Hello, I hope you are having a good day. Thank you for visiting my page. My name is Samantha Sader, and I am an aspiring author/illustrator. I am a toddler mom and a naturalist. My hobbies include knitting, bird watching, singing, gardening, reading, writing, and drawing. We live in a little rural patch of cactus and mesquite thorns. There are rattlers, red ants, and scorpions as far as the eye can see, but we call it home. Although it might sound more like a nightmare, I don’t write horror. I write picture books. I love creating fun stories about nature and big emotions. I dabble in scientific illustration and cartoon-style illustration.
I have been creating art for as long as I can remember. In junior high, I was OBSESSED with tigers. My art teacher would always ask me when I was going to stop drawing them; my answer was? Never. I continued to draw tigers through his class and even into adulthood.
In high school, I started making comics. I loved illustrating funny stories that happened to me and my friends. Making comic book characters with expressive faces was a blast. I made several comics that circulated in my friend group. A favorite of mine was “Grandpa Shark.” I may have to revive that one.
Storytelling is a passion of mine. I love to make people laugh, cringe, or stare at me in horror. People often said, “You should write picture books.” It was a very tempting idea, but I was focused then on landing a teaching job.
I have a master’s degree in Biology and a passion for teaching. I love seeing the “aha” moment when a student finally understands. I became a tutor at my local community college while I waited for a teaching position to open. My husband and I got married, and a few years later, we were ready to start our family. That teaching job was still a glimmer of hope in the distance. The week after I found out I was pregnant with my son, my dream teaching job opened up. Isn’t that just how life works? I had already decided that my son would be my top priority. So I turned it down, knowing full well I planned to stay at home with my son. You might be thinking at this point that I regretted that decision. Not in the slightest.
As much as I would love to teach at the collegiate level, teaching my son every day? That is a dream. My son was born, and I began to read him all the books we had bought. Each day, that comment wriggled in the back of my brain. “You should write picture books.” I sat down and began to write, and write, and write. Soon, I had written fifteen manuscripts. However, the seeds of self-doubt were already sowing themselves deep into my subconscious soil. “What if I am not good enough? What if I get rejected?”
All these thoughts ran on a digital marquee in my head. I wanted to illustrate my own books, but I was afraid. “What if no one likes my style?” I had to remind myself that I could be brave. I could do scary things. My favorite character from the Lord of the Rings, Samwise, wouldn’t back down. He’d march all the way up the Mount Doom of publishing and come down with an agent and a book deal. I had to be brave.
So I picked up my pencil and began with the first picture book manuscript I wrote, “No, No, Neal.” I wrote it based on my experiences working in a native plant nursery and gardening with my toddler. I drew up a wonderful picture book dummy. I edited it and was ready to let the world see it.
*querying enters the room*
I began my querying journey. Rejection, after rejection, after rejection. “Write a picture book, they said. It’ll be fun, they said.” Well, they were not entirely wrong. The writing and illustrating process IS fun. The rest of it, finding an agent, finding a publisher, getting a book deal? Well, at the time, I didn’t realize how accurate the comparison to Mount Doom was. I am still marching up Mount Doom with Frodo (my first picture book) on my back. Rejection is just part of the business.
Every day, I doubt myself, but every day, I remember, “…But after coming all that way, I don’t want to give up yet. It’s not like me, somehow, if you understand.” (-Samwise Gamgee, J.R.R Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King.)
