Introduction
Amanda Hocking (born July 12, 1984) is an American writer of paranormal romance young adult fiction.
Career
Hocking lives in Rochester, Minnesota. Employed as a group home worker until 2010, she wrote 17 novels in her free time. In April 2010, she began self-publishing them as e-books. By March 2011, she had sold over a million copies of her nine books and earned two million dollars from sales, previously unheard of for self-published authors. In early 2011, Hocking averaged 9,000 book sales each day.
Work
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 in an urban fantasy setting; and Hollowland, a zombie novel. 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, at a price of two million dollars, with St. Martin's Press. It concerns her new young-adult paranormal series called Watersong. Book one, Wake, was released in August 2012. All three books in her previously self-published Trylle Trilogy were also sold to St. Martin's Press, and have been 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 set around a travelling circus in the 1980s was published in January 2017, while the duology to be based on Norse Mythology about Valkyries is set for a 2017 release.
- My Blood Approves series:
- My Blood Approves (March 27, 2010)
- Fate (April 15, 2010)
- Flutter (May 25, 2010)
- Wisdom (August 22, 2010)
- Letters to Elise: A Peter Townsend Novella (December 19, 2010)
- Swear (November 9, 2016)
- Trylle Trilogy
- Switched (self published 2010, with St. Martin's January 24, 2012)
- Torn (self published 2010, with St. Martin's February 28, 2012)
- Ascend (self published 2011, with St. Martin's April 24, 2012)
- The Hollows series:
- Hollowland (October 5, 2010)
- Hollowmen (November 8, 2011)
- Virtue (May 27, 2011)
- Watersong series
- Forgotten Lyrics (October 30, 2012)
- Wake (August 7. 2012)
- Lullaby (November 27, 2012)
- Tidal (June 4, 2013)
- Elegy (August 6, 2013)
- The Kanin Chronicles
- Frostfire (January 2015)
- Ice Kissed (May 2015)
- Crystal Kingdom (August 2015)
- Freeks (January 3, 2017)
Adaptations
In February 2011, the Trylle Trilogy was optioned for a film, with Terri Tatchell writing the screenplay.