How I Became an Accidental Author

The story of a romcom author trying to earn a full-time living by making stuff up.

Hi, I’m Amber.

People who don’t know me generally describe me as a romance author, lifestyle blogger, or “really annoying, actually,” depending on how much they like me.

People who do know me, on the other hand, are more likely to say things like, “Why do these things always happen to you, Amber?” or “What’s that on your face?” and that’s why, when asked to introduce myself, I normally just mumble a bit then say I write things for a living. Which is true.

So, hi: I’m Amber, and I write things. These days I mostly write books about slightly awkward people who keep getting themselves into ridiculous situations (Don’t ask me where my inspiration comes from, I beg you…), but before that I wrote a blog called Forever Amber, which used to regularly appear on lists of the Top UK Bloggers, even though it was mostly just about things like that one time I touched an electric fence, or paid £50 for a set of eyelash extensions that made me look like Barbara Cartland.

Then I had a baby. And there was a pandemic. People stopped reading blogs, and switched to TikTok instead. And by the time things started to get back to something like ‘normal’ again, I’d aged approximately 25 years, and had lost a large chunk of my income, and what felt like all of my identity. Oh, and I was also in a huge amount of debt, which I had absolutely no prospect of ever being able to pay off.

So I started writing romcom novels, more or less by accident.

I say ‘by accident’ … like most bookish, introverted kids who grew up on a diet of Nancy Drew and Enid Blyton, I’d always wanted to write a book one day. I just didn’t think I’d ever get to do it, because unlike almost everyone else who lists ‘writing a book’ as their most cherished dream, I had absolutely no idea what this book I would write might be about.

To my absolute disgust, there were no stories in my head, just begging to be told. (Or not any fictional ones, anyway — but more on that later…) Characters did not appear to be trying to ‘speak through me’, as they did with other, proper authors, who talked about their characters almost as if they were real people, who were relying on the author to give them a voice.

Worst of all, every time I did try to sit down and come up with a plot and characters, I would find myself filled with the most horrific sense of cringe — and this intense awareness that I was just making shit up, and that anyone who read it would know this, and would laugh at me.

“Honestly, I think Amber just made all of that up,” I imagined them saying, as they closed the book I’d painstakingly written and dried their tears of laughter. “And imagine making that up!”

It was a real problem, to be honest; and, by the time I went to university (to study English Literature, obviously, because what else was I going to do?) I’d more or less convinced myself that writing a book probably wasn’t something that was in my future.

Instead, I went into journalism.

Then P.R.

Then, finally, when my husband-to-be was diagnosed with kidney failure, and told he’d need a transplant, just two weeks after we’d gotten engaged, I decided to give up traditional employment altogether, and turned to blogging, instead; which I somehow managed to make a full-time living from for almost 15 years.

I know: wild, huh?

When the blogging bubble finally ‘burst’ however, and I realized I was going to have to find some other way to support myself and my online shopping addiction (oh, and my family, obviously…), I turned to freelance site Upwork in search of some low-paid, horrifically boring freelance work.

Well, I mean, that’s not what I was hoping for, obviously. That is mostly the kind of jobs you tend to find on sites like Upwork, though, and, sure enough, I ended up working my way through a handful of torturously boring copywriting gigs, before I one day stumbled upon an advert from someone looking for a Victorian romance writer.

Yes, seriously.

Now, I don’t really know why, but something about that job posting instantly captured my imagination.

Instead of seeing myself chained to my desk, writing dull SEO articles about topics I didn’t even understand, I suddenly saw myself sitting in front of a roaring fire (We don’t have a roaring fire, by the way, so I’m not sure where that came from, but let’s just go with it…), tapping away at my laptop, while fully immersed in a world of Lords, Ladies, and cheeky Cockney orphans, narrowly avoiding the workhouse. And, I mean, that just sounds WAY better than writing about car insurance all day, doesn’t it?

(Not the bit about the workhouse, obviously. That just sounds grim.)

There was just one problem with all of this, of course, and it was a pretty big one, really: I had never written Victorian romantic fiction in my life. Or ANY kind of romantic fiction, Victorian or otherwise. Or any kind of FICTION, come to think of it. I had not one single Cockney orphan story to my name, and this, I suspected, would probably turn out to be an issue if I was going to apply for this job.

(Actually, a quick search reveals that I HAVE mentioned Victorian workhouses more times on my blog than seems reasonable for a lifestyle blogger, really, but… it’s just not the same, is it?)

No, I was not remotely qualified to write a Victorian romance novel: so, naturally, I applied to do it anyway.

I don’t know what came over me. Maybe I just enjoyed the idea of consumptive heiresses and their doomed love affairs a little too much? I dunno. I was totally honest in my application, though: I explained that, although I hadn’t written THIS kind of thing before, I had written plenty of OTHER things, and I was confident (I wasn’t really) that I’d be able to do it. Oh, and I included a link to my blog, because if there’s one thing that’s certain to nail me a freelance job, it would be that post about the Russian Volume Eyelashes, wouldn’t it?

I didn’t expect to get a response. Why would I, after all? Much to my surprise, though, the very next day I got a message from an incredibly lovely editor, who said she’d been intrigued by my application, and wanted to know more. We had a short conversation via email, during which I tried my very best not to say things like, “Cor blimey, guv!” and other things transparently designed to demonstrate my very firm grasp of Cockney orphan lingo. Then she offered me a (paid) trial, and I sat there for a while feeling like a giant fraud, who had just somehow tricked someone into believing she could write a Victorian romance novel, which, LOL. Luv-a-duck!

The next day, I received the plot of the book (Which, actually, was just a novella, not a full-length novel. Let’s not get carried away, here…). All I had to do was write it.

And so I did.

Until then, the main reason I’d never been able to write fiction of my own was purely down to my complete inability to come up with a decent plot. I’d always said that if someone gave me a story, I’d be able to tell it: and, to cut a long story short, that turned out to be true.

I wrote the book/novella. Then I wrote a few more for that editor, before branching out to even more exciting topics, like billionaire romance, and Regency romance, and, in one, never-to-be-repeated case, even Amish romance. Yes, it’s a thing.

Ghostwriting books on Upwork did not, unfortunately, make me rich. Or even significantly less poor, actually. It did, however, teach me a huge amount about writing romance novels — and specifically about plotting them, which had always been my biggest stumbling block.

After about a year of this, though, I was completely burnt out from the endless process of churning out books for other people for not very much money. Why do that, after all, when I could churn out books for MYSELF, for not very much money instead?

And so, that’s what I did.

My first book, The Accidental Impostor was published in August 2022, and, since then, I’ve written 6 more books — all romantic comedies, and quite a few of them with the word ‘Accidental’ in the title; which is what led me to the name of this newsletter. Having stumbled into romance writing more or less by accident, though, I do feel very lucky to have managed to change career at this stage of my life; and while I’m still a very long way from being financially solvent again because of it, I’m doing my very best to earn a full-time, sustainable living from making stuff up … and I’m very glad to have you along for the ride.

Want to follow the rest of my author journey, and help me stay out of the fictional Victorian workhouse? Just hit the ‘subscribe’ button below to start receiving weekly updates…