Dear Reader,

I am a storyteller by nature, but when I sit down to tell you my own story, I find myself at a loss for words. I write fantasy, and yet the tale of my own last eight years feels too fantastical to believe.

I began as a girl who simply liked to play make-believe, and who decided to entertain herself over the dull months of summer vacation by starting a novel. I ended up falling in love with Nyeusigrube, the world I created that summer. The more I learned about its inhabitants and their stories, the more I wanted to learn, and the only way to do so was to continue writing. When I was thirteen, I began dreaming of being published, and with the support of my family and friends I took my first tentative steps toward making that dream a reality.

Here is where the story begins to feel like a fairy-tale, a far-fetched fable full of lucky coincidences and incredible timing. An English teacher from the high school pulled me aside to say hello because I had been in a play with his son in fifth grade, and my friend chose that moment to try to embarrass me by bragging that I was trying to get a novel published. It turned out that the teacher was also a literary agent. He offered to read my work, and later to represent it. Only two months later, on my fourteenth birthday, as I was opening presents, he called to say that In the Forests of the Night had been accepted for publication.

In the Forests of the Night was the first of many- and there are many even more yet to come. Welcome to Nyeusigrube; welcome to my world.

Enjoy.

Yours,
Amelia Atwater-Rhodes