Young Adult Literature author Amanda Joy recently visited the Morton East campus, where she spoke, answered questions and signed her books.

Amanda Joy is known for her incredible books. She wrote two books, A Queen of Gilded Horns and A River of Royal Blood, which gave her the boost she needed for her career. She had the chance to come to Morton East High School, where she read a little snippet of her upcoming book and shared some details about herself and her career. We followed up with some questions about her book, her challenges, and her process.

“Writer’s block is one of the most difficult things,” Amanda Joy said. “It’s something that just comes around every now and then. If you’re writing something, you’re going to experience writer’s block, and it’s hard to fix. People don’t realize that whenever you’re writing, you’re making all these choices, and making choices takes a huge drain on your brain. When you’re writing, you must think about whatever words are going to come next, and that is like a huge break for your brain. To make it fun again for me, I like to either step outside of the book or write something else more fun that will change the energy of the writing. Or I like to do projects, so I’ll create a map to go with the story, or I’ll map out my ideas for the story using lots of markers and make a poster. That usually takes me into a different zone, and I’m excited to go back to writing.”

So what does Amanda Joy want to achieve with her books?

“I want people to have fun when they read my books, but I also want them to see something in the characters that they can relate to and learn from,” Amanda Joy explained. “The main character of my first two books makes a lot of decisions without thinking ahead, and I think that’s something most people can relate to. So, I like it to be equally fun, but also have readers understand the character and who that character is, and maybe even see parts of themselves in her.”