were a lot of things we took for granted by having a properly socialized indoor dog like Isley. At first, Sawyer was confused about couches and didn’t know how to get on them. The TV was incredibly fascinating to him, and he kept looking around for the sounds. He’s gotten used to it now, but he still enjoys watching TV from time to time. He also had no idea how to play to with toys. That was the strangest thing. You just expect a dog to understand what toys were, but he seemed genuinely perplexed by them. Now he loves to play tug of war and occasionally plays fetch, though his favorite game is still stealing toys from Isley.

Sawyer meeting my cat, Sophie.

Sawyer did have a few accidents at first, but honestly, he only peed in the house three or four times in the entire time we’ve had him, so he learned quickly. He also had a couple instances of destructive chewing, but once his anxiety went down and he got used to living with us, that went away.

The biggest issue we had with him at first was actually just how attention starved he was. He would climb up on my lap, and it would be a tremendous fight to get him off. He just wanted to get as much attention as he could for as long as he could. It took a few weeks, but eventually he learned the word “off” and as soon as we said it, he would get off and give us some pace. He still loves to cuddle and he can be a needy baby sometimes, but he’s definitely figured out that we aren’t going anywhere, so he’s not so demanding for attention, anyway.

Sawyer sitting with me on the deck a couple months after we adopted him.

Sawyer also had a great deal of crate anxiety and storm anxiety initially. I work from home, so I was able to be with the dogs most of the time, but whenever I left the house, I would crate both dogs because I didn’t know how Sawyer would do unsupervised. At first, before he’d go in the kennel, he would run and hide – sometimes behind the couch, a couple times in the shower. Then when I did get him in the crate, he would shake and tremble and just look utterly miserable. I would give both him and Isley treats when I put them in their respective crates, but Sawyer always refused to take his. He just cowered.

After a few weeks of this, he seemed to realize that we weren’t leaving him in the crate forever, and he stopped hiding and shaking, and he’d take the treat from me. It wasn’t a big deal for him anymore. Now when I leave, I don’t crate either dog at all, because I know I can trust them to not do anything naughty. (I suspect that they actually both just wait by the front door for my return).

The storm anxiety also lessened dramatically over time. It’s only when it thunders really loud does he get up and come over to sit by me, but he doesn’t shake or look terrified like did before. Although he still absolutely hates the rain. Sawyer actually doesn’t like being outside at all. He’ll go out to go to the bathroom, but he’s always excited to go back into the house. I try playing games with him and Isley outside, and Sawyer plays for a minute, then goes to sit by the door until I let them back in. I think being an outside dog for his whole life before living with us, he’s gotten more than enough time out there. He wants to enjoy the time in the house.

I was afraid how Sawyer would do around cats, but as it turns out, Sawyer – the big 70+ pound dog – is afraid of cats. My cats love dogs, and whenever one tries to cuddle with him, he gets up and walks away. He even lets them steal his food, and I had to watch at first a lot to keep Sophie out of his food dish at meal times. Sawyer defers to the cats and Isley all the time, letting them boss him around. Although he is not above stealing toys and cuddles from Isley whenever he wants them.

Sawyer at Christmas, sporting the winter hat I got him.

We did a DNA test on Sawyer, and determined that he was half Labrador/half border collie. I’d suspected maybe husky or German shepherd, so I was quite surprised. The interesting thing about Sawyer is how dramatically his coat changed from living inside and getting proper grooming and pets. He looks almost like an entirely different dog now.

His border collie genetics came into play when in June, Sawyer had a seizure. He’d never had one since we had him, so I was completely terrified something was wrong. After taking him to the vet, they ran tests and concluded that he epilepsy, a disorder known to commonly effect border collies. But otherwise, he’s happy and healthy, and he should still have a long happy life.

In the past year, Sawyer has really settled into life at our house. He’s the best cuddler ever, hands down. He and Isley get along great, and they love to play together, and I think he’s been a really good influence on Isley, who is a big spoiled baby. Sawyer seems so much more grateful things. He’s mature and mellow, and he listens very well. He’s a wonderful dog.

Sawyer doing what he does best – cuddling.

Sawyer is also wonderful with my eight-year-old stepson. Isley really clings to me most of the time, but Sawyer will cuddle with Gavin on the couch, or go upstairs and play with him. He doesn’t bite or nip, and he’s unbelievably patient.

Since I work from home, the dogs are with me. And when I say “with me,” I mean that the dogs are hardly ever more than four feet away from me at any given time. When one of them is gone (like at the vet or the groomer), I feel like an arm is missing. Both Sawyer and Isley are beside me, letting me bounce book ides off them, or calming me down when I’m freaking out about something, or cheering me up when I’m sad. At this point, I honestly can’t imagine my life without either of them.

Isley and Sawyer.

I will never know the owners who surrendered Sawyer, but I want to thank them for doing it. I don’t know the circumstances of their life or Sawyer’s life with them, but I appreciate the fact that they realized that Sawyer could have a better life somewhere else. I know that Sawyer is very happy with us, and I also know that my family – including my husband, stepson, and Isley – is beyond happy to have him.

This is a picture I took of Sawyer while I was writing this post.

I share my home with five pets: two dogs, and three cats. They are all adorable, and they can all be monsters at times. Working from home with pets – while having plenty of advantages – has had a few disadvantages as well.

The dogs – Isley and Sawyer – adapted well to working in my office. They have three different beds that they rotate between, and I give them chews and/or treats whenever we start work for the day, so they’re usually asking me to go into the office. Then they mostly relax all day, but occasionally ask for attention or to play, which I usually need just as much as they do.

Two of my three cats have no interest in going into the office with me. They have their own plans for the day that involves doing whatever they want whenever they want.

But my third cat, Squeak, is a needy baby. She’ll be six-years-old this month, and while she’s always been clingy, she used to be able to handle me going to work without her. Now, for some reason, she can’t stand it, and she howls at the door until I let her in. Which wouldn’t be so bad, except that when she gets in here, she just demands my attention and meows at me.

This is me working, typing one handed, because it was the only way I could get her to be quiet so I could work.

And this is her from earlier this week, when I was at my wits end. She would howl if I left her out (and she has THE loudest, most obnoxious meow I’ve ever heard from a cat), and she would meow and demand attention if I let her in. After six months or so of dealing with this, I didn’t know what to do, and I couldn’t take it anymore. I loved Squeak to death, but I was losing my mind.

Then I remembered something on the internet that claimed if your cat is bothering you all the time at your desk, put a box on your desk. Could it really be that simple?

The answer is yes, yes, it can really be that simple. We’ve been doing this for a few days now, and it has been AMAZING! She comes in with me at the beginning of the day, and I pet her for a couple minutes, then I put her in the box where she lays down and sleeps contentedly the rest of the time I work without meowing or demanding attention or anything. The box I put her in has some random junk in it with a neck pillow on top, so I think it’s actually like a cat bed within a box, and she’s able to sit up a bit higher so she can look around, which she loves.

But it has been a real life saver. I think both Squeak and I were pretty unhappy with the situation. So if you, like me, are you going crazy trying to work with cats, give a box on the desk a try.

I have a new cover to share with you, and all kinds of info about it, and I’m so excited, so let’s just get to it:

Here’s the official description:

Welcome to Gideon Davorin’s Traveling Sideshow, where necromancy, magical visions, and pyrokinesis are more than just part of the act…

Mara has always longed for a normal life in a normal town where no one has the ability to levitate or predict the future. Instead, she roams from place to place, cleaning the tiger cage while her friends perform supernatural feats every night.

When the struggling sideshow is miraculously offered the money they need if they set up camp in Caudry, Louisiana, Mara meets local-boy Gabe…and a normal life has never been more appealing.

But before long, performers begin disappearing and bodes are found mauled by an invisible beast. Mara realizes that there’s a sinister presence lurking in the town with its sights set on getting rid of the sideshow freeks. In order to unravel the truth before the attacker kills everyone Mara holds dear, she has seven days to take control of a power she didn’t know she was capable of―one that could change her future forever.

Preorder Freeks from Amazon
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Bullet points:
–Freeks is a stand-alone novel, meaning it starts and finishes in a single book with no sequels or prequels or anything.
–Freeks will be out January 3, 2017 in hardcover and ebook.
–It’s young adult paranormal romance set in the 1980s
–I pitched it as Pretty in Pink meets The Lost Boys but with absolutely no vampires
–The soundtrack for Freeks (which is the playlist I created to listen to while writing the book) is my absolute favorite of all time. I’ll post another blog about it in the future going more in depth, but for now, you can check it out: here. The idea for the book was actually solidified while listening to “Hush” by the Limousines.
–The hit Netflix series Stranger Things is definitely inspired by many, many of the same things that inspired me to write Freeks (although the two stories are vastly different). So if you like Stranger Things, you may enjoy Freeks

For those of you who want  more background on Freeks, it is totally my baby. I started writing it several years ago, actually, before I wrote the Kanin Chronicles. It was after the Watersong series had started coming out, and that series didn’t do as well as I’d hoped, and I’d been obsessing over the whole publishing industry and so focused on the business side of writing I’d really lost sight of actually enjoying the process.

So I sat back and I said to myself, “What do you want to write about? Who cares if people read it or it’s good or anything? What interests you?” So that’s how Freeks started, with me writing a book just for myself filled with things I love, which is how the book ended up set in 1987. The number one inspiration for the book (aside from Pretty in Pink and The Lost Boys) were old pulpy horror novels I used to get at rummage sales when I was a kid, along with V. C. Andrews and Stephen King (to name a few).

I ended up stepping back from Freeks for awhile to work on the Kanin Chronicles, but when I went back to it, I loved it just as much as I had before. To this date, it’s my favorite thing I’ve ever ever written (and I think it will be for a long time to come). It was a whole lot of fun, and I really found writing a stand alone to be very freeing – I didn’t have to worry about holding back or what to put in or save for the next book. It’s all there.

The title for Freeks is deliberately misspelled. In the book, an act of vandalism against Mara and her family comes in the form of the word of “freeks” being spray painted on their home, and that’s where the title came from. (It’s also a subtle nod to Pet Semetary.)

So, anyway, I couldn’t be more excited for Freeks to spring forth into the world. I genuinely really and truly love this book, and I think many of you will, too.