Name of Author: Amber K. Bryant @amberkbryant
Title of Book: UNSEEN
Favorite Authors: Margaret Atwood, China Mieville, Marissa Meyer
Bio:
I am a librarian and speculative fiction author. Originally from Wisconsin, I now live amongst the moss and sasquatches with my husband and young son in Western Washington State. I've been writing since the summer of 2012 and joined Wattpad a little over a year ago. My fantasy novella Every Day in May won Jessica B Fry's Breathtaking competition last summer. I also won R. L. Stine's Fill in the Fear contest last October. As winner, I got to collaborate on a short story with Stine. My paranormal novelette, Unseen, won the 2014 Collector's Dream Watty Award. I'm a big fan of both reading and writing flash fiction and have several of these tiny stories published in online magazines, including Every Day Fiction, SpeckLit, and 365 Tomorrows.
UNSEEN
http://www.wattpad.com/story/14077910-unseen-watty-2014-winner
Can you explain what your book is all about?
One might assume Clara is a ghost, but that isn't the case. Clara doesn't know what she is, only that she's invisible. She can see people at the hotel where she lives, but they can't see her.
Nolan isn't invisible but wishes he was. One day while working at the hotel, he sees Clara. Clara is thrilled! Nolan? Not so much. Regardless, he finds himself drawn to her, and to the world she's trapped in. Soon he must decide if the love of one person is worth crossing into a world that may never let him back into his own.
Who is your target audience and why?
My target audience is Young Adult, but I have everyone from 13 year-olds to great grandparents reading and commenting on it. I love writing for teens, I feel very comfortable with this audience, but I'm glad a wide age-range has been enjoying the story.
What is 'paranormal' about your story?
Clara is an unknown paranormal being. She doesn't fit neatly into any category, she isn't a ghost or an angel or a vampire. But she is otherworldly—quite literally. She is living in another reality, one that in this case overlaps our own.
Does it contain other genre elements, if so which ones - and why?
Parallel worlds, or dimensions, and the ability to move between them may be considered paranormal, but this story, and particularly its sequels UNHEEDED and UNSPOKEN, contain many science fiction elements. Not only is there a multiverse, but characters are capable of traversing them and in doing so are able to manipulate both time and space. Aside from paranormal and sci-fi, there's an element of romance too!
Tell us about your writing process - how do you get from story idea to a Wattpad published story?
Usually an idea strikes me and soon after that, the first line of the story will attack my synopses and keep repeating itself until I comply with its demands that I type it out. From there, I usually write, perhaps the first third of the book, letting the characters and plot develop as I go along. Sometime between a third and half-way through, I loosely plot out the rest of the story. I'm not much of a planner, but I will write down what I want to happen for the sake of my poor memory. UNSEEN was an exception in that I didn't even plot part way in. I had an idea for the direction of the story and the rough draft was basically a free flow. Its sequels, on the other hand, and especially the third story, required a bit more of a structured approach.
I never, ever post anything on Wattpad until the entire story has been written and the chapter I'm updating has been thoroughly revised. I usually update about twice a week, so in the days leading up to it, that chapter gets read through and edited anywhere from a dozen to two dozen times. The night before I post, I do a final edit with my husband. It's amazing what a fresh pair of eyes will catch! After the final edit, I copy and paste from my Word document into Wattpad, and the next morning, I push the publish button.
Did you encounter any challenges when writing, if so - how did you overcome them?
UNSEEN wasn't a challenging story to write. At 15,000 words, it's a novelette and so was written fairly quickly. Its sequels are longer and required more research. The third book, UNSPOKEN, was without a doubt the most challenging of the three. Because readers were waiting for it and had high expectations, there was a lot of pressure to "get it right." Normally I don't have trouble starting a story — that's the easiest part for me. But in this case, the fear of failure did act as an inhibiting factor. I had to push past that, and I did so because I knew readers were counting on me. I couldn't let them down. The same pressure that inhibited me in the end also pushed me to get the story written.
You often hear that 'writing well' is the baseline for success. What does that mean for you?
The more I write, the more discerning I seem to become during the editing process. If something doesn't quite work right, it will feel off. After several revisions, it will just... click. That's how I judge "writing well" during the self-editing process. It's how I evaluate my own work and mark it as good. There's a larger matter here, though, and that's how outward perceptions play into my own self-judgement on my writing's quality. Outside validation and/or criticism may not be the ideal focus, but it is perspective-building, and that's something I think writers need.
Is my writing good if other people think it is? Well, it is to them and their opinions certainly matter to me. The parameters dictating what constitutes good writing is so subjective. We will never come to a collective agreement, but if I have readers telling me they love my story, I'm going to see the value of my work through their eyes. I recently had someone tell me she stayed home from work so she could finish the last book in my series. Others have said how much they've cried over my work, how they've lost sleep in order to read it, how they've daydreamed about the characters when they themselves were going about their daily lives, how they've lived vicariously through my characters. All of these reactions are quite unexpected. I wouldn't say they indicate I'm writing well, but if I'm writing in a way that impacts readers, I'm happy with that.
