“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 artist’s signature and then 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, offspring, various 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 crafter, 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. 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 to throw pots.
And that’s what I’m doing now – writing and potting.
As for writing, it’s 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 astonishment, not only did I like it, other people liked it too. It’s called Seventh Son and you can download the ebook for free and form your own opinion on it.
My pottery, curiously enough, also started with a blue bowl – back in Grade 7, when I first learned to handbuild in the ceramics workshop at school and fell in love with ceramics. I still have the first bowl I made; it has a dark cobalt glaze and lives on my kitchen counter in daily use as a fruit bowl. For years I told myself that one day, I’d have my own pottery shop, and that became a reality a few years ago with a small second-hand kiln and a homemade kickwheel that my husband built me out of plywood. I’ve since upgraded to an electric wheel, but the wooden one and the technique I learned for using it made its appearance in Seventh Son and its sequels.
So it really was a blue bowl that started it all.