ABOUT ME
I'm Samantha (Sam), a writer from Southern California.
I've been writing creatively since I learned the alphabet.
When I was young--an only child in a toxic environment--I discovered the written word. I read to escape. I wrote to put my thoughts someplace. Writing became and has since been a way of life for me. Writing what I observe, writing when I'm happy, writing to cope, writing to connect.
After filling up notebooks, then journal after journal as a teenager, and after writing hundreds of papers in college, marriage and motherhood found me without a creative outlet right around the time the internet was exploding with blogs and literary magazines. I wrote and submitted one thing--recipe, personal essay, article--then another. I made writer friends and found communities of people just like myself; writers without many bylines who just loved and needed to create.
I started out with regular columns, then became an editor, a senior editor, and finally Editor-in-Chief of Mom Writer's Literary Magazine. I wrote for local press (San Diego Family Magazine, The East County Californian) as well as appearing in national publications (Parents, Parenting).
In 2007, I published an essayistic cookbook called Little Grapes on the Vine with an award-winning independent press. I promoted the book locally and nationally, appearing on daytime tv's iVillage.
My heart, however, lies in fiction. As much as I loved the community; meeting and interviewing extraordinary people and covering all types of events (younger me would never have believed she got a press pass for San Diego Comic-Con), as much as I love telling the story behind a recipe or reporting on what's important right now, I am a writer of stories. I will always come home to the world of make believe.
Since 2008, I've been writing novels and attending as many writer's conferences, workshops, and classes as my life would allow. I am currently querying a bewitched, romantic psychological thriller, I Was Just Thinking About You. I conceived this debut novel in 2018, and have been writing/self-editing/revising it since. It works as a stand alone book, but I took the story into a series. I wrote a total of four books (and started a fifth) during the pandemic while working full-time from home, with three children remote schooling, while caring for my elderly father.
I wrote and revised I Was Just Thinking About You before work, on lunch breaks, and after work. I wrote it in the waiting rooms of doctor's offices. I wrote in the car during my children's soccer practices. I wrote in my head while falling asleep, waking up in the morning, and while driving. I was not as disciplined as I was possessed by this novel that I was--and am--determined to see in print. All of this, however, led to burn out, anxiety, and depression, during a time when the world as we knew it abruptly stopped, turned upside down, changed, and rebooted itself.
My doctors prescribed anti-anxiety medications, which helped tremendously. Unexpectedly, the meds also shook loose decades of repressed memories of abuse, inflicted by those close to me since childhood. For the past five years, I've been in regular therapy (psychotherapy, IFS, CBT, EMDR, ketamine) processing complex trauma and integrating years of related incidents, so I may live my creative life to the fullest while caring for myself and those in my orbit.
While some of my experiences are fictionalized in I Was Just Thinking About You, this work-in-progress was still not a sufficient container for the memories, nightmares, flashbacks and recalls that (re)surfaced in therapy.
In October of 2024, I created a Substack. It took me a while to figure it out and find my footing, but my old blogging brain picked up momentum and I have been posting regularly. Words That Got Away is my handle. I cross-post on Medium as well.
Most recently, I have created Templates for Healing © which I sell here on my website, and also on Gumroad. My intent with these templates is to prompt recovery for just about anything that has caused pain and suffering. I am always creating and offering new templates, in between writing on Substack, and revising/querying I Was Just Thinking About You.
When I'm not creating, I'm distracting myself otherwise; reading, spoiling my rescued American Staffordshire Terrier rotten, gardening, kitchen-witching, enjoying the Pacific Ocean, or planning a trip (I have a Sagittarius Sun, Leo Rising, and Gemini Moon--I'm generally pretty restless).
Thank you for your interest in me and my work! I'd love to hear from you.
When I was young--an only child in a toxic environment--I discovered the written word. I read to escape. I wrote to put my thoughts someplace. Writing became and has since been a way of life for me. Writing what I observe, writing when I'm happy, writing to cope, writing to connect.
After filling up notebooks, then journal after journal as a teenager, and after writing hundreds of papers in college, marriage and motherhood found me without a creative outlet right around the time the internet was exploding with blogs and literary magazines. I wrote and submitted one thing--recipe, personal essay, article--then another. I made writer friends and found communities of people just like myself; writers without many bylines who just loved and needed to create.
I started out with regular columns, then became an editor, a senior editor, and finally Editor-in-Chief of Mom Writer's Literary Magazine. I wrote for local press (San Diego Family Magazine, The East County Californian) as well as appearing in national publications (Parents, Parenting).
In 2007, I published an essayistic cookbook called Little Grapes on the Vine with an award-winning independent press. I promoted the book locally and nationally, appearing on daytime tv's iVillage.
My heart, however, lies in fiction. As much as I loved the community; meeting and interviewing extraordinary people and covering all types of events (younger me would never have believed she got a press pass for San Diego Comic-Con), as much as I love telling the story behind a recipe or reporting on what's important right now, I am a writer of stories. I will always come home to the world of make believe.
Since 2008, I've been writing novels and attending as many writer's conferences, workshops, and classes as my life would allow. I am currently querying a bewitched, romantic psychological thriller, I Was Just Thinking About You. I conceived this debut novel in 2018, and have been writing/self-editing/revising it since. It works as a stand alone book, but I took the story into a series. I wrote a total of four books (and started a fifth) during the pandemic while working full-time from home, with three children remote schooling, while caring for my elderly father.
I wrote and revised I Was Just Thinking About You before work, on lunch breaks, and after work. I wrote it in the waiting rooms of doctor's offices. I wrote in the car during my children's soccer practices. I wrote in my head while falling asleep, waking up in the morning, and while driving. I was not as disciplined as I was possessed by this novel that I was--and am--determined to see in print. All of this, however, led to burn out, anxiety, and depression, during a time when the world as we knew it abruptly stopped, turned upside down, changed, and rebooted itself.
My doctors prescribed anti-anxiety medications, which helped tremendously. Unexpectedly, the meds also shook loose decades of repressed memories of abuse, inflicted by those close to me since childhood. For the past five years, I've been in regular therapy (psychotherapy, IFS, CBT, EMDR, ketamine) processing complex trauma and integrating years of related incidents, so I may live my creative life to the fullest while caring for myself and those in my orbit.
While some of my experiences are fictionalized in I Was Just Thinking About You, this work-in-progress was still not a sufficient container for the memories, nightmares, flashbacks and recalls that (re)surfaced in therapy.
In October of 2024, I created a Substack. It took me a while to figure it out and find my footing, but my old blogging brain picked up momentum and I have been posting regularly. Words That Got Away is my handle. I cross-post on Medium as well.
Most recently, I have created Templates for Healing © which I sell here on my website, and also on Gumroad. My intent with these templates is to prompt recovery for just about anything that has caused pain and suffering. I am always creating and offering new templates, in between writing on Substack, and revising/querying I Was Just Thinking About You.
When I'm not creating, I'm distracting myself otherwise; reading, spoiling my rescued American Staffordshire Terrier rotten, gardening, kitchen-witching, enjoying the Pacific Ocean, or planning a trip (I have a Sagittarius Sun, Leo Rising, and Gemini Moon--I'm generally pretty restless).
Thank you for your interest in me and my work! I'd love to hear from you.