About

“AMO” means “I love” in Latin. It also happens to be the initials of my name, Angelika M. Offenwanger, which is why I took to using it as my internet handle around various places. Amo Vitam – I love life – is a statement of purpose. I do love life, quite a lot, even though sometimes I forget it in the midst of the heaviness which just being alive on this earth can engender. Life’s a funny old thing – there’s so much to laugh at, to cry about, to muse on, and to just enjoy.

In my off-screen life, I live in small-town Western Canada with my husband, daughter, three sons, two cats, a large number of dust bunnies, and of course my stuffed bear, Steve. I’ve been a nanny, a librarian, a homeschooler, a student, a soap maker, a painter, a potter, an editor, and of course the general-dog’s-body-chief-cook-and-bottle-washer that being a mom & homemaker entails (with the latter being the best, worst, most exhausting and most rewarding of all the roles I’ve fulfilled in my life). In between all of that, I got myself a couple of university degrees by distance ed, and in the process learned how to write.

And that’s what I’m doing now – writing. Blog posts, e-mails, short stories, the very occasional piece of poetry, and novels. I’ve been a voracious reader from the day I was six years old and first picked up Little Lord Fauntleroy, but I never thought I could be a writer myself, until the day in November 2011 when I sat down and typed out: “It was the blue pottery bowl that started it all.” Thirty days later, I had written a book, and to my great astonishment, not only did I like it, other people liked it too. It’s called Seventh Son. So it really was the blue bowl that started it all.