Featured Interview With Amelia Allen
Tell us a little about yourself. Where were you raised? Where do you live now?
Let’s see, I was born in Torrance, CA and moved to Fort Collins, CO about 8 years ago now. I was 15 at the time, so that’s where a lot of dreaming took place…which led to the birth of my first real novel, My Own Private Hollywood. It was around that time when I saw 17 Again in theaters and decided Zac Efron was tolerable. (High School Musical. Just, no.) And wouldn’t mind if he happened to come to the town I lived in. And meet me. And we hung out. And lived happily ever after.
But I digress.
I have one pet so far, who is more so referred to as my baby: a kitten named Celia, who, just last Saturday, turned one. She is my perfect little purr-ball and she is now a little chunk from all the Kitten Chow but she is the prettiest little thing you will ever lay eyes on.
At what age did you realize your fascination with books? When did you start writing?
At a really young age my mom would take me to the PV library every week, which I remember had super cool porcelain pumas or panthers or whatever four-legged catlike creatures, to get a ton of picture books and read them to me every night, so she taught me that I could pretend anything I wanted to when I was just a small unlearned grasshopper—which, I liked, because I was a very shy little girl who wanted to do and be anything I wanted but was too scared.
Writing, for me, started not long after that, actually, I co-wrote and illustrated small stories with a fellow classmate when I was in elementary school about a dalmatian named Dot and a calico cat named Cali.
They were just as bland as they sound.
But middle school was when it really developed into something more and I had seen the movie The Princess and the Goblin and was immediately obsessed (dat song tho) and had to write my own version because I was already a hopeless romantic and had to see more love. And that’s when I’d become a writer.
Who are your favorite authors to read? What is your favorite genre to read. Who Inspires you in your writings?
Oh that’s an easy one: Meg Cabot, Helen Fielding, Lemony Snicket, and then of course there’s Dr. Seuss, Roald Dahl, and Shel Silverstein. But that goes without saying. They are all incredible talents that have each inspired my works in one way or another.
Tell us a little about your latest book?
My Own Private Hollywood is recently published in paperback, hardcover, and eBook, is available so far on Lulu.com, and I must say is quite amazing. Like Morgan Freeman amazing.
Mm. Yes, that’s it. It’s the Morgan Freeman of books.
Like I mentioned earlier, it was a product of my 15 year old dreaming in Fort Collins and it goes a little something like this: Mona Benjamin is your average girl—until she meets the runaway celebrity heartthrob Dmitri Dante. Now she can be not-so-average, the girlfriend of the most beautiful man on earth, and live happily ever after, right? Well, there’s just one thing: She hates him. But then of course it’s a romance because the greatest thing you’ll ever learn is just to love and be loved in return (Moulin Rouge, I know, best love movie in all the land) so they fall in love and do lovely things and have a lovely time doing them.
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