An Interview with Amanda from The Zen Leaf

1) Welcome, Amanda! You have an intriguing blog and I'm honored to have been paired with you for interviews during BBAW. The Zen Leaf has a striking design, and it's a pleasure to interview you. Please tell us a bit about your background, and why you decided to blog.

Amanda: First off, thank you for the welcome. I'm glad to get to know you better! As for my background, I'm a stay at home mom of three little boys. I've been blogging for about three years now in various places. I started on my MySpace profile, and moved to Blogger in February of 2008. The blog I created, The Ramblings of a Hopeful Artist, was more of a personal and writing blog. Periodically, I'd do a book review. When the book reviews grew too many, I started a group review blog called 5-Squared. Over the next year, 5-Squared grew much bigger than I ever expected. By then, I'd discovered the book blogging community and gotten much more active in it. In May of this year, I decided to move my reviews off 5-Squared to my own book blog, and thus The Zen Leaf was born. I like blogging because it gives me an opportunity to socialize with like-minded people. As a stay at home mom, that opportunity is greatly appreciated.

2) This blog is named after your short story, The Zen Leaf. Tell us a bit about that story. How can we read your work?

Amanda: Ooh, hard to describe...Hmm. My short story, The Zen Leaf, is a surreal, dream-like romance involving a teashop with no customers except a cat, a baby, and four characters at a single table. It juxtaposes a past event with the present, and goes over the idea that two people can dance around each other all their lives without ever realizing the other person is dancing. As of right now, The Zen Leaf is unpublished. I'm very young in my publishing career. I've published two short stories and one poem, the latest of which went into a national literary journal called Whiskey Island. I'm currently shopping for an agent for my dystopian novel, MatchMakers Incorporated, and hope one day everyone will have to chance to read that. :)

3) Among other genres, you like to read and review YA fiction--which I also find enjoyable. In fact, I think a lot of adults today are reading YA fiction. Who are some of your favorite authors of YA? Do you aspire to write YA fiction?

Amanda: I just started reading YA fiction this year. Back when I was a teen, YA just wasn't very good, but in the last decade or so, it's gotten so much better. So far, my favorite authors are Scott Westerfeld, Deb Caletti, and Maureen Johnson. I've read several of each of their books and they've been consistently good. So far, I have not written any YA, but I imagine I might at some point in the future.


4) You seem to love reading challenges and have taken on quite a few! What have you enjoyed most about these challenges? I recently joined my first two challenges, so I'm very interested in hearing about your experiences.

Amanda: Really, my challenge obsession marks me as a complete dork. My favorite part about challenges is making the lists. I love lists. I love finding the most efficient way to complete my challenges. Most of the time, I don't even stick with my original list because I love remaking them...yeah. Total dork. Seriously, though, I really joined too many challenges this year. It was my first year for challenges and I just got overexcited. I haven't failed any, but I've taken them way too seriously. Instead of spreading them out for their entire time period, I finish them as fast as possible. With smaller challenges, that's okay, but I joined some pretty large ones, and that put me into a bit of a reading slump for awhile. I'm determined to be more moderate with challenges in the future!

(You've inspired me to sign up for some challenges--thank you!)


5) What have been some of the highlights of your blogging career?

Amanda: I really love when an author contacts me to tell me they loved my review of their work. I've gotten several of those emails, and they always brighten my day. It's also been nice to connect to so many new friends. Recently, I even got to meet one of them in person - Eva from A Striped Armchair. I hope I get to meet more of my fellow bloggers in the future.


6) Your posts get a lot of comments! What advice would you give to someone just starting a blog who wants to get comments? Do you have any blogging secrets to share?

Amanda: Thank you! Honestly, I'm pretty surprised at how many comments I get sometimes! I'm not sure exactly what I'm doing to get them. It probably helps that I love going out to other peoples' blogs and leaving comments. I love having conversations with people, either on their blogs or on mine. I'm not into blogging for any sort of popularity, but for friendship and connection, so it's important to me to get to know the bloggers who visit me, and to keep talking to the ones whose blogs I love. That's probably the advice I would give a beginning blogger, too - just go out and participate in the community. Go figure out which blogs you love and make sure their owners know you love them. Friendship breeds comments? ;)


7) I was astonished by the number of books you read, Amanda. Obviously, you love reading! Were you always an avid reader, or did this passion develop later in life?

Amanda: I was an avid reader as a child, but stopped reading early in my teenage years because I was disappointed with all the books I found. When I got married and had my first son, I spent a year reading the classics in my husband's library, and that rekindled my love for reading. Once I started book-blogging, my reading numbers went way up. I wouldn't read anywhere near this much if it weren't for blogging, but I'm okay with that. I love doing this.


8) Do you have specific goals for this blog, just "go with the flow", or a combination of both?

Amanda: It's very go with the flow. My only desires are to socialize, talk about what I read, and finish my challenges. More recently, I became a little more serious and goal-oriented in starting the GLBT Challenge. I couldn't believe there was nothing out there like that, and had to do something about the gap. I hope to continue to host that annually.


9) If you were "stranded on a desert island", and could bring only three books with you, what would they be?

Amanda: Ah! I don't think I can answer this question! I don't know how I could possibly narrow it down to three. Sorry!!

I couldn't choose only three books, either. Thank you so much, Amanda. I enjoyed interviewing you for BBAW. Your blog is thought-provoking and I've already learned a lot from you in a short time!

You can read Amanda's interview with me at The Zen Leaf. Comments are welcomed!