No one could possibly think that now. At 15, Atwater-Rhodes, who has graduated from cats to vampires, is a published author who has sold two books to Delacorte Press and has a budding reputation as an Anne Rice for young adults and teens. Atwater-Rhodes's first title, In the Forests of the Night, centers on a female vampire named Risika, who is actually more than 300 years old but appears to be about 17. "I just wrote it for the sake of writing it," says Atwater-Rhodes. "Vampires just interest me. They have more abilities than humans."
Well, more than some humans. In addition to writing fiction, the precocious Atwater-Rhodes plays the piano, composes songs and poetry, collects shells and minerals, and sings soprano in the chorus at Concord-Carlisle High School in Concord, Mass., where she also wields an épée on the fencing team. She is not your everyday adolescent. "All the stereotypical teenage things," she says, "I don't engage in them. Wandering around the mall and giggling at magazines doesn't interest me. I've never enjoyed shopping. I detest shoes."
Instead of grazing at the mall, Amy and a few pals like to gather in what they call a "candlelight circle" to celebrate pagan holidays and full moons. "That's where a lot of my ideas for my writing come from," says Atwater-Rhodes. The person she especially credits with warping her mind, though, is her mother, Susan, a high school vice principal, who introduced her to the horror canon, from Dracula to Stephen King, even while reminding her that it was just fiction. "She always made it very clear," says Amy, "that, you know, it's not nice to go over and chop up your neighbor."
Along with Susan, Atwater-Rhodes lives in a brown colonial house in Concord with her father, William, an economist, her sister Rachel, 18, and cousin Nathan Plummer, 16—plus two dogs, two Siamese cats and a pair of ferrets. According to Rachel, Amy always had a busy imagination. "I'm three years older," says Rachel, "but she was the one leading the playacting."
Along with the Meow Stripe chronicles, she was also writing about dinosaurs. Then she shifted to sci-fi and around 8 or 9 bit into Christopher Pike's The Last Vampire. "I really liked the way he portrayed the character's voice," says Atwater-Rhodes. "I tried to mimic it."
She aped him well. After Amy finished writing In the Forests of the Night two years ago, a friend raved about her talent to English teacher Tom Hart, who read the novel and was knocked out by it. "It was clearly the work of a real writer," he says. A part-time literary agent, Hart called Amy on her 14th birthday last year—she was just opening her presents in the kitchen—to say he had sold the book. "Amy almost fell out of the chair," remembers Susan. "She had huge eyes like she was in a cartoon."
In school, Atwater-Rhodes says she has always felt a bit like an outsider. But at last year's final assembly the principal "talked about how we had the next Anne Rice among us," she remembers. "I was shocked when he called me up. Afterwards, everyone wanted me to sign their yearbooks."
Tom Hart says there is "no limit to how popular Amy can become." For her part, Amy expects to go on to college—and be mostly unchanged by fame. "Even-if I earn millions," she says, "I will probably do the average things, like live in a dorm and work at McDonald's." She pauses to reconsider. "Probably not McDonald's."
William Plummer
Tom Duffy in Concord
- Contributors:
- Tom Duffy.
Saved by the Bell Reunion
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