Author Interview (and a Giveaway!): Amanda Dykes & All the Lost Places

I am absolutely thrilled and honored today to chat with the exquisitely-talented Amanda Dykes about her new novel, All the Lost Places!

Amanda Dykes is a drinker of tea, dweller of redemption, and spinner of hope-filled tales who spends most days chasing wonder and words with her family. She’s the winner of the 2020 Christy Award Book of the Year, a Booklist 2019 Top Ten title, and the winner of an INSPY Award for her debut novel, Whose Waves These Are. She’s also the author of Set the Stars Alight (a Christy Award finalist), Yours Is the Night (recipient of the Kipp Award, Christy Award finalist), All the Lost Places (starred reviews from Booklist, Library Journal, and Foreword), and three novellas. Find her online at amandadykes.com.

ALL THE LOST PLACES by Amanda Dykes
GENRE: Inspirational Historical Fiction
PUBLISHER: Bethany House
RELEASE DATE: December 13, 2022
PAGES: 402

When a baby is discovered floating in a basket along the canals of 1807 Venice, a guild of artisans takes him in and raises him as a son, skilled in each of their trades. Although the boy, Sebastian Trovato, has wrestled with questions of his origins, it isn’t until a woman washes ashore his lagoon island that answers begin to emerge. In hunting down his story, Sebastian must make choices that could alter not just his own future, but that of the beloved floating city.

Decades later,Daniel Goodman is given a fresh start in life as the century turns. Hoping to redeem a past laden in regrets, he is sent on an assignment from California to Venice to procure and translate a rare book. There, he discovers a mystery wrapped in the pages of that filigree-covered volume. With the help of Vittoria, a bookshop keeper, Daniel finds himself in a web of shadows, secrets, and discoveries carefully kept within the stones and canals of the ancient city . . . and the mystery of the man whose story the book does not finish: Sebastian Trovato.

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Hi dearest Amanda! Welcome back to the blog!

Amanda: Don’t make me choose! I almost always have an audiobook going in the car, and music is usually on if I’m doing chores at home or writing at a coffee shop or library (I always have my headphones handy for that).

Carrie: a road trip is about the only time i can do an audiobook, but music is almost always on for me. That, and Murder She Wrote reruns LOL

Amanda: Mountains! I write about the ocean a lot and while it’s breathtaking, I’m a mountain girl through and through. Give me a mountain lake over the ocean any day. This will be reflected in my next book (my W.I.P.) . . . That’s a secret hint at the setting I haven’t revealed yet!

Carrie: oooo yay!!!!!! I can’t wait!

Amanda: Board game! Recent favorites are Ticket to Ride (actually that’s a perpetual favorite), Snake Oil, Sequence, Poetry for Neanderthals, Hand to Hand Wombat.

Carrie: we love Ticket to Ride!

Amanda: Print. Especially if it’s nonfiction; I track with it better if I’m able to underline and physically scribble notes and dog-ear pages (forgive me!).

Carrie: I’m with you (on the print for nonfiction, the underlining & the dog-eared pages)

Q: Around here I like to say that reading is my superpower. If YOU had a superpower, what would it be?

Amanda: Stalling on answering this question, haha! I’m not sure . . . maybe sentimentality? I don’t know if that’s a superpower or not, or even if that’s the right word for it, but I have a tendency to look at things and see them in metaphor or as symbols of a bigger story (like Venice as a symbol of redemption in All the Lost Places). For better or for worse, I find story in everything.

Carrie: ‘Story’ is definitely your superpower!

Q: When you walk into a bookstore, where do you head first?

Amanda: The children’s section. It’s always been this way, even before I had kids. There’s so much joy there, and I’m captivated by that whole world: different illustration styles, whimsical words, captivating stories, classics, and new tales. I love it!

Carrie: right? Me too! I can easily spend hours in the children’s book section.

Q: Writing spaces are as diverse as authors and books. Where is your favorite space to write?

Amanda: Life is such that I write anywhere and everywhere. My “office” is an obscure basement hallway that we’ve turned into a library by lining one of the walls with shelves (complete with a rolling ladder!). But my favorite place I’ve ever written is probably sitting on the ground on a tiny island (accessed by quaint footbridge) in a pond in the Sierras, where I was visited by ducks and got to watch deer and the morning mist rising from the water, and words make their way onto the screen.

Carrie: that sounds so magical!

Q: Which of your main characters in All the Lost Places is most like you?

Amanda: While the character of Daniel isn’t necessarily like me as far as character traits go, his big struggle (an artist who can’t create art—he can no longer envision things) paralleled my struggle during a season as a writer who couldn’t write (more on that in the author’s note). It was a parallel I never expected. Daniel and his struggle were all planned out before I ever entered my strange season of writing challenges!

Carrie: oh wow! I love when God works like that ♥

Q: Some authors like to hide little things in their stories. Is there anything you have hidden in All the Lost Places?

Amanda: Readers of Whose Waves These Are, be on the lookout for a cameo appearance from the town in the Alps where Annie Bliss had her “great failure”! There are a few other little hidden things tucked in, but I’ll let you all discover them for yourselves.

Carrie: yay!!!

Q: What do you most want readers to take away from All the Lost Places?

Amanda: Hope. The “lost places” are not empty places . . . there is purpose, comfort, redemption, and hope to be found. Venice as a setting embodies this in so many ways.

Carrie: amen ♥

Thank you so much for taking time to talk with me! 🙂 Before we say goodbye for today, tell us what‘s coming up next for you.

Amanda: For the first time in many years, I’m returning to American soil on the story front. After traveling on page from the wave-tossed ships of the English Channel (Set the Stars Alight), to the trenches, forests, and villages of France (Yours Is the Night) to the canals and isle of the Venetian lagoon (All the Lost Places) . . . I’m coming home to the mountains! And that’s about all I’ll say about that for now. I’ve been researching and brainstorming this story since January 2022 and am excited to be writing it. Stay tuned for the setting announcement in the months to come!

Bethany House is offering a print copy of All the Lost Places to one of my readers! (US only. Void where prohibited by law or logistics.) This giveaway is subject to Reading Is My SuperPower’s giveaway policies which can be found here. Enter via the Rafflecopter form below.

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What about you? What makes you want to read All the Lost Places by Amanda Dykes?