Spotlight: Samantha Combs

Welcome, Samantha Combs, author of the new release Waterdancer! Thanks for joining me today, so honored to be helping you celebrate your newest release!

What inspired you to write this book?

It was actually an idea from one of my kids.  The best ideas I get come from them going, “Hey, Mom, what if... (fill in the blank)…”  My daughter asked me wouldn’t it be cool if she could breathe underwater.  I told her she would need to be a fish.  She asked, “Like a mermaid?”  My son busted in with, “No, a sea creature.  That’s way cooler than a stupid mermaid.”  That’s all it took.

Kids really do have good imaginations. Mine are constantly offering ideas for stories too!

How did you come up with the title?

Same conversation with my kids.  Daughter: If I was a mermaid I would dance in the water all day long and twirl my pretty green tail around.

I love the title! She did well on that one!

Is there a message in your novel that you want readers to grasp?

I don’t usually do “message” books on purpose, but if this one has one, it’s that love can help you move mountains if it’s true and real.

What are your current projects?

I’m writing a YA contemporary and also a new YA paranormal, on the dystopian side.  I am also shopping my newest book, a dark YA paranormal called The Deadlies.  A group of Southern girls at an antebellum prep academy become possessed by the demons of the seven deadly sins.  And only one girl can save them.  Only she doesn’t know it yet.

That is an intriguing premise—sounds really creepy!

Is there anything you find particularly challenging in your writing?

The business of writing is challenging.  Writing is awesome.  Marketing, production, pimping… not so much.

Who is your favorite author and what is it that really strikes you about their work?

It may seem cliché, but I have always loved Stephen King.  He has a way of introducing you to the paranormal, the supernatural and extraordinary in such an ordinary way.  He takes you by the hand and leads you into the weird and odd casually, and long before you realize where you are going.  By then, it’s too late to leave.

From the Back Cover:

As if high school isn’t hard enough, try being Bailey Wasserman.  Try being the new girl in town, navigating a touchy relationship with your flighty mom’s rich new husband in a brand new town he’s just moved you to.  Add to that finding out that your father, a semi-pro surfer who’s just mysteriously re-entered your life after nearly fifteen years of silence, is half sea-creature and you’re about to inherit that particular gene on your sixteenth birthday which is only a few days away, all after you just met the cutest surfer boy you’ve ever seen in your life.

Bailey feels she and her mom have always met life’s challenges as a team of two, more like best friends than mother and daughter.  But her mom’s recent marriage has changed all that.  Having her little brother Landry is all Bailey can find good about that union.  The move to wealthy Del Mar from their humble beginnings has turned Bailey sour, until a chance meeting of surf hottie Jack West changes all that.  Then, when her father reenters her life, with his annoying Zen-surfer lingo and a talking turtle he claims is her spirit guardian, no less, he threatens the only relationship Bailey thinks is working in her world. She soon finds out that’s not all his arrival will do.  His presence and their shared family trait could ultimately force Bailey to make a decision that will alter the course of her own life and those she loves… forever.

Waterdancer is available from these booksellers:

Amazon                              Barnes & Noble                              Musa Publishing

Want more information about Samantha Combs’s available titles? Check out her website!