We were lucky to catch up with Samantha Markum recently and have shared our conversation below.

Alright, Samantha thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Can you talk to us about a project that’s meant a lot to you?

I like to think all of my projects have been meaningful in one way or another, but it’s true that while I can’t pick a favorite, I do have some that have stuck with me more than others. My first two books are special to me in their own ways—my first, This May End Badly, because it was the book that launched my career and was such a joy to write, and my second, You Wouldn’t Dare, because it was the book I’d been dreaming about writing since I was about fifteen years old, when I read my first ever Sarah Dessen novel and realized this was the type of writing I wanted to do for the rest of my life.

But even though I can’t pick a favorite, the book that stuck with me the most once I got the idea and wrote the first scene was my third. My third novel is called Love, Off the Record, and it follows a college freshman named Wyn as she fights for a single reporter spot on her university newspaper, and her main competition is her nemesis and fellow intern, Three.

For Love, Off the Record, it really is the characters that feel the most special to me. Wyn is probably the most similar to me as a young adult—she’s intense, ambitious, lonely, having a hard time finding her place, and also struggling with her body image as someone who is plus size. When I was young, there were very few books with positive fat rep, and I wanted to write a book where readers could see themselves in Wyn and could relate to the journey that she’s on. It’s a story I wish I’d had growing up, while also being a story that is a lot of fun and extremely romantic. (Who doesn’t love rivals-to-lovers, right?)

Samantha, 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?

My name is Samantha Markum, and I am a young adult romance author. I started writing at a very young age—just eleven-year-old me, my family computer, and a hyperfixation on a 90s cult classic musical about a child labor union in 1899 New York City. I was completely entranced by the movie Newsies—not even the cool Broadway version, but the original movie version with Christian Bale—and it was all I wanted to talk about, think about, or consume for about three years of my life. (My poor family. RIP movie night.)

I spent all of middle school completely fixated on writing Newsies fan fiction, but I expanded my materials pretty quickly, and I was the type of fanfic writer who would dive into any fandom, no matter how niche. If there was a couple who didn’t get together, an ending I didn’t like, or, most often, a background character who wasn’t explored, I was opening a new Word doc and clacking away at that keyboard.

I think it was those background characters who really built me into the writer I am now. Most of those were characters who weren’t given a lot of backstory or screentime, and I wanted to know everything there was to know about them. I think that’s where I really grew my writer muscles, exploring these characters who essentially barely existed, and fleshing them out into real people on the page. It definitely primed me for writing novels one day, because most of my books have started with an idea of a character, and then I build the plot around that character. (Or really, I just start writing and hope a plot forms somehow, because I am very much a pantser!)

Even though I knew early on, after reading my very first Sarah Dessen novel at about fifteen years old, that I wanted to write YA contemporary—and, of course, romance, because if there’s no kissing, I’m not interested—it took me until my mid/late twenties to really sit down and FINISH a novel. I’d had a lot of false starts before then, and I’d even finished and shelved what would end up being my second novel, but I’d never had something come together almost cosmically for me until I got the idea for This May End Badly, which ended up being the book that started my career.

I think This May End Badly set the tone for the types of books I would end up writing, because all three of my books so far are about girls who make mistakes, both big and small, and how they come back from those mistakes in the long run. I love writing about teenagers, and especially in a way that I hope makes real teens feel seen. I think it’s easy, as an adult, to fall into a lecture-y trap when it comes to writing for teens. You want to tell them how to do things, because you’ve already lived it. You want to tell them where to step, to minimize their problems in order to minimize their pain, but truthfully, we can’t save teenagers from themselves, just like we couldn’t be saved from ourselves when we were teens. When I sit down to write, I don’t think, “How can I tell a teen how to live?” I always go into it asking myself what story will make teens feel the most seen, the most heard, and also what story will be the most fun for them. And, also importantly, the most fun for me! Because at the end of the day, I have to care more than anyone where these characters are going to end up.

Looking back, are there any resources you wish you knew about earlier in your creative journey?

There are so many resources online for writers that I did not know about before I published my first book. There are blogs, social media threads, and videos that can tell you so much about querying, the publishing industry, the craft itself, etc. But I think the most important resource is a community.

I was lucky enough to be writing in a community I built through fan fiction, so I had beta readers and friends to commiserate and celebrate with. Writing can be a very solitary experience, and one thing I always recommend is trying to build a community you can write in. When I do school visits, I usually encourage teenagers to try fan fiction because it’s a great place to learn not just about storytelling as a craft but the types of stories you want to tell as a writer, and best of all, to meet the people who love those types of stories and want to create them too.

But if you’re not into fan fiction—and that’s totally okay!—there are a lot of writers out there on social media building little pockets of community where you can meet other people in the same stage or near-stage you’re in on your journey. These people can become your beta readers and critique partners and, most importantly, your friends. Having friends in the writing world, whether you’re an unpublished author or ten books in, is so incredibly important to your journey. Publishing has incredibly high highs and even lower lows, and having people you can both explore your storytelling with and also lean on a little emotionally when things get hard and you’ve heard a lot of no’s is so crucial to the experience.

What’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative in your experience?

It’s a totally cheesy answer, but the most rewarding aspect of being a writer is meeting readers. Even when I was writing fan fiction, hearing from people who loved my stories was what kept me going. Now, truthfully, I would be writing if I was the last person left on earth with one copy of the 1992 Newsies VHS on hand, but knowing that your work is going out to someone who wants to read it, and getting those squealing/gushing reactions that you have about your own favorite books is truly a next level, top tier experience unlike any other. And even better, when I get an actual teenager who loves my books, who maybe relates to my characters or their journeys, that is the best part. That’s who I write for.

Contact Info:

• Website: samanthamarkum.com
• Instagram: sam.markum
• Twitter: sammarkum
• Other: threads: sam.markum