Profile: Amanda Amos

About This Author

I grew up in Wallsend, Newcastle upon Tyne where this novel starts. As a youngster I devoured Catherine Cookson books, as well as Hans Christian Andersen and the odd Mills and Boon. However I was always drawn back to Historical novels. Writing and Reading have always been a passion of mine. At the age of twenty I moved to Birmingham . After having my two children, I found myself unable to work and had plenty of time on my hands. My dream of writing, which had started on an English course, started to build within me and I decided to write a novel. Seven years later I eventually finished it. Then one day I heard about a plaque being placed on the cemetery wall of St. Peters church in Wallsend. On it was a dedication to the 102 men and boys who were killed in the explosion at the Wallsend Colliery disaster. I started to research exactly what had happened and discovered me and my younger brother, often played on the land where the coal mine had once been. We never knew about the horrors and tragedies that had played out below our feet and from that 'Far from the Candles Flame' was born..