Favorite Novelist: Amanda Quick

Amanda Quick is the pseudonym for romance novelist Jayne Castle, the author’s birth name. She also currently writes under her married name Jayne Ann Krentz. Amanda Quick is the name she adapted for her body of work classified as historical romances which is always set in England, though the time frame varies from the Medieval Age in “Mystique” to the Regency Period of “Scandal” and “Affair” and the Victorian Era of her historical Arcane Society Collection, which boasts five books and another five books set in contemporary times under the author’s married name.

Her style of writing as Amanda Quick is different from the style she applies to her books by any other name. Her writing is consistently intelligent as Amanda Quick, and shows traits of classic English mannerisms which adhere to the rules of propriety, as Charles Dickens would commend her for doing. She compliments Old English idioms with modish thinking so as not to alienate contemporary audiences

Her stories are plotted out to excite readers by keeping the tales moving with a succession of suspenseful twists and insightful observations from her characters. Her endings follow the traditional format for romances by making it possible for her heroes and heroines to find each other and survive the deadly situations they encounter. Her novels always end happy sating the fans need for gratification. Afterall who would remember a romance that is not satisfying in some way?

As Amanda Quick, Krentz succeeds in creating intimacy between the reader and her characters. Her language entices readers to develop a personal attachment to the characters, and instills the inclination to revisit these bonds over and over again. The phrasing and dialogue make the tales riveting, a skill which Krentz honed over a period of years.

Krentz’s journey into writing historical romantic fiction with Amanda Quick as her moniker, began in 1990 with the release of her novel “Seduction” published by Bantam Books. The novel was followed by a volley of single titled tomes which aided Krentz in building a devoted fan base as the historical romance novelist Amanda Quick.

Prior to her dossier of historical romances, Krentz was writing contemporary romances; some of which were set in futuristic galaxies and imparted paranormal qualities to her characters and metaphysical properties to her storylines. Krentz’s affinity for the sciences, paranormal abilities, and psychical currents has become the themes for many of her books using the appellation Amanda Quick, particularly her Arcane Society Collection which she has currently expanded with her 2011 release “Quicksilver”. Her curiosity for the sciences is shared by her husband Frank Krentz, an engineer whom she met while attending an university in Santa Cruz, California.

Born in Cobb, Northern California, the author was raised by her mother and has two brothers. They moved to Borrego Springs outside of San Diego where they lived for ten years. She earned a Bachelors degree in History from the University of California Santa Cruz in 1970, and later obtained a Masters degree in Library Sciences from San Jose State University to further her studies in the profession which she chose early in life, a librarian.

Krentz and her husband resided in the Virgin Islands for a time, and later lived in North Carolina where Krentz worked for a campus library at Duke University before settling in Seattle, Washington. Krentz became a member of the Advisory Board for the Writer’s Programs at the University of Washington, and established the Castle Humanities Fund at UCSC’s University Library, in addition to making contributions to a number of elementary schools in the Seattle region.

Her characters share many of the values inherent in her own nature such as working towards altruistic purposes and possessing a binding love for family. Her books under the Amanda Quick sobriquet demonstrate such noble attributes as valor, honor, chivalry, and a penchant for traditional family values. Her heroes are manly men with a soft core in the vane of characters played by Hollywood actors such as Errol Flynn and Gregory Peck. Her heroines are models of femininity with a backbone made of inner strength which enables them to go out on a limb and have the courage to face danger. Her characters live up to a certain standard that she shares with her readers and makes them endearing.

It has suited Krentz to write books using a litany of pen names, each one specific to a subgenre of romantic fiction. Originally, this was done to circumvent legal action taken by her first publisher whom she waived her right to ownership of her birth name as an author; thereby disabling her from releasing books using her real name for ten years. The ordeal caused her to adapt pen names for several of her early novels. Some of those names include: Stephanie James, Jayne Taylor, Amanda Glass, and Jayne Bentley.

Having written over a 150 romance novels with 32 of them to date making it onto the New York Times Bestseller List, Jayne Ann Krentz, aka Amanda Quick, is a prolific writer who continues to grow strong as a romance novelist. She received a Romantic Times Career Achievement Award and is the first recipient to be honored with the Romantic Times Jane Austen Award. She is also the editor and a contributor to “Dangerous Men and Adventurous Women: Romance Writers on the Appeal of the Romance”, a non-fiction essay collection that won her the prestigious Susan Koppelman Award for Feminist Studies.

Krentz continues to enrich her reader’s minds and indulge their fantasies with her historical romantic tales under the pen name Amanda Quick. Her fans encourage her to continue this line, and she never fails to bring it with a new installment released each year since 1990. If the world was more like an Amanda Quick novel, everyone could rest easier.

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