Hi! I’m Amber. AKA A.R. Hadley! I’m a self-published author, energy worker, mom, loyal human, and friend. I like to swear and meditate and I really love Superman (Christopher Reeve is the bestest!). Currently, I reside close to the ocean and am fascinated by people, classic films, and connection.
I’ve always found comfort expressing myself through words.
Writing since I was a kid, I won first place in my fourth-grade English class, after creating a mystery-themed fictional story. I penned poetry as an angst-filled teenager and even wrote for a local paper (do we still know what those are, kids?) for a short time in the early 2000s. However, it was in 2014 that I once again tried my hand at fiction. The inspiration came in the form of years of suppression of my voice — it would no longer accept the silencing it had endured. The two stories themselves, the ones I drafted in 2014, started with two dreams, literal dreams. My characters, Cal and Jack, both came to me in dreams.
Funny, isn’t it? The universe knows exactly what it’s doing. Our only job is to pay attention to its whisperings, to lean into them.
The writing was therapeutic in ways I hadn’t dreamed (lol) it would be. And I loved every minute of it — even the days when I threw my phone across the room in a panic! I didn’t look for this path, this path found me.
My early influences were film and television, the power of observing those around me — and probably writers like Judy Blume. The fabulous dramedy Moonlighting (that I first watched at the ripe age of seven) surely impacted the way I see men and women. It’s still one of my favorite television shows to this day! Moonlighting’s writing is a masterclass in creating tension and crafting expert dialogue. Later, I immersed myself in the world of classic films from the 30s, 40s, 50s, and 60s. Then I found writers Ernest Hemingway and David Foster Wallace, and the TV show Mad Men. There’s a theme taking shape here: character driven stories. Peeling back the layers of human skin. Creating characters people can’t stop thinking about even if they’re not quite sure how they relate to them…
My desire is that people feel, not think, when they read my words. I want the reader to feel a comfortable sense of uncomfortableness. Emotions tucked neatly away now being called home. Desires they didn’t know they had coming out to play. Forgotten dreams. To discover things that unite us and make us human.
To know we’re not alone.
“If a writer of prose knows enough about what he is writing about, he may omit things that he knows and the reader, if the writer is writing truly enough, will have a feeling of those things as strongly as though the writer had stated them. The dignity of movement of an iceberg is due to only one-eighth of it being above water.” – Ernest Hemingway
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Title: Moonlight Drive
Author: A.R. Hadley
Genre: Literary Fiction
Book Blurb:
A captivating novel about the rocky beginnings of a girl on her way to music stardom and the wild 1980s all-male rock group she follows — through struggles and addiction and love. An epic tale showcasing ways in which the human spirit triumphs and how dreams never truly die!
“I hadn’t read more than a few pages and was hooked, like a junkie craving her next fix. Moonlight Drive is a heartbreaking story of first loves, making it in the music industry, the lure of addiction, betrayal, pain, jealousy, groupies, following your dreams, and so much more.
Get ready, readers, for Moonlight Drive is your next addiction.” – N.N. Heaven The magazines didn’t do him justice.
Not long after running away from home, Daniella Isabella joins Moonlight Drive’s 1985 Live and Wired tour, hoping her long-lost friend, Nick, will remember her.
He’s finally made it — just like he promised. He’s the bassist for one of the biggest rock bands in the world.
Only, he’s reinvented himself and doesn’t recognize his childhood sweetheart. Nicki Quick has been seduced by the decadent lifestyle of the music scene of the eighties, lost in a haze of sex, drugs, and rock ‘n’ roll. And to Nicki, Dani is just another chick in a long line of groupies.
He soon finds she isn’t like the other girls, though. Music runs through her veins — it’s part of her soul. She’s a songwriter. A dreamer. A girl determined to make it in a boys’ world.
This is the story of two musicians. A boy and a girl. A man and a woman. Two people who learn that being lost is sometimes the same as being found.
Author Note: Moonlight Drive is a 57,000-word novel. More literary fiction, less romance. The characters and their intense and realistic actions drive the plot. Contains content that may trigger some readers.
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Author Biography:
A.R. Hadley writes imperfectly perfect sentences by the light of her iPhone.
She loves the ocean.
Chocolate.
Her children.
And Cary Grant.
She annoys those darling little children by quoting lines from Back to the Future, but despite her knowledge of eighties and nineties pop culture, she was actually meant to live alongside the Lost Generation after the Great War and write a mediocre novel while drinking absinthe with Hemingway. Instead, find her sipping unsweet tea near a beautiful garden as she weaves fictional tales of love and connection amid reality.
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Title: The Truth in the Lie
Author: A.R. Hadley
Genre: Literary Fiction
Book Blurb:
The Truth in the Lie is an unforgettable story of a woman’s road to authenticity, the lies she tells herself on the way there, and the lengths in which she’ll go to keep feelings from unravelling her new start in life.
“A.R. Hadley’s incisive words dissect the character's psyche like a surgeon cutting out a tumor. Identify the spot, slice it open, and trace the blade's tip along the unhealthy growth.” – Goodreads Reviewer
She writes to make you uncomfortable…
When thirty-eight-year-old, divorced, and childless Bree moves back home to Florida, she begins to write a fictional novella that forces her to confront her deepest fears and darkest secrets.
Bree also finds herself in the middle of a haunting love triangle. She’s a bartender at a local restaurant where she soon faces her attraction to both her overbearing boss and the widowed chef.
With intense themes of connection, loss, and self-discovery, The Truth in the Lie is a powerful and emotionally charged novel that will have you hooked until the very end.
You might think you know the truth...
…but are you falling for the lie?
Author Note: The Truth in the Lie is a 59,000-word literary novel. A tale of connection, not romance. The characters and their intense and realistic actions drive the plot. Contains graphic content that may trigger some readers.
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Title: The Flyaways
Author: A.R. Hadley
Genre: Literary Fiction
Book Blurb:
“A.R. Hadley writes with flawless beauty in this forbidden teacher-student love story. Poetic and troubled, the characters will pull you into their tangled and messy web, fraught with angst and a push-pull chemistry that burns up the pages.” – Author Sierra Hill
An affair. Its consequences. The price of freedom.
Set in Daytona Beach and spanning two semesters of college, is the story of bright, young student, Holly Kerr, her beautiful Professor Kelley Nicolo and the forbidden games they play when they fall in love … despite his marriage and their vast differences.
Or maybe they’re more alike than they realize. Souls searching day and night, never resting … flyaways lost and looking for a place to land.
Emotional and with no guarantee of a happy ending, The Flyaways is a quick and satisfying saga, one that will leave readers breathless, feeling as though they’ve broken into a million little pieces, then been glued back together due to the sheer force of this explosive connection.
Author Note: The Flyaways is a 30,000-word novella. Literary fiction, not romance. The characters and their intense and realistic actions drive the plot. Contains graphic content that may trigger some readers.
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Title: The Ocean in His Veins
Author: A.R. Hadley
Genre: Literary Fiction
Book Blurb
He’s a surfer. A loner. A man on a quest to rid himself of pesky feelings.
After his grandfather passes away, Cal Prescott begins to see life differently.
Money wants his attention, women beckon, and the pursuit of success becomes a cycle he can’t seem to break.
Follow Cal from age sixteen to forty-five, from 1985 to 2014, from the tangerine fields of Ojai to the neon streets of Miami Beach — from being ready to take on the world to hitting the bottom of the sea.
Cal spends half his life waiting for the perfect wave to break over the horizon, looking for comfort, searching for peace — and he’ll chase every last drop of water ... until he finds release.
Author Note: Part of the two-book series: The Ocean Series. The Ocean in His Veins may be read as a companion to the main title Where the Ocean Meets the Sky or as a standalone. Please be advised that reading this story first may change the way Cal is initially perceived in the latter book. This can be good or bad, depending on the reader.
Literary fiction, not romance. The characters and their intense and realistic actions drive the plot. 76,000-words. The Ocean in His Veins details Cal’s life from age sixteen to forty-five. The story ends the night he meets Annie in 2014. Contains graphic content that may trigger some readers.
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Title: Fireflies
Author: A.R. Hadley
Genre: Erotica/Queer/Literary Fiction
Book Blurb:
“This is intelligent smut — Fireflies has gone to top of my league for its gritty realism and haunting originality.” – Polli P
Three’s company, but is four a crowd?
Mike and Dane are a bisexual couple living the good life in a tucked-away Florida beach town.
But things start to shift when Dane announces he’d like to add a third to their seven-year relationship. A woman.
What ensues is a journey neither man expected. And after a few rather interesting hookups, two women enter the picture, forever changing the course of their lives.
Will the men get everything they’ve always wanted? Or will their polyamorous relationship prove to be more than they can abide?
Author Note: Fireflies is a 45,000-word novel. Part of The Physical Collection: a series of sexy standalones by A.R. Hadley. More literary fiction, less romance. The characters and their intense and realistic actions drive the plot. Contains graphic content that may trigger some readers.
Buy Links (including Goodreads and BookBub)