Amy Ivan

Fiction sneak attacked me.

During college, I majored in psychology, but my creative writing course provided the real outlet to studying people with “issues”. My professor encouraged me to submit material to a competition, but since the entry fee equated to my spare change for the month, I declined.

Fast forward a decade to Okinawa, Japan. I made the most of motherhood on the jungle island: Forever waving goodbye to my pilot husband, raising two children, and devouring every morsel of fiction available on “the rock”. Starved for something different, I ordered from the fledging Amazon.com for my book fix. (When the site sold only books.) Returning to the States, I realized how often I mulled over a story, plotting how I would have written it. Somewhere between another sleep deprived night and a batch of macaroni and cheese it hit me—I didn’t want just the escape of a great read. I had to create my own. So I bought more books—about writing fiction.

My desire to learn the craft surged beyond the printed or digital word. Settings drawn from my travels as a military spouse became the colorful backdrops in my first manuscripts. Every project has brought new challenges, the pain and promise of stretching my skills, the quest for the right “nuggets”, and best of all, characters dragging me out of bed to write their story. I hold a B.A. in psychology (handy when creating antagonists), have been an editor at a small press, and am a member of Mystery Writers of America, Sisters in Crime, and Florida West Coast Writers. Contest credits include 2018 RWA Utah’s Great Beginnings – first place, 2019 Kiss of Death’s Daphne du Maurier – second place, 2022 Claymore competition – finalist, 2023 West Coast Writers contest – finalist, and the 2023 Georgia Romance Writers Maggie competition – winner (suspense).