Hi, I’m Amber, and, like most bookish, introverted kids who grew up on a diet of Nancy Drew and Enid Blyton, I spent my entire childhood dreaming of being an author 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.
Finally, when my fiancé (who’s now my husband) was diagnosed with kidney failure just two weeks after we got engaged, we both had the very banal and yet incredibly important realisation that life was way too short to be spent stuck in jobs we hated.
So I walked out of my well-paid, but absolutely hated job, with absolutely no plan, other than to never go back.
Terry started dialysis.
I started a blog.
Although my blog started off as an ‘online diary’ (look, it was the noughties, OK?), it quickly turned into a full-time job, which paid the bills for over a decade, and made me realise that it really was possible to make a living doing something I loved — in this case, writing about my life: including our move to a tiny village in the Scottish countryside, which was absolutely nothing like all of those smalltown romance books I’d been reading had led me to believe it would be.
By the time the pandemic happened, though, social media had started to eat into the income I was making from blogging, then AI came along to finish it off. Faced with the prospect of having to get a ‘real job’ instead, I knew there was absolutely no way I was willing to do it. As an anxious introvert, I’ve never been cut-out for corporate life (I still regularly have nightmares in which I’m forced to return to one of my previous jobs…), and I was genuinely terrified of having to go back to a life that had made me so unhappy I’d cry in the shower every morning before work.
So, instead, 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, I went on to self-publish a further 7 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 — before stumbling my way into a book deal in 2025.
In true ‘accidental author’ fashion, my book deal also happened more or less by ‘accident’, in a series of events I’ve written about here, and my first traditionally published book, Highland Getaway, came out in June 2026.
My Accidental Book Deal
A while back, one of Terry’s clients kindly sent him a bottle of very nice champagne as a thank you for a project he’d just completed for them.
Having stumbled into romance writing more or less by accident, though, it turns out that the real challenge is continuing to do it... because writing books might be my dream job, but it’s an extraordinary difficult way to make a living, and most authors end up having to get a ‘real’ job alongside it to pay the bills.
I’m not going to do that, though.
Partly because I’ve never been into the idea that being an author means having to squeeze writing into the gaps left by a ‘real’ job — I want writing to be the ‘real’ job — but also because the thought of having to go back to the corporate world, or any kind of traditional employment, really, remains my biggest non-existential fear. (Well, that and crabs. I’m absolutely terrified of crabs…)
I absolutely refuse to go back to crying in the shower every morning before work, because the thought of the next 9 hours feels a lot like being sent to one of those Victorian workhouses I used to write about. I refuse to dedicate the rest of my life to helping other people get rich. I refuse to accept that it’s ‘normal’ to spend most of your waking hours doing something you hate. And, most of all, I refuse to give up on my dream of living a life I love… and that doesn’t involve sitting in a windowless office for 9 hours every day.
Instead, I’ve been doing my best to supplement the income I make from my books with other types of creative work which can be done from home, and which doesn’t leave me feeling too burnt out and exhausted to write.
And that’s what this newsletter is about.
It’s about making a living doing something you love. Living a soft, slow life, that gives you space to breathe, and doesn’t leave you constantly wondering, ‘is this all there is?’ It’s for anyone who’s ever wanted to quit their job, turn their back on ‘hustle culture’ and move to a small village in Scotland where nothing ever happens, but at least you don’t get asked to join a Teams call every five minutes.
As a subscriber you’ll get:
a behind-the-scenes look at what author life is really like in a small Scottish village
honest insights into my various side-hustles, and how much I earn from them
a first glimpse of what I’m writing, and how I go about turning ideas into finished books
a look at all of the ways I try to romanticize my life as an anxious introvert who likes books more than people
the occasional rabbit hole: because there’s more to life than books, you know (but not much more…)