Author Spotlight: Sam Weiss

Although Sam is terrible at writing “About Me”s about her, she’s been told she’s great at writing about what fictional people do. The more miserable she can make them, the better. Her love of horror films from the 80s, sci-fi shows from the 90s, and alternative music from the 00s have inspired her to write what she’s calling “Dark Science Fantasy” although she’s kind of making that up as she goes along.

When she’s not ready to pull her hair out after discovering another plot hole she’s created, she goes camping with her husband as far away from society as possible. So far, this tactic has been mostly successful and she’s only had to physically converse with a grand total of nine people this year. Next year, she hopes to get that number down to six.

Author Links:

Author website: authorsamweiss.com
Goodreads: Sam_Weiss

THE AFTERLIFE EXPERIMENT: books2read.com/u/3kjaZL
IN THE HOUSE OF ROOT AND ROT: books2read.com/u/mKqa7v

Insta: @samwisestrange
Tiktok: @samwisestrange
Bluesky: @samwisestrange.bsky.social

What draws you to the eldritch and unknown, why write about these kinds of fears, and what fascinates you about them?

I’m not really sure, I think it’s kinda like mankind’s fascination with what’s inside a black hole. You’ll never find out, and if you do, you’ll never tell the tale. A lot of my favourite media from when I was younger usually centred around a god-like Big Bad and that sort of level of power is terrifying, yet somehow awe-inspiring.

Tell us about your inspirations for your writing: what elements from these inspirations do you use? (Vibes, themes, settings, aesthetics, philosophy…?)

I’m an all-vibes-no-plot kinda writer. I wish I had answer about drawing inspiration from deep philosophical readings, because that would make me sound smart and cool, but alas, I am that person who hears a song, imagines a scene for it, and then cobbles an entire plot around it.

My favourite media is stuff that’s atmospheric, sort of bleak, and can go completely off-the-wall at times, so that’s been my biggest inspiration.

Things like Donnie Darko, Twin Peaks, Fringe, Dark, The OA, and The Leftovers, where you go, “I’m not entirely sure what I just watched, but I loved it” is the sort of stuff I write.

How does your first book in the Altered Planes series deal with mental health and the ways this impacts your protagonist?

I have the old, “I’m in a psych ward and no one believes me” trope where you’re not entirely sure if what the MC, Atra, is experiencing is real or not, but that’s more of a plot device and less of an actual mental health topic. But the story certainly delves deeper into things like abandonment and the fall out of how that affects you for years, as well as anxiety and depression.

I myself deal with anxiety and depression and these topics are explored more thoroughly in Book 2 without the old “am I real or am I crazy?” trope propping everything up. I went through a really rough patch in my early 20s where I had no clue who I was or what the hell I was doing, and my characters who are also in their early 20s go through a similar situation in that book.

I think it depicts how these illnesses can actually manifest, since media usually just shows it as “you can’t get out of bed and/or you have panic attacks” which isn’t the case a lot of the time. A lot of the time, you’re not even sure why you’re acting the way you are. So that was cathartic to write.

How did you come up with the antagonistic entities that the protagonist faces? 

By accident. Usually when I start a story, I have an idea for an overarching Big Bad, but the real antagonist is a human closely associated with it. Most of the time, I have no idea who that is until been outlining for a while. I

’ll have ideas for secondary characters, or side characters that have some sort of relationship to the main cast, and I start thinking of things like, “Okay, what if this person is related to this person? Or this person used to be romantically involved with this person? Or this person knew this person’s relative?” It’s a fun exercise to see how many different directions a story can go, and one of those ideas will stick, and my antagonist will develop from that.

Tell us about your characters – which character did you find easiest to get under the skin of, and which was the hardest to write?

I have a secondary character, Tom, who is a character you’re supposed to love to hate. He’s a huge coward who constantly makes the wrong decisions, and I had so much fun with him. Seeing what would happen if you decided to run instead of own up to your mistakes, making him zig where you’d normally zag, knowing that if he just did the right thing, he wouldn’t make it worse for himself, but yet he always manages to dig himself deeper into a hole. I did something right there because readers either love him or absolutely loathe him.

The hardest character I’ve written so far is the antagonist for Book 2, which I can’t say much about because major spoilers. But when I’m writing characters, I always come up with a backstory about why they are the way they are. It makes it easier to sympathize and get into the head of a villain when you know what their emotional wounds are, but for Book 2, I just wanted to make a really nasty antagonist with no redeeming qualities. They’re evil because they wanna be, so it’s been a challenge to figure out their motivations and what makes them tick. I guess we will find out how that goes when the book is released.

Share some reader responses to The Afterlife Experiment – what has been your favourite so far?

I’ve had some very mixed responses on my book, which I’m not surprised by because it is a bit out there and it’s not going to be for everyone. Someone called my characters, “morally grey at best, absolutely horrid at worst” and I wear that as a badge of honour.

My favourite response has to be:

“It’s like real-life curiosity mixed with a dash of the supernatural and served it up in a story that’s as much about human connection as it is about the great beyond. It’s a mirror reflecting our deepest fears and hopes about what comes after. Five stars don’t do it justice. This one’s staying with me for a long, long time.”

When I read that review, I was like, “YES this person GOT IT!” Even I wasn’t sure what I set out to write until I read that feedback. And honourable mention to an ARC reader who DNF’d but left a 5-star review. I will always remember that.

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