Amy de la Force, Lucy Cavendish Fiction Prize shortlistee in 2024, not only rediscovered her voice when she committed to writing full-time — she rediscovered herself.
I’m one of those annoying people who’s known what I wanted to do with my life since I was 25 years old, after my first creative writing class at university: write books. The problem was, the odds were against me, so I majored in journalism and minored in creative writing, then sidestepped into marketing after I was hired by Apple. Corporate became my life.
It stayed that way for far too long. Burnt out from the grind at yet another start-up, having not written anything for years, I started dabbling in writing courses. First Faber Academy, then Curtis Brown Creative in 2020 — my breakthrough. I was accepted into CBC’s selective novel-writing course with my finished romantasy draft and met my COVID-era cohort, who became my genius writing critique group, many of whom have stayed in touch in our virtual Slack pub, The Write Inn. A crucial tip: with writing, your community and your beta readers are everything. I wouldn’t have survived querying literary agents without them.
The romantasy, A Kiss of Hammer and Flame, was my third novel and an idea 16 years in the making. It was different for me in that it began with an environment, a concept: three kingdoms warring over an Atlantis-style lost city (only goth and not an island / underwater) that guarded the world’s ultimate weapon. Previously, my ideas had always started with a character, so teasing out my protagonist was a new, fun experience. This story became an amalgamation of my favourite speculative fiction sub-genres, like fantasy romance, paranormal and horror, as well as my love of pantheon mythologies.
While working on my romantasy’s sequel, I fell down a research rabbit hole Googling pictures of cool-looking old books as inspiration for a description I wanted — and stumbled upon what I thought would make an amazing story; except that it would be historical fiction, which wasn’t my genre. I was about to hand off the idea to one of my friends who writes hist fic, when I just… Stopped. And decided to hold onto the concept, just in case.
That was the moment Illusions of Grandeur was born.
Meanwhile, I’d been shopping the romantasy around to agents for about a year, and had gotten close with a Very Important Agent in the US, but interest seemed to be dwindling. Resigned to shelve the book after my last batch of queries expired, I began tooling around with a novel plan and opening for my historical fiction. After a year of querying, I knew infinitely more about hooking readers in the first sentence / paragraph / page / chapter / three chapters than I had before, which was my goal. I kept writing and hit 5,000 words.
Then my mum died unexpectedly in Australia while I was living in London.
Everything changed. Illusions of Grandeur had started with a big, bold, brilliant female main character, who I now had no headspace or energy for. Stepping away, I sat down and had a serious talk with myself. What was I doing? Why was I still freelance marketing when life was clearly so damn short? When was I going to take myself and my writing dream seriously?
When New Year’s Day rolled around, that was it: it was time to start writing full-time. Not prioritising money was scary, but I was lucky enough to be able to have a break. So I took a grounding breath, sat down at my desk, tentatively opened my laptop and decided to just try writing for an hour. Incredibly, somehow the words flowed.
Enter the Lucy Cavendish Fiction Prize. I’d always had this *feeling* about my historical fiction concept, and I was keen to see if anyone thought the same, even at such an early stage. By now, I had half a draft, so I was super grateful for a prize that championed incomplete manuscripts, especially for other emerging women writers where gender-based social roles tend to allow us less time to write. When Illusions of Grandeur longlisted, I was surprised but happy as it was validation that my idea and my writing had legs. Then I shortlisted, and I was absolutely ecstatic; winning didn’t matter because just shortlisting was an enormous opportunity and acknowledgement within publishing. And indeed it was, because I not only met my phenomenal agent through the Lucy Cavendish Fiction Prize, Sarah Hornsley at PFD, but thanks to her astute feedback on my romantasy, we got it out on submission in record time — and had an offer from a publisher within three weeks.
That publisher was Canelo, who acquired the UK and Commonwealth rights to my debut romantasy novel, A Kiss of Hammer and Flame, as a lead publication with a 3-book deal to be launched in July 2025. To say that my debut not only landed a trilogy but will also be a lead title is honestly bananas. And I am so, so thankful as Canelo’s excitement for this novel, and series, was obvious from day one, so I’m confident AKOHAF has found its home.
So what’s next? First, editing AKOHAF's sequel, then it’s back to Illusions of Grandeur. My historical fiction novel brought me back to life from grief, and it deserves to have its moment. My goal is to finish, edit and get it out on sub next year, making it the next chapter in what’s already been an extraordinary journey. I can’t wait!
