As we get ready to celebrate Mother's Day, we are thrilled to welcome bestselling romance author Amanda Scott to the blog. Scott shares some wonderful stories about motherhood, including how she got her first steamy read!
Amanda Scott with her mother, whom she describes as "a very strong woman, descended from other strong women, [who] passed those traits on to my sister and to me."
Did your mother impact or influence your writing?
My mother was a very strong woman, descended from other strong women, and she passed those traits on to my sister and to me. She died before I sold my first book (The Fugitive Heiress), but I did read some of its first chapters to her while she was in the hospital. She seemed to enjoy the story, but she never got to see it in print.
If she impacted my writing, it’s because she taught me to read when I was three. We lived in San Francisco then, while my dad was going to law school, and she taught me to read by using the advertisements on the cable cars and streetcars. From that point on, she encouraged my reading. Once, when she had friends over, I was reading a book that utterly scandalized one lady. I was about seven or eight, and I guess the book had sex scenes in it. Mom told the woman that she didn’t care what I was reading, as long as I was enjoying the reading. She thought, accurately, that most of what upset the woman would go right over my head, and that anything I didn’t understand, and wanted to understand, I’d ask her to explain—also accurate, because she never ignored or discouraged such requests and was a veritable font of knowledge for me.
What strengths did she impart that may have helped you in your career, directly or indirectly?
Whenever I think about questions like this one, I remember her telling me to “rise above it!” Someone would throw me a curve, or I would hit a point of frustration in something I was trying to accomplish or a conflict when someone was asking me to do one more thing (usually when I was already in over my head), and Mom would say, “Just rise above it, deal with it, and move on.” I’ve heard those words often in my head during my career. They can pop up at the oddest times, too. She also instilled in me a sense of responsibility and self-reliance.
She was strong from birth, I think. She contracted polio when she was eighteen months old and was paralyzed from the waist down for several months. The doctors told my grandmother to keep massaging her legs to remind the muscles of what they were supposed to do, and when the paralysis wore off, he told her to get Mom involved in something that would build up the strength in her legs again. Gram chose ballet and my mother proved to be particularly flexible, as well as a talented ballerina. She appeared in all sorts of venues, including variety shows, so Gram eventually took her on the road. Mom performed all over the Northwest, including Alaska, while they lived in Washington State, and then, when they moved to California, she appeared in several movies, as well. She was known as Baby Lowell.
Gram disapproved of the Hollywood scene, but Mom and her younger sister loved it. Mom also danced professionally as a ballerina and eventually with the San Francisco Opera Ballet until she married my dad.
Could you tell us about your relationship with your own children? How did becoming a parent affect your perspective on life?
Everything an author does, reads, sees, or hears becomes grist for the mill, so certainly the birth of a child has a major impact. My son was highly entertaining, for one thing, so he gave me all sorts of ideas for characters from the time he was born and still does today, especially since he now has two wee ones of his own, also highly entertaining. On the more serious side, he gave me increased insight about parents, parenting, and just character in general. He has always been forthright and blunt, which I appreciate (usually).
He drenched me with our hose when he was two or three, and only a few days ago, I got a text from him telling me that he’d been tinkering in his garage and heard his four-year-old son, just outside, say, “Daddy, help me, I’m stuck.” He stepped outside, straight into the full force of a Super Soaker. His text ended with laughter and “Classic!” I texted back, “Classic, heck! Karma!”
What are your children’s reading habits, and how were they formed?
My son also learned to read early and used to read under his covers (believing, I’m sure, that he was the first child to outsmart his parents in such a fashion). We could see the flashlight through the covers, but my husband and I agreed that as long as he was reading, we would remain blind. Our son still reads voraciously, whenever he finds time, just as my husband and I still do, and our parents and grandparents did before us. I think reading for pleasure and knowledge is something that parents can easily hand down to their children if they make the effort.
Amanda Scott is the author of more than fifty romantic novels, many of which have been bestsellers.
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