Slow-Burn Holiday Romance with Amanda Elliott

Now I would like to welcome author Amanda Elliott to the show. How are you, Amanda? I'm great. Thank you so much for having me. Thank you so much for taking the time to come on. And so before we kind of take a look at a couple of your books, especially as we're getting into the holiday season, tell everybody a little bit about who you are and what really sparked your interest into becoming an author. So I've been telling stories basically for as long as I can remember, probably before I can remember. I'm the oldest of five kids. And so I spent most of my childhood, like telling my siblings stories, like usually trying to scare them because, you know, I was the big sister, and that was what we did. Sometimes trying to make them laugh. And then at some point, it occurred to me that I could write it all down. And so I still have, you know, picture books that I wrote and colored myself when I was, you know, five or six. And I was definitely not meant to be a picture book illustrator. My talents do not lie in the art world. But I just kept writing things down since then. And as I got older, I really hoped to obviously to get to do it professionally one day as a career. But I knew, you know, it's a very competitive world. It's hard to do it. So I entered the world of book publishing. Um, moved to New York city and figured that, okay, hopefully one day I'll get to tell my own stories, but in the meantime, I can help other people tell theirs. And that was also so much fun. And then I sold my first book and ever since then I've been writing. Yeah. And so you have a couple of different books out, um, and they're all kind of like romance, really cute, fun, little stories. And so one of them, um, was Love You Latka. So tell us a little bit about what's involved in this love story. So Love You a Lotka was my first Hanukkah romance. It came out in 2024 and it was so much fun to write. Right. I love Christmas movies. I love holiday movies, but I'm Jewish. And so I, you know, I loved watching them and reading them, but I never really got to see myself represented. And so it was so much fun to take Hanukkah and, you know, write a story centering around that instead of around Christmas, which is still great. But, you know, it was fun to see myself in the pages of the book. Yeah. And I know it's so fun because, you know, like, you know, the holidays very well. So I'm pretty sure that was probably fun, you know, like seeing it on the pages and have like so many people resonate with it because it kind of gives a different perspective, you know, when it comes to Christmas and the holidays and love stories that you, like you said, you don't see very often. And then you have a new one, which is eight ways to say I love you. And so tell me a little bit about what's in this one and what would you say was the most fun with writing this story? So I had so much fun writing Eight Ways to Say I Love You. That book, as opposed to Love You, Alaka, which is kind of a fake dating, only one bed story where a girl goes to, a woman goes to her fake beau's house in New York City. And, you know, so they both ideally get something out of the deal. This one is set over a long period of time. So I'd long wanted to write a book set over many years. And when my publisher asked me for another Hanukkah book, I thought like, oh, like, you know, it would be fun to kind of do something with the number eight and check in with a couple every year at Hanukkah time. So the book kind of came out of that. And it follows Leo and Shira, who grew up together, their childhood friends on their suburban New Jersey street, which is modeled on the one I grew up on. And when they're teenagers, Leo moves away when his parents get divorced. And then, you know, they kind of lose touch in the years since. And Shira moves across the country and then Leo moves back in with his estranged dad. And that's kind of where the story starts, where Shira is back for her once a year visit from across the country for her family's Hanukkah party. Leo comes, they rekindle a connection. It's clear they're right for each other, but not right now. So it's going to take them eight years of us seeing them once a year. And so I had so much fun writing it that way because it's a lot of it was a challenge figuring out how to, you know, fit eight years into one. regular sized book without um you know making it too giant or skimming over too much of the year that happens um between them um everything that happened between them each time they meet so I had a lot of fun with it and I hope it's just as much fun to read. If there's any like fun lessons or just lessons in general that you would love readers to take away from those two stories or really any of your books what would it be? Well, I think for Eight Ways to Say I Love You, the book kind of revolves around how people change. And sometimes people change, you know, in positive ways. Sometimes they change in negative ways. But no matter how they change or what they do, there's really, you know. they can always come back. They can always decide to do better. And without spoiling, that's kind of the path of one character in the book who has had, you know, a rough go of it. They've made some bad choices, and then they do decide to turn things around. And I think that's also part of kind of the holiday air. It's also, you know, the whole Scrooge kind of thing, which is a Christmas story, not a Hanukkah story, but it's kind of got the same, you know, moral of it. People can change. And, you know, in the end of this book, like, I mean, it's not really a spoiler because it's a romance, but they do change into people who are perfect for each other by the end. And I think it was fun to do that journey with them. And Amanda, do you have any final words for fellow book lovers out there, especially as we enter into this festive season? Try and pick up something new. I think that's a fun gift to yourself for the holiday season. I'm a pretty analytical person. I love lists. So I always keep track of everything I read over the course of my year. And at the end of the year around the holidays, I go back over and I'm like, okay, so I've read a lot of this genre this year. And I read a lot of this genre this year. And I haven't read a lot of this genre. And so maybe or I haven't read enough by like these kinds of authors. So maybe next year, I'm going to make a special note to like You know, read more Latino authors, or I'm going to read more nonfiction, or I'm going to try like science fiction, because I really like, you know, haven't explored much of that. And so, you know, I recommend people do that too. Because even though, you know, you might have your favorites, and it's always great to read, you know, your favorite genre, it's really fun also to discover what else is out there. There's so much else out there to read. Well, Amanda, thank you so much for creating these amazing stories, you know, that you don't see too often and for sharing the motivation behind it, you know, with me and fellow book lovers out there. We greatly appreciate it. Thank you so much for having me.