Wake (Hocking)

Author Bio
• Birth—July 12, 1984
• Raised—Austin, Minnesota, USA
• Education—attended community college
• Currently—lives in Austin, Minnesota


Amanda Hocking was employed as a group home worker, writing novels in her free time—17 of them. In April 2010, she began self-publishing them as e-books, and by March 2011, she had sold over a million copies of her nine books and earned two million dollars from sales, previously unheard of for self-published authors. In early 2011, Hocking averaged 9,000 book sales each day.

Hocking's published work, originally self-published, consists of My Blood Approves, a vampire romance series; the Trylle Trilogy, which covers a teenage girl's journey of self-discovery in an urban fantasy setting; and Hollowland, a zombie novel. The New York Times characterized her novels as "part quirky girl-like-Hocking characters, part breakneck pacing, part Hollywood-style action and part bodice-ripping romance—they are literature as candy, a mash-up of creativity and commerce."

In March 2011, Hocking signed her first conventional publishing contract for four books, at a price of two million dollars, with St. Martin's Press. It concerns her new young-adult paranormal series called "Watersong." Book one, Wake, was released in 2012, with the second installment, Lullaby, following later the same year.  All three books in her previously self-published Trylle Trilogy were also sold to St. Martin's Press, and have been re-released in 2012. (From Wikipedia.)

Read the New York Times Magazine article on Hocking.