James has described the Fifty Shades trilogy as 'my midlife crisis, writ large. 'The explosion of interest has taken me completely by surprise' she said. James has spoken of her shock at the success of the books.

Beginning in August 2009, she then began to write the Fifty Shades books. She says she then discovered the phenomenon of fan fiction, and this inspired her to publish her novels as Kindle books under the pen name 'Snowqueens Icedragon'. Between January and August 2009, she wrote two such books in quick succession.

She read the novels several times over in a period of a few days, and then, for the first time in her life, sat down to write a book: basically a sequel to the Twilight novels. In late 2008, James saw the movie Twilight, and then became intensely absorbed with the novels that the movie was based on. James says the idea for the Fifty Shades trilogy began as a response to the vampire novel series Twilight. As of 2012, they reside in Brentford, West London. She married Niall Leonard, a novelist and screenwriter from Northern Ireland, in 1987. Īfter leaving university, James became a studio manager's assistant at the National Film and Television School in Beaconsfield. James was educated at the independent Pipers Corner School and at Wycombe High School, a state grammar school for girls in the town of High Wycombe in Buckinghamshire, followed by the University of Kent in South East England where she studied History. Early lifeĮrika Mitchell was born on 7 March 1963 in Willesden, Middlesex to a Chilean mother and a Scottish father who was a BBC cameraman.

The novels were subsequently adapted into the films Fifty Shades of Grey, Fifty Shades Darker, and Fifty Shades Freed. In 2012, Time magazine named her one of 'The World's 100 Most Influential People'. The Fifty Shades novels have sold over 125 million copies worldwide, over 35 million copies in the United States and set the record in the United Kingdom as the fastest selling paperback of all time. In 2019 she published her first book unconnected with the fictional world of Fifty Shades, The Mister, to negative critical reaction. Prior to this, she wrote the Twilight fan fiction 'Master of the Universe' that served as the basis for the Fifty Shades trilogy under the web name Snowqueens Icedragon. She wrote the best-selling erotic romance trilogy Fifty Shades of Grey, Fifty Shades Darker, and Fifty Shades Freed, along with the companion novels Grey: Fifty Shades of Grey as Told by Christian, Darker: Fifty Shades Darker as Told by Christian, and Freed: Fifty Shades Freed as Told by Christian.

Erika Mitchell (born 7 March 1963), known by her pen name E.

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