Featured Interview With Samantha Cross
Tell us a little about yourself. Where were you raised? Where do you live now?
I was born in a very small town in Connecticut called Putnam, and when I was two years old my parents moved back to their home state of Michigan, where I was raised and still reside. Michigan often gets a bad rep, but it can be quite beautiful, and because of that most of my books take place there. I’m a single gal, unless you include my marriage to writing and my 12 year old cat Loki.
At what age did you realize your fascination with books? When did you start writing?
Without realizing it, I have been telling stories my entire life. As a child I never saw playing with Barbies as a pastime, but a tool for dramatic storytelling. Every doll was an important, colorful character, and my dollhouse the perfect place for an intense rooftop fight. Once I outgrew it, and could form proper sentences, I turned to writing and never turned back.
Who are your favorite authors to read? What is your favorite genre to read. Who Inspires you in your writings?
There isn’t one single genre I seek out. I’m the type to check out a book blurb and judge it by what is interesting to me. If it sounds like an exciting or unique story I will dive right in regardless of a genre. It’s the same as my writing. If an idea strikes me, I go for it instead of limiting myself to what I should or shouldn’t do.
A lot of my inspiration actually comes from music. Obviously books have had a hand in my inspiration, but there’s nothing like sitting down at a laptop, slipping on your headphones and letting the words flow.
Tell us a little about your latest book?
This story was actually based on a dream I had in early 2008. A girl had traveled to a woodsy neighborhood where werewolves were hiding in the shadows. I was up at 3am scribbling down every detail I could remember, but it took me years to actually write it because I couldn’t decide on a tone. Then one day it all clicked, and I wrote it in the summer of 2014. It was then in March of 2015 that I received an acceptance to be published by Summer Solstice Publishing, where I changed the name to Lunar Rampage.
It’s a mystery, it’s horror, and it’s extremely quirky. For those who have read it, the portion they comment on the most is the humor. Here is the blurb for my werewolf novel, Lunar Rampage:
Photographer, animal lover, and unfortunately for the summer, the new girl in town, Cora Nash considers herself a simple girl. Renovating and living at her grandmother’s house seemed like a good idea, until events took a turn for the bizarre. Garbage cans viciously torn into, howls from the woods, wild animals behaving erratically, and an ominous warning from the good looking bad boy, “Stay out the forest.”
This seemingly normal town hides a mysterious and violent secret. When one of the townsfolk up and disappears in the forest, leaving nothing but a pair of shoes, Cora is the only person willing to investigate. The answer, however, is nothing she could have ever anticipated, when under a full moon she finds herself face to face with a… werewolf.
If werewolves don’t exist, where did it come from? And… more importantly, who could it be?
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