Goodreads asked Sam Reed:

How do you get inspired to write?

Sam Reed I’m pretty sure I got started writing by reading. Books were the things that made me feel the most okay. Internally, I felt like a strange kid, I don’t know if I actually was one, but I often felt on the outskirts of things. Words on pages that I could hold were the places where I saw reflections of myself - characters I could relate to, situations I could be invested in, and my reactions were my own - meaning however I felt while reading, was ok. So then, for me, writing became a natural outlet, I felt safe on paper, I felt like the truest me on paper, so writing was where I got to learn myself. First it was just journals, and then, probably again, because of the reading, my crazy imagination started leaking through and it became about telling stories, trying to make sense of things I didn’t understand by giving them fantastical foundations, by writing characters who were strong where I was weak and who lived and saw and grew in the ways I wanted to, or even the re-telling of things, reworking the past into something that if it was negative, would no longer have any power over me, and if it was positive, that could be made gloriously larger, worth sharing and celebrating. So I guess, if boiled down to the basics, for me, writing started by not just falling in love with words, but in realizing I could trust the world words allowed me to live in and create.

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