Biography
Samantha’s love of stories began when she was about 12—could read a whole book in a day and wrote lots of stories featuring cute ghosts. Now she writes stories about badass women, sharp weapons, and banter-y relationships.
When she isn’t writing she’s usually cuddling her dog, starting a new craft project she might not finish, or trying to figure out how video games work.
There’s a 94.6% chance you can find her curled up in a bookstore somewhere (math is not her strong suit), but if you don’t, you can find more information on her website.
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The Legionnaire
Saiden, a Blood-Cursed legionnaire—blessed by both the God of Life and Goddess of Death—is a paradox. Called both “death-bringer” and “world-ender,” she is surprisingly careful about taking lives and proving herself to be a monster. Torn between her loyalty to her queen and the need to protect her people, Saiden struggles to decide who she is going to be in a world that has already cast her aside.
Queen Loralei is hiding the fact that she’s been blessed by the God of Life while navigating the manipulative and dangerous landscape of ruling a kingdom. When she discovers a mysterious prisoner in her dungeons, she begins to unravel a complicated plot that shadows her reign and would change the course of history.
Mozare, gifted by the Goddess of Death with the powers to control shadows, is hiding lots of secrets in the dark. As Saiden’s legionnaire partner, he would do everything to protect her—even if that means killing the queen she swore to protect to save her from a fate worse than death.
With friends and enemies becoming indistinguishable from each other, can these three individuals survive long enough to fulfill their destinies without losing those closest to them, or will their missions irreparably ruin them—and possibly the entire kingdom?
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Blog Posts
The World of The Legionnaire
Before we get into the nitty-gritty of this post, I want to take another moment to share this absolutely beautiful map made by Grayson Wilde. I adored working with them on this project, and this map is everything I could have hoped for in my debut series’ map. When I was younger, my dad used to say that you could tell a book was good if there was a map at the front, so having this map felt fortuitous to
Meet the Characters of The Legionnaire
To me, a story is all about the characters. Sure we go in to books hoping plot happens, but plot is boring if it’s happening to the wrong characters. I loved crafting conflict for this story that made sense for its characters, and characters that made sense for its conflict. You can use this blog post as an introduction to the characters, or come back later and use it as a reference. And don’t forget to check out Instagram for
The Legionnaire’s Signature Drink
Hello friends! Because I hate recipe posts where you have to scroll through miles of content before you get to the recipe, the recipe is right here, but keep reading if you want to learn more about why I made some of the choices for this signature drink. Ingredients Instructions If you want to make a non-alcoholic version, add some apple juice to the mango and then continue on from step 3. And that’s the drink. If you make one
Invisible Queerness
Happy Pride! When I originally planned this post, it was going to come out only a few days before my book did. It was one in a lineup of posts that have now been delayed so that they can ramp up to my new release date on October 3rd. But there’s no better time to talk about my queer characters and my own queerness than the beginning of Pride, so I decided not to postpone this post. I hope you
The Legionnaire’s Origin Story
The next few blog posts on my page are going to be about the story process. Just a disclaimer, this is how things went for me with Book 1. They’ve already changed for other projects since then, and will undoubtedly change again in the future. If these things are helpful to you, that is lovely, but please don’t let any of it be a hindrance. The Legionnaire almost came to me in a dream. Which probably sounds weird, but hear
The Query Letter that Started it All
This is something I found super interesting to look at when I started my research before going into the query trenches, so I thought I would give anyone curious a look at the query letter I wrote before submitting to Inimitable Books LLC. Fair warning, the query letter contains minor spoilers for The Legionnaire, so continue at your own discretion. I wrote a lot of versions of this query letter before getting to the one you’ve just read. At first,