About Amanda Nelson & Lisa-Marie Potter:
Amanda and Lisa-Marie are a co-writing team of best friends who share imaginary worlds, including a short story, Shivers, published in Moments Between online magazine.

Lisa Marie Potter (BIPOC): I am a mom of four who grew up in Nottingham, England, home of Robin Hood, and now I reside in Alaska with my husband and golden retriever, Samson.

Amanda Nelson: I grew up in Maryland and moved to Arizona, where I attended Arizona State University. Currently, I live in Mesa, Arizona, with my husband and four kids.

Both of us review books on our social media and love hiking in Olympic National Park, fighting over our fictional crushes, and acting out scenes from our books.

What inspires you to write?
We are pantsers, meaning we write by the seat of our pants. Usually, we start with a sliver of an idea and a character based on a shared celebrity crush. From there, we talk about who the character is to us and what he would want, what he does for a living, and what scenario would put him in a rom-com-type situation. Then we brainstorm a loose outline, but, depending on inspiration in the moment, the outline is seldom followed.

Tell us about your writing process.
Considering we live in different states with different time zones, we always have to coordinate our schedules each week to accommodate life outside of writing. But at the beginning of every work session, we spend at least an hour talking. As best friends, there's always something to say, but if we get it out early, the writing flows easier.

We also write in dual point of views, so typically one of us takes one character and the other portays the second.

How do you develop your characters?
Our male main characters are always physically based on a celebrity crush. From there, we ignore what we know about him in real life and picture him as the perfect man, envisioning how he'd act and react to certain scenarios. Luckily, we agree with almost everything about the guys; the women in our stories, though, tend to vary with generic trope responses. But none of our characters talk to us; we just know them well enough to write their personalities into our scenes.

What authors inspire you?
Stephenie Meyer has been our most influential author. The two of us bonded over the Twilight series (not the movies), and it was because of those books that we were inspired to write a story of our own.

How do you keep going in the midst of distractions?
Haha! We are constantly distracted, but usually, one of us wrangles the other in, reminding the other to focus on the task at hand. We also find that setting goals and deadlines are enough pressure to keep us on task.

What are your hobbies when you need a break from writing?
Lisa-Marie: I love archery. I have my own bow and strive to get to the range as often as possible. I also have a nephew in England who has taken up the sport, and I love to FaceTime him and compare targets.

Amanda: I love watching Bob Ross. I have taken five Bob Ross classes, including several with Lisa-Marie. I even have my own set of Bob Ross oil paints and will follow along with his videos as often as time permits.

What romance genres do you write?: sweet contemporary romance

Do you write in genres that are not romance related?
Our first completed manuscript is a YA speculative time travel novel. It has a romance subplot, but it's not the main focus. We are currently revising it into a dual point of view.

What formats are your books in?: eBook, Print

Where to find out more about the author

Website(s)
Amanda Nelson & Lisa-Marie Potter Home Page Link
Link To Amanda Nelson & Lisa-Marie Potter Page On Amazon
Link to Author Page on Bookshop

Your Social Media Links
Goodreads
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All information in this post is presented “as is” supplied by the author. We don’t edit to allow you the reader to hear the author in their own voice.