Author Interview w/ Amanda Nelson & Lisa-Marie Potter

April 24, 2025

Author Interview w/ Amanda Nelson & Lisa-Marie Potter

Written Interview

Tell me about yourself. What do you like to do outside of writing. What is a day in the life like for you?

Outside of writing, Lisa-Marie and Amanda love to hike in the Olympic National Park. Their favorite pastime is acting out scenes together while they traverse the wilderness.

What inspired your first novel? What was the thing that got you into writing in the first place?

Our first manuscript was inspired by the events of Amanda’s friend, Emily Russo, whose high school relationship was a running theme for the characters in that YA Speculative.

Unfortunately, that manuscript has been shelved for the time being, but the lessons we’ve learned from writing it and Men In Books Aren’t Better will help when we get back to revisions.

How do you come up with characters? Are they spontaneous or meticulously planned?

Usually, we develop the male main characters in our manuscripts first, basing their appearance on famous men we find attractive.

For their romantic counterparts, we choose someone we feel physically matches the men we’ve chosen—who we think would make a cute couple.

Their names come from places like baby naming websites, end credits of movies, and people we know who gave us permission.

What are some of your favorite genres to read? Are there any books you’d recommend to first time readers or people looking for something new?

Lisa-Marie likes to read psychological suspense, paranormal romance, and romance. She’s a sucker for a bad boy. Her recommendation for suspense readers is Playing Nice by JP Delaney. And for paranormal romance, Sinner by Maggie Stiefvater.

Amanda is a hopeless romantic and loves romance and romancy. If there’s not a happily ever after, she won’t be satisfied. Her recommendation for romance would be Love in the Time of Serial Killers by Alicia Thompson. And for romancy, The Cruel Prince series by Holly Black.

What’s the most difficult thing about being a writer?

Amanda says marketing. Being with a small press, we do a lot of the marketing ourselves, which is both time-consuming and expensive. Hopefully, everything we’re doing will pay off in the long run, because writing is a marathon, not a sprint.

Lisa-Marie says writing the first draft. Because we’re pantsers—we don’t have an outline, we write as we go—drafting is when we need to be our most creative, and make sure both of us are on the same page with the story, the characters, and the direction of the plot.

What is your process to completing a novel from outline to final product?

As we mentioned before, we are pantsers, so we don’t have an outline. We make up the story as it goes, following the general arc of romance novels, then refine the story through edits and feedback from beta readers. We even develop and document full background stories for each character, even if it doesn’t make it into the final product. Once we have all that in place, we hand the manuscript to our agent, and the feedback process with revisions starts again.

What’s the most unhinged thing you’ve written in your novel? Don’t worry, we don’t judge here.

Men In Books Aren’t Better is a romance, so other than the guy being fictionally perfect, there’s nothing unhinged about it. Our YA Speculative has some unhinged elements, but that’s a different story…

What’s one thing about being a writer that absolutely drives you up the wall?

Lisa-Marie says querying and being on submission. Both were long and grueling processes with industry response times that felt like forever. In case you can’t tell, Lisa-Marie isn’t very patient.

Amanda says the rating system for reviewing books. While a reader can love and gush over a book, they still don’t give it five stars, which makes no sense to her.

What does being a successful writer look like for you? What type of life do you want to live as a writer?

Lisa-Marie thinks a successful writer is one whose name is synonymous with good writing. Then people will buy a second book based on the author’s name alone.

Amanda says that a successful writer is someone who connects with their readers—when a writer has reviews that gush about loving the characters and the storyline and ache for more.

For both of us, we’d love a writing room/place where we could both go to get away from the world, write exclusively, and decorate with our ideas and character photos.

Describe your writing journey. If you had to write a story centered around it, do you think you could pull it off?

Our writing journey isn’t too different than many other authors. We wrote a manuscript, queried it way before its time, and realized through a whole heap of rejections that it wasn’t ready. Then we took classes and attended conventions, refined our craft, and tried again.

When our first manuscript didn’t get much traction, we shelved that project and wrote Men In Books Aren’t Better.

After over one hundred cumulated rejections, we got an offer for an R&R (revise and resubmit) from Nicole Payne.

We revised and resubmitted our manuscript to Nicole within twenty-four hours and received an offer of representation within a week.

Submission for our book lasted nine months, then we received two book contracts with The Wild Rose Press. A year later, Men In Books Aren’t Better released on November 25, 2024. We’re currently awaiting a release date for book two, Just What the Doctor Hired, for later this year.

If we had to write a story about our writing journey, we’d likely bore people to death unless we added a lot of fiction.

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About

Amanda and Lisa-Marie are an award-winning, co-writing team of best friends who share imaginary worlds, including Men In Books Aren’t Better (September 29, 2024), Just What the Doctor Hired (July 9, 2025), and a short story, Shivers, published in Moments Between (February 28, 2022). Lisa-Marie Potter (BIPOC) is a mom of four who grew up in Nottingham, England, and now resides in Alaska with her husband and golden retriever. Amanda Nelson grew up in Maryland and moved to Arizona, where she attended ASU and currently lives with her husband and four kids. Both women are hopeless romantics, but Lisa-Marie also enjoys suspense novels, while Amanda’s second go-to genre is romancy. The duo review books on their socials, hike the Olympic National Park, and fight over the same fictional crushes.

Men In Books Aren’t Better has received the book of the month award from Long and Short Reviews, the Literary Titan Book Award, and is up for book of the year from the Mid-Atlantic Region Authors.