Mandy Hubbard - YA Author

 The Short Version:

  The Long Version:

Mandy Hubbard grew up on a dairy farm, where she was more likely to be seen in mismatched rubber boots than couture high heels. Under duress, she’ll admit that she stepped in some cowpies a time or two, and perhaps fell into some mud puddles. She devoured all kinds of books, though her favorite was any book featuring a horse. Once, she wrote a twenty-page epic about a bubble-gum chewing runaway pony, even though the assignment was only two pages. Despite the obvious, it did not occur to her that she enjoyed writing.

In 2003, while searching out fanfiction of The Backstreet Boys (that is a story for another day), Mandy ended up at a site called Fictionpress.com. Once there, she became addicted to the stories told by novice writers and eventually decided to try writing one of her own. A semi-biographical horribly melodramatic tale was born. Although it was quite a bad attempt at fiction, Mandy became enamored with writing. She wrote several more novels over the next few years. 

In 2005, she read a book called THE BRIDE’S NECKLACE by Kat Martin, a romance set in regency England. The hero was an earl. His friends were dukes and barons. Mandy fell in love with all of them. She wanted to wear dresses and hang out in ballrooms. Instead, she wrote a novel set in 1815, and began querying agents. She would eventually realize that a writer had to research a novel set in a different time period.

To avoid doing so, she decided to write a contemporary YA novel. Again she queried agents, this time with more luck. In January 2006, she signed her first agent, and when that didn’t work out, she got a different one that September. In October 2006, after three years of writing, her first work went out on submission. Rejections poured in. Later that year, her second attempt at publication, PRADA AND PREJUDICE, went out on submissions.