Five with Fisher - Sami Ellis
With an anthology out now and her debut novel releasing this spring (click here for more!), Sami Ellis is set to take the writing world by storm. We cannot stress enough - Five with Fisher begins with fifteen questions and the author chooses which five to answer. Sami’s choices… might surprise you.
What would be your writer “mascot”? A raven? A narwhal? Something else? Why?
A bed bug. Hard to believe a brain that small could cause so much chaos.
Tell me something you edited out of your book that you really love. What darling did you kill that you’re the saddest about?
In the earliest, EARLIEST draft of Dead Girls Walking, Temple lived with her estranged grandfather rather than an aunt. He showed up at the midpoint on a motorcycle and with a chainsaw, ready to back his grandbaby up with whatever the hell is popping off. It was a tribute to my own grandpa (whom the book is dedicated to!) who always had quiet destructor vibes lmao. I cut it because 1) I wanted all the on-page characters to be women, and 2) after getting rid of the only other man in the book, it felt significant that the only man that has a presence in the story is Temple's dad. But I was sad to see it go.
Tell me about an “inside joke” that made it past all the edits to the printed page.
In my story in All These Sunken Souls, the parents of the kid the main character is babysitting return home late because "It turned out the massage parlor wasn't the kind we thought it was. We ended up with a little bit more commitment than we wanted." I made it all the way to copyedits before anybody even questioned me on that line lmao--but yeah, it means what it sounds like it means. I like to imagine while the main character is going through her own thing, those parents went through a The Lovebirds-esque comedy of errors.
Tell me a secret.
I had a short period of time when I was addicted to shoplifting. I only stopped cuz I got caught stealing a rotisserie chicken (it was not my first time stealing a rotisserie chicken lmao). I ain't never go in that store again.
Tell me about a research hole you fell into when writing one of your books.
One time I was procrastinating so I spent a lotta time lookin up pics of james daunt in different poses no further questions.
Sami Ellis is a queer horror writer inspired by the horrific nature of Black fears and the culture’s relation to the supernatural. She is also the co-founder of the Write Team Mentorship Program. You can follow her @themoosef on Twitter, use her writing resource, the Agent Adjacent Cheat Sheet, or check out her words in the Black horror anthology, All These Sunken Souls (2023) and in her debut novel Dead Girls Walking (2024)