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E. L. James

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E. L. James is a very famous British author. Her real name is Erika Mitchell. She is well known for writing the Fifty Shades series. These books are romance stories written for adults. Her work became a huge multimedia franchise. This means her stories moved from books to movies.

Her books reached millions of people all over the world. In the United Kingdom, she set a record. She had the fastest selling paperback of all time. More than 150 million copies of her books have been sold. Over 35 million of those were sold in the United States.

James began her writing journey in a unique way. She first wrote stories called fan fiction. Fan fiction is when a writer creates new stories using characters from other books. She used the pen name Snowqueens Icedragon for this work. Her ideas started after she saw the Twilight movie in late 2008. She read the Twilight books many times in just a few days. This inspired her to write a sequel to those stories. Between January and August 2009, she wrote two books very quickly.

Erika Mitchell was born on March 7, 1963. She was born in a place called Willesden. Her mother was from Chile. Her father was a Scottish man who worked as a BBC cameraman. She grew up in Buckinghamshire, England. She went to Pipers Corner School and Wycombe High School. Later, she studied history at the University of Kent. After university, she worked as an assistant at a film school.

Her career saw many big changes and successes. In 2012, Time magazine named her one of the most influential people in the world. This was a very big honor for her. By August 2013, she was at the top of the Forbes list. She was one of the highest-earning authors that year. She earned about 95 million US dollars. This money came from her book sales and film rights. She also worked as a producer for the Fifty Shades films.

James has a busy life outside of her writing. She married a writer named Niall Leonard in 1987. He is a novelist and screenwriter from Northern Ireland. They have two sons together. They live in Brentford, which is in West London. She has also written other books like The Mister. That book was different from her famous series. It was published in 2019. Her work continues to be a part of modern culture.

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