Much like the 3Q’s I did with Michael Kelly of Undertow Publications, today, I welcome Sam Richard who many of you will know as the driving force behind Weird Punk Books. Weird Punk continues to put out fantastic releases, and Sam himself is no slouch, being an acclaimed author. I’m a huge fan of Sam’s work and so very happy to welcome him here, on what is the final 3Q’s of 2022!

Steve: What does your writing time look like? Do you try and write at the same time each day? Do you have a word count you attempt to hit?
Sam: I’m one of those people who has no consistent writing schedule. It’s honestly kind of frustrating, but I can’t sit at my computer and be productive if I have nothing in the tank, so I wait for ideas to gestate a little and then spend time working through and writing them. I tend to write best at night, roughly from 10PM – 2AM, but that’s also its own kind of exhausting, so I just sit down when I have the idea and the time. No real word count goal, though I do love to hit at least 1k at a time. Sometimes that doesn’t happen and other times I can crank out a whole 5k story in that one sitting. It wildly varies from project to project. I’ve just made peace with my process being all over the place.

Steve: You end up at an estate sale and discover an unpublished manuscript from an author you love. Do you keep it just for yourself or do you share it with the world?
Sam: This is a really weird/hard question as a publisher, not just as a writer, as I have the publishing background to make that happen, but obviously there are legalities and a whole web to untangle. If this hypothetical includes that I could do this, the person who controls the author’s estate would be ok with it, and we’d worked out the finer details, I absolutely would. Provided I like the project.

Steve: Tell me about your newest release (novel/story/poem/novella) and why someone should read it!
Sam: Latest release of mine is the reprint of my Wonderland Award-Winning Collection To Wallow in Ash & Other Sorrows. It’s available on the Weirdpunk website, plus everywhere else you can get books. I also have my follow up collection coming out very soon. Still figuring out the title and cover, but it should be out late October if everything goes according to plan.

Steve: Bonus Question! You wake up in a comic book. What is your comic book character and what is your superpower?
Sam: If I woke up in a comic book, my only hope is that it would be something that Vertigo would have published in the 90s. I’d be perfectly at home there. And if that was the case, my character name wouldn’t be a traditional super-hero name. Maybe something re-imagined from a long forgotten classic era comic. A name like Joe Ghoulie or some shit. Yeah, Joe Ghoulie. My power would be freezing time. Specifically freezing time so I could sleep as much as I want and still get things done. But I’d probably use that power to rob billionaires, too.

Ha! That’s awesome! You should use Joe Ghoulie as a pseudonym! Thank you again, Sam!

To find more of his work, check the links!

Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Sam-Richard/e/B0169BVE5I/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/SammyTotep

Website: https://www.weirdpunkbooks.com/