We recently had the chance to connect with Amber Royer and have shared our conversation below.
Hi Amber, thank you so much for taking time out of your busy day to share your story, experiences and insights with our readers. Let’s jump right in with an interesting one: What are you being called to do now, that you may have been afraid of before?
I don’t know if afraid is the right word, but I am about to start a radio podcast, which has felt a bit intimidating before, because I don’t know a great deal about editing audio. But my brother in law is starting a community radio station in Temple, Texas, and his wife came to one of my recent classes. She is encouraging me to just record the podcast, and she will help me learn the editing. Which is such an amazing feeling, to have someone supporting me and helping me move forward. I’ve been a bit trepidatious about audio after I tried recording an audiobook version of one of my novels only to have the microphone disconnect during recording, and wind up recording the half the book using the microphone inside my laptop, which led to hours of wasted work and unusable files. But who knows? Attempting the podcast may give me enough confidence to try recording the audiobooks again.
I don’t know what format we will eventually post the podcast on, but I’ll make sure it gets posted somewhere so y’all can listen to it outside the Bell County area. The working title is Story Like a Journalist Radio, and it will be tied to my writer’s workbook/textbook of the same name. The textbook concept involves using lessons from the journalism classroom to write powerful fiction, particularly through using the 5-Ws and H to create a story bible. I’m planning a video class to support writers using the book, and the podcast will be a looser format, with me sharing stories and little writing lessons, but also interviewing other creative folks. For updates, check out my website at amberroyer.com
Can you briefly introduce yourself and share what makes you or your brand unique?
I’m an author and author coach. I have been teaching creative writing since 2008. You can check out my classes through UT Arlington Continuing Education. I also lead FREE discussion sessions on the third Saturday of each month through my Saturday Night Write writing craft discussion group. We have a Facebook Group where I post the information for our Zoom meeting, and members can discuss writing woes and successes.
My book series include the Bean to Bar Mysteries and the Chocoverse space opera trilogy. I also write nonfiction, and I have a cookbook, a creative journal series, and a writer’s textbook/workbook.
I am in the middle of drafting the 9th book in my Bean to Bar Mysteries, My character is a craft chocolate maker who becomes an amateur sleuth. I chose this character after meeting so many amazing real-world chocolate makers while researching and publicizing the Chocoverse books. Felicity is a mix of a number of them, with her love of travel, desire to reinvent herself and her life, care for the environment, and pull to use her small business as a hub for her growing community of friends and family. I’ve been able to do some fun things with these books, including letting her participate in a chocolate festival in Tokyo (Japan is one of my favorite places to visit) learn about endangered sea turtles (I got to interview turtle experts) and teach on board a mystery-themed cruise (yes, I’ve lectured on cruise ships). And now, in Death by Bloomed Chocolate, Felicity is finally getting married — if she can just figure out what happened to her florist!
I try to use each book in the series to highlight something different about chocolate production and running a small business, and Felicity gets to spend time with a different animal companion. I also bring a classic, rare, or first edition book into her life — and it’s gotten to the point where she freaks out when old books show up unexpectedly. I’ve had reviewers mention that one of the most fun things things is all the different ways she’s come across the books. This makes it a challenge, because I have to keep thinking of unique setups that don’t feel forced.
On the nonfiction side, you can look forward to the Thoughtful Creativity Journal, which will be the third book in the series. In the meantime, check out the Thoughtful Travel Journal and the Thoughtful Chocolate Tasting Journal.
Great, so let’s dive into your journey a bit more. What’s a moment that really shaped how you see the world?
I was one of those kids who was always wrapped up in books. I always felt a bit out of place, and like asking for things was making myself a bother, so I loved reading and looking at the world through the eyes of folks who loved adventure, or embraced their awkwardness and did audacious things anyway. (Yeah — I really connected with Romana, the little sister from Beverly Cleary’s series.) In the fourth grade, I had a teacher tell me she thought I had talent as a writer, and point out that somebody has to write all those books I loved to read so much.
From that point on, I thought of myself as a writer. A writer is an observer. A writer is a thinker. A writer exercises empathy on all fronts, and allows painful experiences tp be transformative into powerful scenes. This gives you both purpose and permission in many avenues of life. For instance, travel. If you’re a writer, you’re not just a tourist. You are researching a possible book or article — or even a personal essay — you might write. Which gives you a reason to ask people about the history of an area, to learn about the chef who is preparing your food, to pay attention to the way people talk and ask them for personal stories. This works even in your own neighborhood, where you uncover facts and people you night otherwise have walked right past. I’m planning a fictional wedding in my new novel, For research purposes, my husband and I have been visiting event venue open houses, and talking to wedding professionals. One of my favorite questions to ask these people who have worked on so many weddings is, “What is the most outrageous thing have you ever seen happen at a wedding.” Not all of their stories can make it into the book, but these interactions have certainly sparked some of the storylines.
Was there ever a time you almost gave up?
Absolutely. I’ve been writing for most of my life, but, after a few early successes with short stories in my early 20’s, I could not manage to find a publisher for my longer work. After years of trying to crack the writing market, and 14 — count ’em 14 — trunk novels, I decided to stop writing. My husband and I were pretty broke, and I simply couldn’t justify the amount of time it was taking up, without bringing money in.
Or so I thought. What I didn’t realize is that, published or not, I had been using my writing to process my thoughts and emotions through the veil of fiction. And that by quitting writing because I wasn’t achieving external success took away my emotional support system right at the time when I was the most stressed. This led to the most emotionally depressed period in my life.
I came back to writing years later because I needed something that would bring me joy. And by coming back after giving up (almost like the dark moment in a novel), I gained some perspective. I had been writing by instinct, expecting to get by on voice and imagination alone. But I don’t have an instinctive mind for plotting, so my work turned out loose and rambling. It wasn’t until I started studying literary structure that I started creating work that was publishable.
–Shout out to Larry Brook’s Story Engineering, which blew my mind and changed the way I thought about the purpose of structural elements in writing, and Robert McKee’s Story which laid the groundwork for my current understanding of scene and sequel.
Sure, so let’s go deeper into your values and how you think. Is the public version of you the real you?
Pretty much. I mean, we all have a curated version of our lives that shows up on social media, because most of our days are too messy to make good Instagram pics, or not interesting enough to pull out a camera and make a YouTube video. Nobody wants to see me making up alternate song lyrics to sing to my cat about how fluffy her tail is while I fold laundry. Nobody wants me to pan the camera across from my lovely food pics so you can see the pile of dishes that has spent three hectic days in the sink.
People sometimes think I am obsessed with coffee, because I regularly post pics of fancy coffee drinks in Instagrammable cafes or road-side food trucks. And they assume I’m buying these kind of drinks every day and just posting the highlights. What they don’t realize is that I research coffee places I plan to try, and they’re seeing the three or four times a month I’m having a fancy coffee drink out. I’m not posting when I make a K-cup at home, or the days when I’m not feeling the need for coffee at all.
I would rather stay positive in my public life, so generally I follow the rule of if you don’t have something nice to say, don’t say anything at all, so I’m probably not going to negatively review anything or get into intentionally argumentative territory. So yes, I do have thoughts and opinions that aren’t necessarily going to make it into a post, or even a novel.
But in the parts where it matters, the public me is me. If I meet you at a conference and you have a writing question, if my schedule allows, I’m going to take the time to answer it. You really are seeing my cats, and I occasionally post their beauty shots paired with the chaos of getting that shot. I am pretty straightforward, but also a casual talker who sometimes makes up words. Overall, I am a positive person. (In fact, I once had a conference organizer say that if we were all dog breeds, I would be a golden retriever, because I’m all about pitching in where needed and up for pretty much anything. Fair, conference organizer. Fair.)
Before we go, we’d love to hear your thoughts on some longer-run, legacy type questions. If you retired tomorrow, what would your customers miss most?
Honestly, I think it might be the coffee pics. (Which don’t make me money in any way.) But I had so many people during the pandemic tell me they missed going on vicarious little adventures to coffee shops, cafes and chocolate stores with me. Some of them worried if I was okay. I finally started buying coffee mugs off Amazon and posting them with bags of beans from some of my favorite coffee roasters.
I already had a huge collection of mugs and coffee/tea accessories from places I’ve traveled. It’s kind of out of hand at this point.
From my work, though, I think my readers would miss my characters. I’ve had people tell me the mom from my Chocoverse books reminds them of their abuela. Or that the adopted character in my Bean to Bar Books finding about his past and coming to terms with it echoed their own feelings. Or that Felicity helped them find words for the feeling of moving on from grief. I haven’t had a huge audience of my work, but I do have people who connected deeply with it.
And I always have a few folks e-mailing me to make sure I’m working on the next book.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://amberroyer.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/amberroyerauthor/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Amber.Royer.Author/
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/c/AmberRoyer
- Other: Amazon Author Page: https://www.amazon.com/Amber-Royer/e/B00PFV4CGM
Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/8144619.Amber_Royer
Image Credits
Either me or my husband took all of these photos.
