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Samantha has captured her life experience into a memoir titled Blind Pony. This isn’t just a “Hey, listen to these fun life stories” book. She’s captured hard experiences.
She left home at 14 and ended up working in the music industry at Geffen records amongst bands like Aerosmith, Nirvana and Guns and Roses.
She went from music to movies and worked on movies like Dazed and Confused and Four Weddings and a Funeral.
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ENTREPRENEUR AND HOLLYWOOD EXEC SAMANTHA HART’S DEBUT MEMOIR – LOS ANGELES BOOK FESTIVAL AWARD WINNER – OUT NOW
THE INCREDIBLE TRUE STORY OF ESCAPING CHILDHOOD ABUSE, SELF-DISCOVERY THROUGH GLOBE-TROTTING ADVENTURES, AND THE RESILIENCY TO BUILD SUCCESS AND STABILITY IN LIFE AND LOVE
HOLLYWOOD CA, JUNE 8, 2021…In her debut memoir, entrepreneur and Hollywood executive Samantha Hart reveals the abuses and traumas that she overcame to build a creative, successful, and love-filled life. BLIND PONY As True A Story As I Can Tell (Wild Bill Publishing) was released on March 15, 2021, and is a 2021 Los Angeles Book Festival award winner.
BLIND PONY As True A Story As I Can Tell illuminates Sam’s remarkable ability to be honest and vulnerable about horrific experiences while infusing her unique brand of humor and being relentlessly hopeful. Her story starts with a heart-wrenching childhood of abuse that she endured by her grandfather, which led to her life as a runaway teen and landed her in 1970s Los Angeles. She navigates various abusive relationships, toxic Hollywood characters, a search for her father, “Wild Bill,” and ultimately finds her North Star.
“Almost no one in my life, including long-time friends and colleagues, knew about the trauma I experienced as a young girl. I always managed to overcome adversity throughout my life, maintain a positive outlook, and do well for myself. But deep inside, I felt damaged. In telling my story now and hearing from readers, I realize there are a lot of “blind ponies” out there. If my story resonates for even one person and helps to provide some hope for healing, it was worth writing,” says Sam.
Sam is currently working on adapting BLIND PONY As True A Story As I Can Tell for TV/film while writing her next book, a novel entitled Starcrossed, and a collection of drawings and stories called When I Was A Muse.
BLIND PONY As True A Story As I Can Tell is now available on Amazon and at bookstores everywhere.
“Unforgettable and raw, Hart’s deeply honest musings will ring true to those who want to understand
what it’s like to walk through fire.” Book Life
“…a memoir about overcoming—about facing up to and learning from one’s past
without being imprisoned by it.” IndieReader
“A powerful coming of age story about finding strength through rebellion, recovery, and forgiveness.”
Jill Watts, bestselling author/Professor of Graduate Studies at CSU
“Hart is a gifted storyteller….she became a backgammon hustler in Los Angeles,
something readers likely won’t find in many memoirs.” Kirkus Reviews
“Excellent writing…I recommend this book to simply everyone.” Dog-Eared Publishing
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Transcript
Samantha: Are you looking for new books to read? Do you like finding a new, special author? Are you tired of the same old books from the same old authors? Well then, welcome to Discovered Wordsmiths, a podcast where you can hear from fantastic new authors. Join Stephen Schneider as he finds and talks to authors you may not know, but authors that have worked hard to write great new books.
Hear about their book and why you should check it out. So sit back and listen to today’s Discovered Wordsmith.
Stephen: Hello, Discovered Wordsmith land. Welcome to another episode. Uh, before we get to the author and book today, I wanted to tell you that over the weekend, I was in Salem, Massachusetts with a group of wonderful authors, and we’re working on an anthology, which will come out soon, but, uh, some of those authors are going to be coming up.
They’re exciting, uh, stories to tell and people to meet and some great books that I’m sure you’ll love. So I’m excited about talking to them and getting them on here for everybody. But today’s author is Samantha Hart, who has led an interesting life that she’s compiled into a memoir. She ran away from home at 14.
She worked in the music industry at Geffen Records. And she’s also worked in the music industry, or I’m sorry, the movie industry. With some, uh, movies that you may know. So it’s a interesting story. She has good stories to tell and her book is, uh, something she hopes gets out there to help other young girls that may be in the same situation as she has.
So, uh, let’s get going and here’s Samantha Hart. Today on the podcast, I’ve got Samantha Hart, the author of blind pony, a true story as near as I can tell, is that correct? As true story as I can tell. As true story as I can tell. Well, Samantha, welcome to the podcast. Thank you so much for having me. So before we get talking about your book, finding out about, uh, what, what it’s about, tell us a little bit about you, uh, what you like to do.
You D you do outside or before you wrote and published.
Samantha: I started my career quite young. Um, I was working as a photo stylist. I did a little modeling. Um, I traveled a lot and learned a lot from, you know, those travels around the world. And when I really started my career in earnest, it was in the music business.
And I had the privilege of working at Geffen records in the heyday. Um, when there was a lot of, you know, exciting bands was indie rock and roll. It was Aerosmith, Nirvana, Guns N Roses was that whole era. And, um, and then I segued my career as a creative director into. Indie movie marketing, and I had the privilege of working for Gramercy Pictures, which is now Focus Features, and it, I worked on films like Dazed and Confused.
Um, there was recently a book out, which, uh, The oral history of Richard Linklater’s Days and Confused and I was interviewed for that because I did the marketing campaign for the film and I worked on Four Weddings and a Funeral and we were really cutting new ground because back then, you know, British films weren’t very popular in the U.
S. yet. If you can believe it, they wanted. When we sent prints around, bicycle prints around the United States, they were saying, can you send us a subtitle version? We can’t understand it. Um, so, you know, it was like a different time. It was definitely indie, uh, filmmaking and I worked on, um, Boys Don’t Cry and.
Well, Monty, and, uh, that was before I started at searchlight and waking that divine and went on to, you know, work at universal for larger films. I meet parents. Um, and then I started my own company and I had several offices. I ran a company of like 50 people and we were doing kind of, I called it indie advertising where we were one of the first companies and we were, our hub was in Chicago.
We were traditionally a posthouse initially. And then we expanded into production and we put everything under one roof so that we could do, you know, everything soup to nuts. At some point I got kind of became tedious because I really started that company because I wanted to create a company where I wanted to work.
And it, like everything, it kind of blew up and became this big company. It wasn’t satisfying me. And I wanted to do the creative work, not just the production and posts. I wanted to actually start, you know, writing the ads and doing more creative work that way. So we started, we kind of ended that era. And when we moved back to Los Angeles, my partner and I, and we started Wild Bill our company now, and we work on a much smaller, you know, more nimble model.
And take on more of the projects that we are interested in. We help a lot of startups. We do a lot of nonprofit work. Um, we do big campaigns still, but. You know, it’s sort of with a bent of, you know, trying to be more creative with it. So it was during the time that I started while Bill. I, I kind of also selfishly wanted to do that because I, I wanted to start writing.
You know, that was always my passion was writing. And I’ve kept journals since I was 12 years old. You know, everybody’s always said to me over the years at cocktail parties or whatever, you should write a book. You should write a book. Cause I have a lot of very funny stories about my life. As you can imagine, I was a teenage runaway.
I ran away when I was 14. When you start that young, you have a lot of stories and definitely you have a lot of experiences as a fish out of water person. I think that initially people were saying you should write a book because they thought it was so extraordinary, all these stories. When I finally had the time to write, I really realized what I had to write about was actually very painful and sad and it became a real catharsis for me, you know, and then I would put it away because it was just too emotional for me.
I just shove it in the drawer and I also have, I have 3 children, I have a granddaughter and I have 2 teenage sons. You know, I’ve been a mother most of my life actually. And so I had between running my company and my children and doing all my creative work or whatever. I was just like, yeah, the book, whatever.
But then when the pandemic hit, you know, and I, our company kind of shut down, I really had the time to really go back and look at it again with fresh eyes and in a different place in my life. And it really hit me. I have to tell this story. I have to, it became kind of my heart’s mission and just to finish it.
And so I did, and that’s Blind Pony is true stories. I can tell up to this. So
Stephen: pardon up to this point. Yeah, the memo. Exactly. So jumping back real quick for a second, uh, what you mentioned Aerosmith, Guns and Roses and some good movies like Waking the Divine and that. What did you do with the music industry and, uh, the movie industry?
Samantha: Okay. Well, in the, in the music industry, I, I started out working for Neil Diamond’s publishing company, and I kind of was just knew nothing about the music business, just kind of. It’s a long story I won’t go into, but just kind of ended up sort of living in the basement cellar of this music publishing office, kind of like a little rat down in the cellar and started, you know, uh, working as a secretary and answering the phone.
And I was terrible at it, by the way, I got better at it for, you know, it, it required, you know, very fast typing. You know, I didn’t have the skill set, but anyway, I kind of faked my way through that. And, but I learned a lot about music publishing. And then I went to Chapel Intersong. At Chapel Intersong, I really think I developed a lot of musical taste.
You know, I heard about a job. I worked at Chapel, I assisted a song plugger, you know, an A& R kind of, you know, artist and repertoire song plugger. And I got, like, fascinated with the old catalog of Bernie Taupin that he wrote with Martin Page that not a lot of people knew about, and then those songs became, blew up with heart, had a hit with it, and so did Jefferson Starship, We Built This City was one of them.
Uh, you know, so, you know, just developing my taste or whatever. So then I heard about this job at Wyndham Hill and it was, um, it was to work in the A& R slash production division, but being the assistant to this woman, um, who ran it and I thought, well, I kind of know that A& R, like I have great taste in music and so it sounded perfect.
And I’ll assist, I’ll apprentice under her and I’ll learn things, right? The day I started, literally she quit. There’s some big blow up. So they took the A& R part, the artist and repertoire part of it away. And it was strictly a production job. When you say production, I thought, you know, product producing records.
Like it was going to be fun, right? No, this was nuts and bolts production. Making masters, you know, um, and the old fashioned way at the time, you know, and, and printing the covers going on press and all that kind of stuff. And so I knew nothing about that. You know, I always had an interesting graphic design from my early years, assisting a photographer and.
Doing styling and set decorating, I, and then I did have a job at a design firm, you know, as a freelancer or whatever. And I was interested in that, but I didn’t know how to put all the pieces together. I mean, again, talking about someone with very little life experience. Running away at 14, how do you put the building blocks together to build a career for yourself?
You know, I didn’t even, I mean, I just kind of was flying by the seat of my pants most of the time. So I’ll never forget. I went, Windham Hill was distributed by A& M records. They asked me to, I had to go to the production meeting to represent Windham Hill my first week. And again, I knew nothing about what they were talking about.
So they’re going around this big conference table and I’m sitting there, you know, they’re talking about shipping the parts and this plant and that pressing plant and you know, whatever. And, and then they said, Windham Hill, have you shipped the parts yet? And I just, Blankly stared at them and said the wing or the thigh like chicken parts.
I mean, you know I was like admitting you may as well be talking chicken parts I have no idea what you’re talking about and you know It was so it just stunned the room and then there was giggling but it really wasn’t at my expense people loved it, you know because they they kind of heard that the story that I came over and a and m records was Always looking at Wyndham Hill is like the silly, you know, the, the effete label, but it’s kind of the little stepsister over here that doesn’t know what she’s doing.
They’re actually very smart people, Wyndham Hill. And I learned a lot working there, but I learned so much from A& M. So Aubrey Moore, the head of production, just looked at me and he just loved that I wasn’t trying to pose. I wasn’t trying to be insincere or sarcastic. I was just kind of putting my cards on the table, so to speak.
And he just turned to his right hand woman and he said, get this kid up to speed, Janice. And she did, and within a month, I could have told you anything about pressing record and I was going on press checks for Wyndham Hill and Chicago and really just busting a move. And I became very good at it and I was recruited by Geffen records to come because they had the same kind of dynamic with Warner Brothers, you know, they were distributed by Warner Brothers.
So they wanted sort of, uh, me to come in and be the liaison with Warner Brothers. Because at the time the white snake album was exploding, they wanted me to be there to sort of push the production executive to get our records on press before Warner brother, a lot of it was just this nuts and bolts production.
And then I grew into more of the graphic arts and I started the art department, the creative department. And then I went on to invent a package that kind of revolutionized how CDs were shipped. I don’t know if you recall the old long boxes, the six by 12. Well, it was Jetson technology in the Flintstone package, right?
It was this two six by twelves fit in rack as a 12 by 12 album. Then they just didn’t wanna retrofit. So it was, you know, it’s like, so I, I kind of had that kind of a mind, or I have that kind of a mind where I sort of look at things and. If it just seems silly, I want to change, you know, was talking about digital film delivery and the film business long before and streaming and day and date releases way back in late nineties, long before it was the thing.
Geffen, I was just known as a, like a disruptor. And when the Nirvana baby came out, it was Kurt’s idea to put the baby on the cover, but he had found his photo. He liked of a baby girl, and it was way too expensive for an indie band and it was like a 10, 000 dollar photo or something. So, um, the art director and creative director me through the bunch of babies in the pool at a swimming class.
And the art director found this, you know, Robert Fisher is the art director. He found this baby boy and I’m like, we were all like, that’s perfect. We loved it. And so I took it up to the marketing, to the president, to the marketing meeting. And they were like, well, the penis has to go. And then at the time it was like verbiage was I text the penis off.
And I’m like, well, why would you want to go and do that? You know, this is a boy band. I mean, it makes perfect sense. Well, Walmart won’t carry it. And I’m like, well, maybe that’s a good thing. Walmart won’t carry it. So it became a whole thing. And, you know, like, so I’ve always been known as kind of a disruptor and I went to get David Geffen and fought for that.
And. Uh, it’s hard to describe what I do, what I did there in terms of, like, I kind of went off into different. The great thing about working at Geffen was David had a, you know, sort of a thing where we had business cards, but they didn’t say what you did on it. He said, if people don’t know what you do, then you’re not doing it.
And so it allowed me the freedom to kind of think out of the box and go beyond my comfort zone. You know, I created a package that sort of revolutionized everything because it folded onto itself. It did not throw it away, so it was, um, but the real, the real impetus behind it was getting rid of the box because to ship something this big is a lot less than shipping something this big.
You think about it. All the CDs were being shipped out of Terre Haute, Indiana at the time. That’s all across the country, all around the world. You know, that’s a lot of money, right? For shipping something that large that you really don’t need. You’re going to throw it away. It kind of worked out, you know, and then I tell a story in the book.
I don’t really talk about my career all that much in the book. It’s more about my arc of becoming a woman just growing up. Um, but I do mention a story about being handed again, all these, like, ledgers at Geffen by the CFO. And, you know, what am I supposed to do with this? Well, just study it, you know, it’s all these numbers and things.
And I happened to notice that we were being charged 5 cents a unit to pull J cards, the old J cards for cassettes. When I went to visit the plant one time, I noticed that it had been automated. And so I asked the guy, how long has this been automated? He told me about two years. So they retroactively gave all of Warner Electro Asylum, the rebate for, for that charging five cents a unit to hand operate.
Stephen: Obviously, you’ve got stories and you’ve got good stories to tell, but you said your book isn’t actually about those stories. So tell us about the book. What is it about? And why did you want to write this book
Samantha: right now? I think that, you know, before I knew it, I felt that my You know, I suddenly, as I became to this, to this stage in my life, um, it really began to occur to me that, you know, my childhood was kind of.
Stolen from, from me. I never really had the opportunity to have a normal childhood. I was abused from the time I was five years old, you know, which is why I ran away. It really affected me because I think that in many ways I had like a lot of developmental arrest because I was so busy trying to pretend I was grown up that I never really grew up.
And I think if that makes sense.
Stephen: Sounds like you fit right into the rock and roll industry.
Samantha: Possibly. Yeah. Well, yeah. I mean, you know, Steven Tyler, uh, definitely, you know, taught, told me he had developmental arrests and, you know, that’s why he get away with pulling his pants down and at the four seasons hotel and mooning me in the jacuzzi, you know, I mean, it almost killed me on an 80 foot dive in Hawaii.
So. Because he, uh, abandoned me when he was supposed to be my buddy, and then I was saved by the famous producer, Bob Ezrin. Yeah, I have a lot of stories like that, but that wasn’t really the heart of what kept nagging at me, and I was going through. You know, some of my old journals and I came upon a journal, and this is in the preface of my book, uh, that I wrote when I was 12 years old, and it said, this is a story about me, nobody special, like, why do you want to read this book?
It’s about me, nobody special. And I really felt like it just, I started crying. I read those words in my little handwriting at little hearts and things, and I said, you know, I really felt when I was 12. I wanted to tell this story of what happened to me and I thought it was important. And so looking back all of a sudden in reflective mode and seeing the whole trajectory in front of me of what happened to me, it really underscored.
I really need to tell, I really need to talk about this and I’ve, you know, I called the book blind pony because I was literally given a blind pony. By my grandfather, and he was the one abusing me and he did it, you know, as a form of control over me, you know, I had sisters and they were all given, you know, beautiful horses and.
And he gave me this, like, sort of, she had been a show pony, she had her eye kicked out and she, you know, was, it was, she was damaged, which is how I felt all these years. And so, you know, it really stuck with me and I kind of use that as a metaphor throughout the book, you know, of hearing that, you know, the galloping and just sort of being left in the dust.
By my sister’s galloping up the hill because they all had stronger horses and my horse shied a lot and she had to be sort of caught, you know, taking care of adult or whatever, because she spoke to a lot of things and they just occurred to me that, you know, I kind of. I had to do that for myself so that I wouldn’t go off the track, you know, so I wouldn’t spook at things.
I had to be very brave. I had to, you know, take care of myself. I just really felt motivated to tell this story. And so since doing so, I really have developed, have gravitated to the story and you know, I’ve discovered there are a lot of blind ponies out there as I like to say, because you know, the story isn’t unique, that unfortunately.
I mean, of course, certain things about it are, are unique to me, but, you know, a lot of people have been, you know, hurt and damaged and unrightfully so, and there’s no recompense for them. There’s nothing they can do, but they are afraid to tell people and they’re afraid to talk about it. And if I can make 1 person feel okay about.
Having their childhood disrupted, but going on to be successful despite all these things, or, you know, being, you know, at a place like, uh, this 1 woman contacted me. She I was on a small television station broadcast in Louisville, Kentucky. And she happened to hear it very successful woman happened to hear the show and she reached out to me on LinkedIn and she said that she started crying.
She had to hide it from her. Co workers, because my story was her story. In a manner of speaking, and she said, like. You know, I have never talked about it with anybody, you know, and it’s such a responsibility for me to hear something like that. I’m not a psychologist. I mean, I’ve gone to plenty of therapy, obviously, but, um.
But, you know, I, I don’t have all I can say is what I did would help me was and make people make fun of it. Journaling, um, certainly helped me and then going to therapy and talking about it and being honest about kind of coming out, you know, coming out of the closet in a way and just saying, yeah, this is who I really am, you know, really helped me.
I mean, at one point. Some, I was really trying to hide my Pittsburgh accent and someone thought I sounded British. So then I became British. And then, you know, and, and at one point I had to use someone else’s ID to get a job in it, you know, selling alcohol. So then I became Angie, you know, I mean, it was like, I had so many identities and so many different things.
I was juggling and who am I? You know, it’s like at one point the, Boss was going, Angie, Angie, yelling my name. And I didn’t turn around because like, I didn’t know he was talking to me. So forget I was Angie. Um, and then another guy thought I sounded Australian. He goes, you have a real French aesthetic for being Australian.
And then I was like, Oh, he doesn’t believe I’m from England. Okay. I’m Australian now. That’s further away. I’ll have to know less about it. You know, um, I was just going, you know, I mean, it sounds crazy, but it’s all true. And when I really thought about these things and this, you know, 15, 16 year old girl going in and play playing backgammon with guys in their forties, you know, and beating, beating their asses, you know, it’s a really funny story you read about in the book of how I.
Learn to play backgammon, but it’s also very sad, right? I mean, it’s like did whatever I had to do to survive basically and If a lot of men took advantage of me or whatever at least it was my choice For them to be taking advantage. I knew they were taking advantage of me. I wasn’t Really a savvy little girl, you know, but it wasn’t somebody abusing like in the way that I had no control of if that makes sense.
And that for me, it wasn’t a matter of the heart anymore. It was just a matter of my body. I could. I could be okay with that. It was a very difficult child growing up period. And I think that when I got my daughter, you know, had my daughter, my life really changed for the better.
Stephen: It does sound like you, you’ve had an interesting life if nothing else.
Um, but it sounds like there’s a lot of good feedback from people who have read the book that it’s made a difference.
Samantha: I mean, I never knew what to expect. And I mean, To see, you know, I’ve, I’ve got thousands of 5 star reviews on Goodreads and I, you know, I told someone recently I, I was stunned when I got 1 star, 2 stars, I mean, but 5 stars and people really relate to the book.
Um, I know it’s a difficult book to read in some of the chapters. But I think you had to know everything about the painful side to be able to, you know, grow with the character, you know, and understand some of her motivation. And like, you know, um, I’ve had readers tell me they’re screaming at the book, like, don’t do that.
Don’t go there, you know. But she like, why is she doing this? Why can’t she be smarter than that? I was 16 years old, you know, and I’d already been on my own by that time first 2 years. So I graduated high school by the seat of my pants. I tested out of classes. I took correspondence courses. I, you know, it was really meaningful to me not to be a college, uh, uh, high school dropout.
I’m glad I wrote the book. Like I said, if it helps one person out there, you know, to be there, to be your authentic self is the best version of yourself, like to be at this place in my life and to be able to tell people and be honest about, you know, I’m, I wasn’t some rich kid growing up, you know. I mean, I, you know, when I worked at Geffen, I mean, I’d go out and spend 3, 000 on an outfit to go to a meeting, you know, I was very stylish.
People thought, you know, they never thought I was someone who had such a, an arduous childhood, you know? Um, I never let anyone in on that side of myself. In relationships, nothing like I, I just didn’t go there. I didn’t want to talk about being from a farm in Pennsylvania and being abused. And, you know, it was a very dark place and.
And neglected as well, for I don’t neglect, but you know, now I feel very free and I feel very happy and satisfied that there’s no sort of skeleton in my closet, you know, that’s going to jump out and at any moment, you know, blow everything for me or whatever. You know what I mean? It’s like, it’s a very free feeling.
Stephen: So let me ask this, uh, with your book, um, cause I know it’s a memoir and it’s a very personal book. If you had the chance, uh, to turn this into either a movie or a TV show, which would you choose, like, to see it as?
Samantha: Well, at this point, I, I would have to say definitely a series, because it’s too epic to be a film.
It really is. Um, and I have thought about this and, you know, I spend a good part of my career in indie film, as I told you, and to me, I’m actually surprised. It hasn’t been snatched up yet because it’s really, you know, I’ve read, I’ve worked on films that were, um. You know, difficult cells or whatever. This is just, it’s all there.
I mean, Queen’s Gambit had chess and this has backgammon. I mean, it’s hysterical and it’s, you know, and I think that flawed female characters are so popular right now. So I, I’m definitely not, I’m definitely leaning toward series and I’m not, I’m. I won’t be surprised that it’ll be picked up because it’s, it’s a really rich story and it’s an incredible vehicle for a young actress.
Um, it’s range that she has to, she has to become three different people with all these different accents and it’s just, and it, and it goes from. Pennsylvania to Phoenix, Arizona, to Los Angeles, to London, to Paris, to Hamburg. You know, I left out Stockholm, Sweden and Japan because it was just too much.
However, it’s, it’s really an epic story. And it’s, I think it’s a very heartfelt story. You know, like I said, there are some difficult things to read in the book, but that’s easy to kind of skate around in a series.
Stephen: Samantha, who would you like to play you? Uh, which
Samantha: actress? Gosh, um, a lot of people have actually asked me that, and I, it depends on when the film is made, because, you know, the, the character is so young, um, I think it’s gotta be someone who’s an up and comer.
You know, we don’t even know who, yet, who they are. Um, Because, you know, films take a while to put into production. And so who I like today might be too old by the time the film’s made. So it needs to be somebody who can play the range. I think it’s too, too different, you know, the younger Sam and then, um, then the older, but she’d have to really go from age 14 to.
And when she hits the road, or, you know, when she goes to Phoenix, I went to Phoenix, Arizona, looking for my father and I found him, but he was, you know, kind of just a bullshit artist and, you know, um, very meaningful relationship to me. But, you know, I, he said he couldn’t take me in and, you know, I had to get an apartment and.
He did help me in my hangover enroll in high school the day after I met him. And then I didn’t see him for three months. So, you know, um, but he was a character and there’s some funny stories in the book about that relationship, which I think are really part of the, some of my favorite stuff. Um, but then when I, then I, I leave him and I go to, uh, LA, you know, kind of just basically people say, did you want to be an actress?
Is that why you went to LA? And I’m like, No, it was just too hot in Phoenix. I didn’t want to go back to the cold. So I came over here, you know, and that was the big motivation. Um, like I said, I had no practical life skill, um, except what I taught myself. And you’ve got to think too, you know, everywhere I went, different jobs I got, I had to use a fake ID.
I had to hitchhike to get there. I was too young to get a driver’s license. I mean, there were a whole, you know, there were many things I had to overcome along the way that you just don’t think about when you grow up in a normal, healthy, loving home. Like I look at my kids. And I, each one of them, I love them so much, just is, um, I can’t even express to you how much I love my children and how great they are.
And they’re so intelligent, so well adjusted humans. It’s the thing that I’m most proud of, obviously, but I, I just, I look at them and I see how much I love them. And I just, I just scratched my head and say. I can’t understand why I wasn’t loved like that. It’s like, I mean, that’s really at the heart of the story.
Like why, how could that be that, you know, I wasn’t loved in the way I love my kids, you know? So I think that’s why I wrote the book. I wanted to claim back some little piece of my childhood, some little part of me, some little part of my innocence. So I, I did it. I think it was a very brave, brave thing to do, you know?
But, um, I’ve gotten great support from people for writing it, so I’m really happy, even for my clients.
Stephen: So do you have plans for another book, a, a sequel or a second thing?
Samantha: I do. Okay. Yes, I do. I’m actually, um, I’m actually working on two different pieces. One is a, a novel, but it’s kind of based a little bit on some of my experiences again.
But I’m going to fictionalize. Um, I don’t want to write another memoir. It’s coming along really well. I’ve I’ve got the ending, which is kind of a shocker, which I’m really excited about. You know, that’s the, that’s the brilliance of fiction is you can take reality and then you can twist and bend it and make it anything you want, like a Gumby doll.
You know, it’s like, whereas with a memoir, you have to be very faithful to what Reveal that much about myself. Again, I’m just done with that. So there’s that book. And then the other book I’m working on is more of a coffee table book, and it’s taking drawings that were made of me by the father of my daughter who, um, passed away.
And when I cleaned up his estate. Uh, although I hadn’t seen him in 30 years, I felt it was my responsibility because no one else was around to do it. And so I took care of closing up his estate and, um, he was a brilliant singer songwriter discovered by Bob Dylan, produced by Robbie Robertson, had two albums on Warner Brothers, but then he kind of, you know, just didn’t.
Success just didn’t happen for him, you know, um, on a big level, you know, he was a pet poet of a lot of people, but he drew me every day as a young, prepubescent girl, basically naked up until I got pregnant my daughter and they never drew me again. And I thought, well, all of a sudden I was cleaning the garage, which he’s a pack rat.
It was just filled with junk. And this. Portfolio dropped down on top of my head, almost knocked me out and I opened it and it was the drawings out perfectly preserved. And so I want to, um, create a collection of his drawings because I think they’re beautiful and, but they’re from the male gaze, right? And then I want to juxtapose that with the female gaze in my writing, um, you know, so, um.
You know, and I, I really, I really want to do some, that’s kind of a passion project and I’m going to, um, that’s something I’m going to donate the proceeds for that to, um, Oh,
Stephen: interesting charity. Well, Samantha, all your work in your book, it sounds really exciting, interesting. It sounds like it’s helping a lot of people, which I think is really, you know, great giving back, uh, to the world.
Uh, and I appreciate you taking some time to talk to us about it. We’re going to talk about some author things coming up next. Thank you for sharing your book with us.
Samantha: Okay. Well, thank you again for having me. Thank you for listening to Discovered Wordsmiths. Come back next week and listen to another author discuss the road they’ve traveled and maybe sometime in the near future, it might be you.