1 minute read
Anna-Maria Athanasiou
AUTHOR
Lifestyle chats to best selling author, AnnaMaria Athanasiou
Advertisement
The romantic novelist has written 8 books and sold tens of thousands of copies and writes from her home in Nicosia.
Anna Maria wrote her first books, The Waiting for Summer novels in secret, firstly because she never thought she’d finish them and secondly, it was a completely new territory for her. Throughout her life Anna-Maria had regularly created scenarios and stories in her head, thinking that one day she would finally put them down on paper. Eventually, in the September of 2011 she took the plunge and started to write down an idea that she'd been creating for almost ten years. Waiting for Summer books one and two are the result of her small idea, and she finally had them published in September 2013 and June 2014. The love story and her characters, Sylvie and Nick, captured the hearts and enthusiasm of her readers, spurring Anna-Maria to carry on with her writing. Anna lives with her husband, two sons, a golden retriever and seven cats, and has penchant for cake, tea, whisky, wine and a healthy obsession with shoes. Anna-Maria loves the fantasy land of romantic fiction, and is passionate about bringing her sexy stories and characters to life. She said, “When I finished my first book my brother sent it off to a publisher and they accepted me straight away, I never thought in a million years it would be published but here I am, eight books later. It was surreal when the books arrived at the house I opened them and when I saw my words published I burst into tears. It takes me a long time to write my latest series took 18 months to write, I let the character grow in my head and then the idea is in my head and finishes in my head before I start writing. The characters to me are real and I pick up their idiosyncrasies . I will never retire from writing because I love writing, but when I do write, it has to be in complete silence, which was quite difficult during lockdown when everyone was at home all the time. But I am pretty disciplined." Anna-Maria has since been asked to collaborate with other authors on four charity anthologies and is an Inspirational Global Woman Nominee.
