An Interview with Amber Eve on Comparison, Confidence & Becoming an Author

The first in what I hope will be a series of interviews with writers I admire.

This weekend, I’m delighted to be publishing my interview with author and blogger

Amber Eve

. Amber has been writing online and blogging for around two decades (possibly longer!). She’s someone I’ve known about since the late noughties, someone I thought was wayyyyy above me in the hierarchy and talent of writers, and someone I’ve been massively inspired by.

Amber has her blog, Forever Amber, where she’s been documenting her life and interests for years, before pivoting to Substack and writing fiction (her Substack is called The Accidental Author). She started writing novels as a ghostwriter but is now writing under her own name. After publishing eight novels independently, she’s recently been taken on by a publisher and an agent.

Amber’s answers to my questions made me almost emotional as I recognised myself, and many other women, in her words. Yet we always think that we’re the only ones to feel that way.

I find her incredibly inspiring, so I hope you love this interview where we talk about her writing journey, comparison and self-publishing as much as I did.

You can find Amber on Substack, and her latest novel, a fabulous summer read called Bikini, is out now. Her blog, Forever Amber, is also still available to read.

Helen. Back in 2006, on your blog, you announced you were writing a novel as it was "your most deeply cherished dream", yet you also admitted that "it's highly unlikely that mine will ever be finished". Yet here you are, eight novels to your name and with a recently acquired literary agent and publishing deal. Yours is an inspiring story of keeping going, keeping writing and never giving up. How does it feel to you? Are you proud of the journey you've been on and how you managed to push procrastination to one side? Have you looked back at the last twenty years and thought, I've done it? I ask, as many women tend to downplay their achievements and quickly move on to the next project.

Amber. It’s really interesting that you say that about women downplaying their achievements, because it’s something I hadn’t really thought about until now, but I definitely have a tendency to find reasons not to ‘allow’ myself to feel proud of my achievements — mostly, I think, because I’m so constantly comparing myself to other people, that it’s always been easy for me to convince myself that I’m not doing as well as I ’should’ be. Comparison really is the thief of joy!

I think also, though, that back when I wrote that line in 2006 (Wow, I can’t believe I’ve been writing online that long!), self-publishing wasn’t really a “thing” — or, if it was, it was mostly considered to be a form of vanity publishing — so, if I’m totally honest, when I published my first book, I felt a bit like I’d ‘cheated’ somehow, or that it didn’t really count, because I hadn’t done the hard graft of finding an agent and a publisher, which I’d been led to believe was the ‘right’ way to go about it. It’s silly, really, because I don’t feel like that at all about other self-published authors, but impostor syndrome has always been kind of my ’thing’, and so it’s only really been in the last few months, when I’ve started to break into traditional publishing, that I’ve started to allow myself to feel like, OK, maybe I can feel a little bit proud about this. It did occur to me a few weeks ago, though, that if my teenage self were to somehow find out that she would one day actually achieve her dream of publishing a book (which seemed as unlikely to me as flying to the moon, basically), she would be pretty proud, so maybe it’s time I let myself be proud on her behalf!

Helen. Absolutely! I can't remember when I first came across you online, except that it was many years ago. Am I correct in thinking you used to write for a shoe or fashion blog, owned by the same company that owned Trashionista, which I used to write for? I've followed your blog, your Patreon, and now your Substack. Plus, I bought your non-fiction book about blogging (which, maddeningly, I can't currently find in my office). I love your writing style. I loved your blog, especially when you wrote about writing and being online. You made me feel like I could do it too (and it is quite possibly one of the reasons I'm here now). Can you give us a brief rundown of your writing journey? What encouraged you to write online, and what gave you the push to write and finish your first novel under your name?

Amber. Ah, this is all so lovely to hear, Helen, and the idea that I might have in any way inspired you to be in this space is the greatest compliment ever!

As for the blogging, yes, you’re absolutely right: the shoe blog was called Shoewawa, and it was part of the Shiny Media stable of blogs, which included Trashionista (Katie Lee

Katie Lee / KJ Lyttleton

, who was one of the founders, is also now an author, and has a fantastic Substack about her journey!). Along with Shoewawa (which I edited, as well as writing for), I also wrote for a few others: Catwalk Queen, TV Scoop, ShinyShiny … probably a few others that I’ve long since forgotten! I’d gotten into blogging after a brief career in local journalism (I wrote for not one, but two of the local newspapers in the area), and an even briefer one in local government PR, which ended when my then-fiance (now husband), Terry, was diagnosed with kidney failure, and we had a bit of a ‘come to Jesus’ moment where we realised our time on earth wasn’t guaranteed, and yet, here we were, just kind of trudging through it, stuck in jobs we hated… you get the picture.

Within a few months we’d both left our jobs, and launched our own company, with the idea that Terry would design websites and I’d write the copy for them. That idea fell through fairly quickly when it emerged that I absolutely hated copywriting (and wasn’t very good at it, either…), but luckily by then I’d stumbled into blogging for Shiny Media, having got the job by sending them a link to my own blog, Forever Amber, which I’d started after a couple of years on Livejournal, which was a bit like an early version of Substack, although it was much more diary-based. I’d been writing diaries since I was a kid at that point, and I think the early days of blogging felt like a natural extension of that — I was literally just writing diary-style entries about my day-to-day life, which wasn’t particularly interesting, but I really enjoyed it — I actually really miss those days, when blogs were still ‘online journals’, and people were just documenting their lives, without trying to ‘influence’ anyone, or monetise it!

With that said, though, although I’d started blogging as a hobby, my experience working with Shiny Media taught me that it was very possible to make a decent living from it, and that seemed like the closest thing to a ‘dream’ job I could imagine, so I went on to launch three more blogs of my own, which I ran for almost a decade (I think: the exact timeline is all a bit hazy now!), before I started to get really burnt-out by the constant cycle of content production, so I merged one of the sites with my personal blog and sold the other two, so I could concentrate on Forever Amber. Honestly, at that stage, I would have happily just kept on doing that forever, but after I had my little boy, Max, the traffic basically went into free fall, and the pandemic more or less finished it off … which is when I decided to transition to fiction writing! So, to (finally!) answer your question, the main push for me was the sheer necessity of finding something to replace the income I’d lost from blogging. Writing is literally the only thing I know how to do, so I signed up to Upwork in search of freelance work, and somehow stumbled into ghostwriting romantic fiction, which was fun, but so badly paid it was completely unsustainable in the long term. It did give me the confidence to feel like I could potentially write my own books, though, so that’s what I did — and here we are! The final push was definitely a financial one, though: I think if I hadn’t been under pressure to find an alternate form of income, I’d never have done it; I’d just have procrastinated forever!

Helen. One of the reasons why I turned to blogging was that I didn't have the confidence or writing experience to write a complete novel and submit it to agents. Writing online has helped me complete my non-fiction book proposal, submit it and work on finally finishing my novel. It's also given me a platform and community. How has writing online helped you with your ultimate dream of writing novels? Do you think you would've self-published or even completed your novels without your background in blogging?

Amber. In some ways, I actually think it did the opposite for me, in that I spent a lot of time absolutely convinced that I was only capable of writing blog posts, and that fiction writing was something that was completely beyond me… Every so often I’d get a comment from a reader suggesting I should write a book, but although I really, really wanted to, I always really struggled to come up with a decent idea for a plot, so my early attempts were all just thinly-veiled versions of my own life story, and, for a long time, I was convinced I could only write about things that had actually happened to me — which was pretty limiting, really! With that said, though, blogging definitely helped me develop a ‘voice’, and also to hone my ability to tell a story, so yes, I think it definitely helped: if I hadn’t somehow stumbled into a career as a blogger, I’m not sure I’d ever have had the confidence to publish a book!

Helen. As I mentioned above, I love your writing. Your writing voice comes across as really confident, even though what you write about shows that this isn't necessarily the case. I know you’ve mentioned impostor syndrome but have you ever had to deal with fear of failure or success? Or self-sabotage, self-doubt and so on? If so, how did you overcome them?

Amber. Oh, absolutely. This links back to what I said above about impostor syndrome, but ever since I was a little girl I’ve always had the feeling of not quite fitting in anywhere, and even when I’m objectively doing well at something, I will downplay it and convince myself that I’ve somehow just managed to trick everyone into thinking I’m better than I am, and I’m about to be found out. I also have a very self-deprecating sense of humour, combined with that extremely ‘British’ tendency to downplay everything I do, which doesn’t help, either… I’ve been trying my best to get past this lately, so if someone compliments my outfit, I’ll just thank them, rather than rushing to assure them that it was £5 from Vinted, and it doesn’t even fit right — which is definite progress for me! — but if someone shows interest in my books, I still struggle to believe they’re not just being polite, or trying to humour me. I think my main way of dealing with it is just by talking about it; I’ve always been very open about my insecurities in my blog and newsletter, and while I’m sure some people might not quite ‘get’ it, there are so many who do, and who’ve told me they feel the same way, that it helps remind me I’m not alone in feeling like that!

Helen. I absolutely get this. I downplay my achievements a lot, too. So much so, my bestie gave me a talking to some weeks ago in McDonald’s! I still can’t see myself how she sees me (i.e in such a positive way regarding my achievements), but her words have helped enormously.

Do you have any advice for aspiring authors? For writers at the beginning of their journey?

Amber. This is a bit rich coming from me, because I’m a chronic over-thinker who always wants everything she does to be perfect, but I honestly think the best thing you can do is try NOT to over-think it, and just make a start. There are so many people out there telling new authors that there’s a right and wrong way to write a book, but while there is obviously some valuable advice out there, I think a lot of it is just noise, which can actually end up being a barrier to writing. I see a lot of new writers get very caught up in the idea that they have to do certain things in order to write a book, but, actually, the ONLY thing you have to do (at least to start with) is to write the book — even if it’s bad, and messy, and has to be completely re-written once it's done. So I think you have to give yourself permission to get it wrong, and to accept that the first draft doesn’t have to be perfect — it just has to exist. And, once it does, you might not have an instant bestseller on your hands, but you’ll at least have the bare bones of something you can work on, and improve — which is significantly more than most people have!

Helen. Again, I completely agree. I think people (huge generalisation, but this is often women) who think they have to do everything perfectly. They have to be a ‘better’ writer, they have to know about story arcs and three-act structures and so on, instead of allowing themselves to learn as they go.

How did you find the self-publishing process? I'm thinking of going down this road, but I'm scared of the cost/that initial outlay and not recouping it, getting the formatting wrong, uploading the wrong file and the one-star reviews. I know this is just my fear holding me back. How did you convince yourself to publish your first book? Was it as terrifying as I believe it to be? Do you recommend self-publishing?

Amber. When I published my first books, I had zero budget to work with, and while that’s obviously not ideal, it did actually simplify the whole process, because there was a lot of stuff I just couldn’t afford, and therefore didn’t have to worry about. For instance, all of my books have been written using the online Reedsy editor, which was free when I started using it (It’s now £5 per month, which is more than worth it for me…), and formats the manuscript for you — no technical knowledge needed. I use free ISBNs from Amazon, and all of my covers have been self-made (I admittedly have an advantage here as my husband has a background in graphic design!). I’m not, of course, claiming that this is the best way to go about things, and I have absolutely no doubt that those books would’ve done much better if they’d had professional covers, and been edited by someone other than me, but the process doesn’t have to be complicated or expensive, and most mistakes can be fixed. (I have definitely uploaded the wrong file at times, but I’ve lived to tell the tale!)

As for those one-star reviews, I have a strict policy of never reading reviews. My husband does go through them occasionally to make sure there are no common themes I need to be aware of, but I firmly believe that reviews are for readers, not for authors; no book can possibly appeal to every single reader, and — for me, at least — there’s nothing to be gained by exposing myself to every possible opinion that can conceivably exist about my writing. Everyone’s different, obviously, and some authors have thicker skins than I do, but I know that reading my reviews would just convince me to never write another word, so I take the view that what people say about me behind my back is none of my business, and leave it at that!

(Oh, and I wrote about this in my most recent newsletter, but when I released my first book, I didn’t tell anyone what my pen name was. I did end up inadvertently outing myself on Instagram, but it at least meant I got through the first few weeks of it being out in the world without having to deal with real-life comments or questions about it, either!)

What's in a (pen) name?

Helen. And finally, this one might be too personal, but what led you to sign with an agent after self-publishing eight books?

I got offered a book deal! It was completely out of the blue, because I hadn’t considered pursuing traditional publishing at that point, but back in February I was contacted by an editor who was looking to buy Scottish books by Scottish authors... It just so happened that I’d finished writing a romance set in the Highlands two weeks before that (I still can’t get over the serendipity of the timing!), which I’d been intending to self-publish, but I sent her the manuscript, and, to cut a long story short, a few weeks later they offered me a two book deal, which had me scrambling to find an agent. It was a bit of a baptism of fire, because I had absolutely no experience of traditional publishing at all, but I was fortunate to find my agent, Kate Nash, very quickly, and she’s been absolutely brilliant in helping me navigate it all. I don’t think I’ll ever get used to saying the words “my agent”, though!

Amber, thank you so much for agreeing to be interviewed and for the amazing and honest answers to my sometimes rather personal questions.