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Amanda Cockrell

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http://www.amandacockrell.com/

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CockrellAmanda1

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June 2013

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I grew up in Ojai, California, a wonderful place where you could ride your horse down Main Street and there was a hitching post outside the library. It was a bedroom town for Hollywood, full of writers and actors and directors, so there was always something going on, and famous people’s discarded trousers tended to end up in the local thrift shop. Ojai also had a branch office for every philosophical and religious movement to arrive in California since the 20s. I loved it and it became the template for Ayala, the setting for several of my books.

My father, Francis M. Cockrell, was a screenwriter, and my mother, Marian Cockrell, was a screenwriter and a novelist. I first began to write, badly, in high school, where I created characters that m I grew up in Ojai, California, a wonderful place where you could ride your horse down Main Street and there was a hitching post outside the library. It was a bedroom town for Hollywood, full of writers and actors and directors, so there was always something going on, and famous people’s discarded trousers tended to end up in the local thrift shop. Ojai also had a branch office for every philosophical and religious movement to arrive in California since the 20s. I loved it and it became the template for Ayala, the setting for several of my books.

My father, Francis M. Cockrell, was a screenwriter, and my mother, Marian Cockrell, was a screenwriter and a novelist. I first began to write, badly, in high school, where I created characters that my high school English teacher, J. B. Close, of blessed memory, told me were shallow. He was, alas, right, and the rightness of his assessment was knocked into my head in creative writing workshops at Hollins College (now Hollins University) a school which had, and has, a wonderful writing program with the goal of teaching students to write like themselves, and not like the creative writing professor. (This is rarer than you would think.)

Since the only thing I actually do well is write, I have managed to make a living doing so in one form or another for most of my life. Besides my novels, I have written a lot of other things. I have written radio commercials for Custer’s Last Sandwich Stand, featuring the Singing Pickles. (“Oh, you must be a lover of your landlady’s daughter, or you don’t get a second piece of pie!”) I have written ads for panty girdles. I have written the text for a book of very bad paintings of California missions. I have written local history, book reviews, obituaries, wedding stories, and a paperback plantation saga under a name that will forevermore be secret. Also, I have received fiction fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts.

I have a master’s degree in English and creative writing from Hollins and am currently the managing editor of that university’s literary journal, The Hollins Critic, and director of its graduate program in children’s literature. I teach writing and children’s literature.

I live with my husband, Tony Neuron, and a substantial assortment of dogs and cats, in Roanoke, Virginia.

Amanda Cockrell also publishes under Damion Hunter. ...more

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Amanda Cockrell’s books

Average rating: 4.3 · 5,902 ratings · 231 reviews · 29 distinct works

	What We Keep Is Not Always What Will Stay 3.73 avg rating — 168 ratings — published 2011 — 5 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Daughter of the Sky (Deer Dancers, Book 1) 3.92 avg rating — 78 ratings — published 1995 — 7 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Wind Caller's Children (Deer Dancers, Book 2) 3.84 avg rating — 49 ratings — published 1995 — 3 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	The Long Walk (Deer Dancers, #3) 3.95 avg rating — 42 ratings — published 1996 — 2 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	When the Horses Came (Horse Catchers Trilogy, Book 1) 3.52 avg rating — 29 ratings — published 1999	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Coyote Weather: A Novel of the 1960s 4.21 avg rating — 24 ratings — 2 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	The Legions of the Mist: A Novel of Roman Britain 3.96 avg rating — 24 ratings — published 1979	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	The Rain Child (The Horse Catcher's Trilogy, No. 3) 3.53 avg rating — 15 ratings — published 2001	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Children of the Horse: The Horse Catcher's Trilogy, Book Two (Horse Catchers Trilogy, 2) 3.43 avg rating — 14 ratings — published 2000 — 2 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Pomegranate seed: A novel 3.75 avg rating — 8 ratings — published 2001 — 3 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars

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A Virtual Bookstore. . .No, Not That One

Since I am the kind of person who can happily wander a bookstore's shelves at random for hours until someone comes and hauls me out of there, I have fallen in love with Shepherd, a new (relatively) website for book recommendations. An electronic gold mine for both readers and writers doing research, Shepherd's bookshelves are browsable by Wikipedia topic, by favorite book or author, or practically

Series by Amanda Cockrell

Deer Dancers (3 books)
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Amanda Cockrell (Goodreads Author)

3.91 avg rating — 169 ratings

The Horse Catchers Trilogy (3 books)
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Amanda Cockrell (Goodreads Author)

3.50 avg rating — 58 ratings

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Roman Record Keeping & Communications

by Paul Chrystal

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May 05, 2021 04:46PM

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Amanda Cockrell is now friends with Craig Chapman
Apr 28, 2024 02:51PM · like
Amanda Cockrell made a comment in the group Goodreads Librarians Group — Damion Hunter pseudonym books please add to Amanda Cockrell topic " Two books under my pseudonym Damion Hunter are posted to my Damion Hunter page but not to my Amanda Cockrell page. They are Empire’s Edge and Birds of ...more "
Apr 20, 2024 11:24AM

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Quotes by Amanda Cockrell (?)

“Helen stood up., "Accept that the universe is an apparently random dance. There may be a pattern to it-I think there probably is-but we can't see it from where we are.You have to let the dance happen. You'll love some of it and hate some it.”
― Amanda Cockrell, What We Keep Is Not Always What Will Stay

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“that's becuase you're my angel. Angel by name, angel by nature.”
― Amanda Cockrell, What We Keep Is Not Always What Will Stay

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