Amanda Pritts
Author
"When I was 18, I received detention and a disciplinary call home - where I wasn't living - because I had been selling copies of my short stories around school. The school treated it the same way they treated gambling or selling drugs. I'm not sure why. At least I got other students reading."
- Amanda Pritts
I suppose the appropriate way to start this website off would be to briefly introduce myself, so please, allow me to do just that.
My name is Amanda Pritts, and I was born March 7th, 1991 in a bad neighborhood in Pittsburgh, PA. I want to tell you my formative years were spent playing with friends, enjoying fantastic exotic vacations or even living in a sturdy home. None of this would be true.
The Early Years: My parents divorced when I was little. After the divorce was finalized, I was constantly on the move with my father and three older sisters, where we bounced between Florida and Pittsburgh constantly. We lived with drug addicts, alcoholics, and endured countless visits for years from CYS. By age 7 I had started showing signs of anorexia, which continued to be a consistent battle until I was 26 when I wrote my first published novel, "Starving For Perfection," which you can buy here. My father remarried and we settled down in a nice neighborhood where I was enrolled in a school known for high test scores, great teachers, and well-to-do students. To say it was a culture shock would be an understatement. I struggled to make friends, and had a long record of fighting and mouthing off to my teachers. The rest of my time was spent in my room with my nose in a book.
Early Adulthood: I spent all of my time working or with friends. I was a hard worker, and had a decent income for being so young. I never asked anybody for money, and paid all of my bills by myself. On the rare occasion I was home, it was filled with arguing, abuse, and alcoholism. I left my parents home altogether right after I turned 18. I made the split decision to go live with my abusive, Covert Narcissist boyfriend who was 27 year old and lived in his mothers basement. I lived with him for the remainder of my high school career and the start of college. By the time I had the courage to walk away from my abuser, I was 21, a college drop out, jobless, and on drugs. I had sunk to a new level.
Present: At 22, I married my soulmate. A hardworking country man with a strong Christian faith and a firm but loving demeanor. Within a year of our first date we were married and blessed with a beautiful baby boy. It was at this point I knew I was going to need some help to resolve the years of trauma in order to become the wife and mother my family needed. Going through therapy sessions and an additional 2 years of self-help was the hardest, and most rewarding thing I've ever had to do. Shortly after, my father made a trip to visit our little home in the woods. He brought with him a gigantic storage bin full of my old journals, poems, writing awards, and the binders of stories I had written in High School. I spent that night digging through the storage bin re-reading everything I had ever saved and the realization hit me all at once that this was what I was meant to do. At 25 I wrote, "Starving For Perfection" and at 26 it was published. From there I worked for multiple businesses writing their articles, blogs, medical papers, and even sales pitches. I also was hired as a political journalist for USA Politics Today before starting my Java_and_Books page on Instagram to do book reviews for fun. If you're not following me on there, please do so to enjoy coffee and literature with me!
And currently that's where I am. I hope this gave you an interesting, if not in depth, look into my life. Please feel free to browse this site in detail. If you would like to request a review, please do so by going to the Contact Me page, there you can email me directly or follow me on Instagram and send me a message directly.
If you feel led to donate, please do so by clicking the Donate Link below. All donations are appreciated, and not lost on me.
