For Tryon resident Amanda Edwards, gathering inspiration

for her young adult paranormal romance novel series comes from some unlikely and quirky places, like her garden, her work as a museum curator and her study of archaeology and anthropology.
Edwards recently signed a contract with Mundania Press for two trilogies. The first novel of the first series is titled Moonflower and follows a girl named Caitlin who discovers she is descended from a long line of witches. On her sixteenth birthday, she “comes into her powers” and moves to an island colony of witches off the coast of Olympia, Wash.  She finds true love, and forms friendships that will last hundreds of lifetimes.
Wolfsbane is the title of the first book of the second series, which will follow a 19-year-old college dropout and coffee shop employee, who also happens to be a werewolf hunter. This novel is set in southern Indiana, near where Edwards grew up.
Edwards, a library assistant at the Polk County Library in Columbus, has been deeply immersed in books and writing her entire life. As a student at Purdue University, her academic pursuits included anthropology with a focus on Native American archeology and anthropology. She minored in history and French and later worked with curators and archaeologists at a museum in Indiana.
“I wanted to be the female version of Indiana Jones,” said Edwards.
While her life today is more settled than that of a world-traveling, adventure-seeking artifact collector, Edwards is excited about the writing process and the news that the two series were accepted for publication.
“It is so hard to get published,” she said. “It’s rejection after rejection. I didn’t want to do self-publishing, so I started hitting the small presses.” She said Moonflower caught the attention of an editor at Mundania Press, known for a variety of genres including fantasy, horror, mythology, time travel, vampires and werewolves.
The trilogies will all be named for flowers and herbs and will be published under the name Amanda McCrohan. She says Moonflower’s expected release will be in six to twelve months, depending on the publisher’s schedule. Moonflower is a night-flowering plant, and wolfsbane is a flowering herb. Edwards got the inspiration from her garden.
“The main character blossoms when the light hits, like a moonflower,” said Edwards.
Edwards has a blog with updates and announcements regarding the books, amandamccrohanbooks.wordpress.com and she can be found on Facebook and Twitter under Amanda McCrohan. Edwards is married with two children.