Meet Amy Weinland Daughters | Author & Freelance Writer

We had the good fortune of connecting with Amy Weinland Daughters and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Amy Weinland, do you have any habits that you feel contribute to your effectiveness?
Persistence. I tend to never give up, not because I believe so much in myself but because I’m somewhat delusional. When I begin a project, and even when things aren’t going as planned, I have flashes of the glorious way it will turn out. Even if the deck is obviously stacked against me, I can see a finish line that exceeds all of my expectations. It means I won’t quit simply because I’m convinced it’s going to end ever so well.

Let’s talk shop? Tell us more about your career, what can you share with our community?
Though I’ve always dabbled in writing, it became my profession by accident. My husband’s job relocated us from Houston to England in 2002, a move that meant I took a forced pause from my career in purchasing. With three years to do with what I wished, I took history classes at the local university and began to write. When I discovered there was a market for my work, a new career path came to light.

While I’ve written content for a variety of sources, my main freelance gig has been college football. I spent from 2012-15 as a national columnist covering college football for Bleacher Report and have written a weekly column for FBSchedules.com since 2014.

My first book – “You Cannot Mess This Up: A True Story That Never Happened” (She Writes Press, 2019) – is based on an idea that I toyed around with for several years before actually committing to it. I don’t know that I ever seriously thought it would be published. As a history lover and a person who loves to make people laugh, I wanted to write a humorous time travel book. So, I wrote myself back to my own childhood in the suburbs of north Houston.

In the story, the adult me in 2016 unintentionally time travels back to 1978. Upon my arrival, I get dropped off at my childhood home to spend Thanksgiving. There to greet me (I was posing as a distant cousin stuck in town over the holiday) were my parents (who were suddenly the same age as me), my siblings and my ten-year-old self.

Magically, and quite fortuitously, my funny time travel book became a catharsis that changed my actual, non-fiction life. As it turns out, there are lots of feelings associated with personal time travel.

“You Cannot Mess This Up” was nominated for and won several awards including being selected as the Silver Winner for Humor in the 2019 Foreword INDIES and the Overall Winner for Humor/Comedy in the 2020 Next Generation Indie Awards.

My second book – “Dear Dana: That Time I Went Crazy and Wrote All 580 of My Facebook Friends a Handwritten Letter” (She Writes Press, May 2022) chronicles an amazing, almost unbelievable adventure I went on beginning in 2014 when I reconnected with my old camp pal Dana on Facebook.

Though we hadn’t had any contact in thirty years, it didn’t take us long to catch up—and when I learned that Dana’s son Parker was doing a second stint at St. Jude battling cancer, I was suddenly inspired to begin writing the pair weekly letters.

When Parker died, I—not knowing what else to do—continued to write Dana. Eventually, Dana wrote back, and we became pen pals, sharing things through the mail that we had never shared before. The richness of the experience left me wondering something: If my life could be so changed by someone I considered “just a Facebook friend,” what would happen if I wrote all my Facebook friends a letter?

Though I’m super humbled that I get to share the story of “Dear Dana” – I’m even more excited about the positive impact it can have on our fractured culture.

The biggest challenge I’ve encountered in my writing journey is something I share with virtually every individual who has a creative aim – rejection. While I continue to struggle with it from time to time, I’ve made significant progress in separating the emotional stake I have in every word I write and the reality that when you sell something it’s a business transaction where the buyer does (and should have) the right of refusal.

Let’s say your best friend was visiting the area and you wanted to show them the best time ever. Where would you take them? Give us a little itinerary – say it was a week long trip, where would you eat, drink, visit, hang out, etc.
If you’re coming to Houston, the first order of business is eating. And while H-town offers a dizzying array of cuisine from around the globe, the trifecta of “must eats” is Tex-Mex, steak, and BBQ. The best place to sample each of these delicacies depends on your host, because everyone has a favorite among the generous number of quality options in each category. If I was driving the tour bus, we’d visit Lupe Tortilla for beef fajitas, stop at Pappas Brothers Steakhouse for the meat-fest, and call on Demeris for the best BBQ in town.

For entertainment, it depends on what time of year you’re visiting. If you come in February, we’d do the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo – the largest such event in the world. We’d take in the actual rodeo, see a performer from the star-studded list of artists, do the carnival, and see the exhibits. Most importantly, we’d take special care to get tickets to the BBQ Cookoff, perhaps the best single event on the Houston calendar.

Though there are lots of sports on offer – the Rockets, Texans and Houston Cougars are all top-tier events – Houston is a baseball town with a football problem, so we’d have to visit Minute Maid to watch our beloved Astros. If you’ve never experienced college football tradition at its finest College Station, home of the Texas A&M Aggies, is only an hour and a half up the road.

Then there’s the wide variety of first-class museums and shows – from natural history, to fine art, to theatre and symphony – Houston has it all. If I was doing the planning, I’d ensure that the stunning Bayou Bend Collection was at the top of your list. Then I’d drive you an hour or so north, to Huntsville, and we’d tour the museums that tell the unique story of Sam Houston. Finally, we’d visit NASA, where I would take you to see the Apollo Mission Control Room that’s been restored as a museum.

Houston – we have an itinerary.

Shoutout is all about shouting out others who you feel deserve additional recognition and exposure. Who would you like to shoutout?
Camp Olympia, Trinity, Texas

I have been closely associated with Camp Olympia since 1980. I attended as a camper, worked as a counselor and full-time staff member and my husband and I sent both of our children to Olympia. No institution or group has had more positive impact on my than has Camp Olympia. It was there that I learned not only to believe in myself but to put others first.

Website: https://www.amydaughters.com/

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