Welcome my guest Amy Williams to the blog. We're sitting down with a beverage of your choice and chatting about real life stuff--embarrassing stories, normal days, books, and even a nickname you will not believe! So, without further ado, may I present you with Amy Williams...
...a novelist, freelance writer, founding member of Crosshair Press LLC, and professional nerd. You can find most of her work under the name A.C. Williams, but she also writes young adult fantasy (The Legend of the Lightkeepers) under the pen name Kimberly McNeil. Amy is single and lives in her family’s 100-year-old farmhouse on five acres in the middle of the Kansas prairie. She loves cats and drinks far too much coffee.
Let's Get Real
Would you rather live in a story world you’ve created for a year OR live three days in a story world someone else has created? If second option, which story world?
I would absolutely choose to live in the world I’ve built for my YA Fantasy series, The Legend of the Lightkeepers. No contest. It’s full of adventure and beauty and talking fox-people, and the local cuisine is Indian. I’d eat chicken korma with basmati rice every day and never get tired of it. And I’d learn how to fight with a laser sword too. I’d probably chop off my foot accidentally, but I’d have fun until then.
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| Amy and her cat Amelia Pond |
Oh, do I have to? The most recent embarrassing story from my everyday life happened at a conference. While I was there, I made friends with a wonderful older woman. She was just incredible, and she was also blind. Since we hit it off so well, we decided to go for ice cream after dinner. I got her down stairs, out of the hotel, up stairs, across the street, and helped her purchase the ice cream she wanted. Then, we went back to the hotel, and everything was great until we were getting out of the elevator on her floor. And, well, long story short, I kind of let her walk into a wall. I could have curled up and died right there. But fortunately she was gracious, and she still wanted to be friends!
Share about a failed meal you’ve made.
I had a bright idea to make cheese soup some time ago because someone had given us a huge bag of cubed cheese. But I’d never done it before. So I got a recipe offline and gave it a try. Yeah, the cheese didn’t melt. It cooked. And turned into rubber. So the soup was more like chewy orange plastic with salt broth. Nasty.
What’s one thing you must have/do in the morning?
Coffee. Someday I’ll be spiritual enough to say Jesus. But for now, it’s coffee. ;-)
What does a ‘normal’ day look like for you?
I’ve just recently started a new schedule, so I can answer this one pretty easily. I get up around 6:30 a.m. every weekday, and while I’m drinking my coffee I have quiet time and write in my prayer journal. Then, I walk two miles and take a shower, because I smell terrible afterward. I eat breakfast and usually get started on my work around 9:30 a.m. Then, I work for 50 minutes at a time and take a 10 minute break until lunch, which is around 1 p.m. And I start up again at 2 p.m. until 6 p.m. The only weekday that’s different is Wednesday, which is a “town day.” The city is 45 miles away, and I go in to meet with clients and drain the local coffee shop of its caffeine stores.
I try to write for 7 to 8 hours every weekday, whether it’s on a novel, an online training course script, a client copywriting project, or blog posts.
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| Crosshair Press LLC Founders Katie Phillips, Amy Williams, and Amy Davis |
- Japan. I have always loved Japanese culture, so Japan has been at the top of my bucket list since early high school.
- Alaska. I love the wild, rural areas of the world. Honestly, I’d love to drive to Alaska, up through Canada and back home again. What an amazing trip that would be!
- San Francisco. My YA Fantasy series The Legend of the Lightkeepers is partly set in San Francisco, but I’ve never been there! So Frisco is on my must-visit list for 2018.
I got my nickname, Whirlygig (or just Whirly), when I was a freshman in high school. Those summers, my brother and I would go over to my best friend’s house every Wednesday afternoon and play video games on their N64. The game we defaulted to was Goldeneye. The only character I liked to play was the Helicopter Pilot, but he needed a name. So I named him Whirlygig. My best friend at the time was also named Amy, so to avoid confusion, the nickname stuck. To this day, half the people I know still call me Whirly.
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| From @CreateExploreRead Instagram |
Jim Taylor. He’s one of the main characters in Meg Mitchell and The Secret of the Journal, and I love everything about him.
Connect with Amy:
Facebook: @AmytheStoryteller
Twitter: @AmyStoryteller
Instagram: @AmytheStoryteller
Website: www.amycwilliams.com
Kimberly McNeil (aka A.C. Williams)
Raised in an alien world by adoptive parents, Meg Mitchell fights Centaurs, trains as an Andai warrior, and chills in her favorite willow tree. But when she discovers her birth father’s journal, Meg learns that she and her brother and sister have a lost cousin. Together, the Mitchell kids leave the world they know to return to San Francisco.
When her sister is kidnapped, Meg enlists the help of teenage detective Barb Taylor and her genius little brother Jim. Following clues dropped by a mysterious benefactor, they embark on a cross-country adventure to rescue her sister and find Meg’s cousin.
Family is everything to Meg, but not all is as it seems. In her quest to reunite her family, she may lose more than she ever imagined.
Purchase: Meg Mitchell & The Secret of the Journal
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