My name is Sam Tschida (pronounced cheetah) and I am a romcom author. My debut novel, Siri, Who Am I? (Quirk Books) is about a woman who wakes up alone in a torn party dress in an LA hospital with no memory. She pieces her life together through her Instagram account. Since that’s my thing this year, I decided to introduce myself in the same way. So here goes, five obscure facts about me, as found on my Insta account:
Siri, Who Am I?
1) This is my neighbor’s Siamese cat. I took a picture of him while I was out running one day, unaware of who he belonged to. Turns out that he belongs to Jack, a guy I know from the parent pick-up line. Jack is in his 70s and takes care of his grandkids. He’s my favorite person at parent pickup because I’m more comfortable with grandpa energy than mom energy. I don’t know why parent pick-up feels so cutthroat, but it truly does. Sometimes I run into Jack at the local coffeeshop and have a coffee with him and his friend, a retired cop named Big Mike who doesn’t say much. I look forward to seeing them again after this infernal pandemic is over.
2) This is my son and my dog. I think my son is trying to train the dog. He hasn’t had much success so far.
3) Terrell, my man, came home with new coffee cups recently. The “queen” cup is my favorite because it’s new and because I like to feel fancy when I first wake up in the morning.
4) Pictured is my good friend, Cristina. She drove up from Missouri for the weekend a while back. We ate a ton of good food and took turns writing each other’s books. I think she added a couple of lines to Siri. Cristina is a fabulous writer, screenwriter, and an even better friend. She recently lost out a screenwriting honor to Shia LeBeouf who is now my sworn enemy. Being Shia LeBeouf’s enemy hasn’t taken up any of my time, which is a relief.
5) That time I visited a wax museum in Nashville.
6) This is SMUT University, a school of writing I run out of my basement. It is so named for humor and down-with-the-patriarchy reasons. I swear we aren’t all writing porn. These are the students from my Tuesday class, all brilliant and lovely. I moved the university to Zoom because of the pandemic. This may be controversial, but I actually like Zoom, even if I miss the boxed wine and tacos we used to share.
7) I was supposed to stop at five, but I can’t bear to cut the wax museum, and it’s not like I’m an accountant or anything. Numbers schmumbers.
That’s it. Now you know everything about me.
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My first job was as a Saturday girl in a giant hardware store in Liverpool. I worked in the bathroom department on the til surrounded by shiny, new toilet seats. Pinewood or mahogany? Or black plastic? After a year, I got a job in Woolworths and was put on the entertainment counter. Talk about living the dream. I got to put videos into boxes, CDs into cases, and choose the music played across the store. Cher’s ‘Believe’ was number 1 when I started. I felt like I’d come a long way from selling loos... to read more click HERE
