We recently connected with Jamie Samland and have shared our conversation below.

Jamie, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Before we talk about all of your success, let’s start with a story of failure. Can you open up about a time when you’ve failed?

I fully believe that we learn more from failure than from success. After I wrote the final words of my first book, I thought, “Wow! This is it! I just have to wait for Netflix to call with a miniseries request!”

I hired a developmental editor, who ripped the book in half. From her feedback, I split characters, combined others, and cut whole story arcs. I learned humility, that the book I created wasn’t flawless on the first go, and allowed myself to accept criticism.

Jamie, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

I started as a fantasy author, writing what was essentially fan fiction for a video game I played in the 90s. As my life experience grew through college and beyond, I made a few more passes with my characters. I kind of, sort of wanted to publish a book, but didn’t have much real drive to do it.

Then in 2017, as I was about to test for my black belt in taekwondo, I considered other abandoned goals, and I picked up those characters again. It wasn’t until the fall of 2020, as I was testing for my third degree, that I finished and published the book.

I stuck with the characters and their world through a trilogy, but wanted to branch into a few standalone novels. One of those contained my first written sex scene. Friends kept telling me to ramp up the spice, and I did. Then my mom called it “classy”, and I made it spicier. After publishing, a friend who writes dark romance said the scene was “cute”, so I branched into erotica for three collections of short stories and an erotic thriller.

I’m very eclectic in my genres. I have several collections of comedic short stories, and now I’m working on a gothic horror.

I self-publish, so I write what I want to read.

We often hear about learning lessons – but just as important is unlearning lessons. Have you ever had to unlearn a lesson?

“Follow all these grammar rules!”

But… no. I don’t want to. Writing is about conveying a voice, not sticking to rigid rules that, there’s a good chance, don’t work for you. It’s more important to learn a rule, then decide if you want to adhere to it.

The rule saying, “don’t end a sentence with a preposition,” is dumb. It was instituted by Latin nerds and has no place in English.

“Never use adverbs!” Maybe, as they encourage weak verbs.

“Don’t use passive voice!” Sometimes it’s clearer to use it.

So yeah, I learned lots of rules, learn why they were set in place, then decide what doesn’t fit for me.

Can you talk to us about how you funded your business?

Self-publishing is also self-funded. I’m fortunate enough to have disposable income to channel into the cost of publishing: editors, beta readers, cover designers, printing bookmarks, table runners, and book stock. There is a huge amount of cost, but this is my hobby. If golf were my hobby, how much would I spend on green fees and equipment? How is this any different?

As soon as I made that realization, that putting money into the books and the publishing process, I gave a big sigh of relief. I love writing books, and it’s worth investing some money in your beloved hobbies.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://jmsamland.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/author.jamie.samland/