An Interview with Joana Bastos, author of Samantha's Summer

Samantha's Summer is a novel published by a group called PublishAmerica.com in December 2005. Its author is Drew undergrad Joana Bastos (CLA 2010). The following synopsis of the book is courtesy of PublishAmerica.com .

Samantha Lexington was forced to live with an abusive father and cruel brothers, but when 18-year-old Sam is kicked out of her home, she has no choice but to work as a maid in the Conway house. The Conways are the richest family in New York City , so when the youngest Conway, Ryan, falls for Sam, his mother and older brother won't allow it.

As Sam tries desperately not to fall for Ryan, she finds herself in difficulties because of his love for her. When an unexpected murder lands Sam in the home of her birth mother, she encounters even more troubles. Money problems force her back into the Conway house where she and Ryan fall even more for each other.

They believe that their love can survive anything but can two teenagers handle a world that won't allow a rich boy and poor girl to be together?

The Reading Light sat down with Joana to discuss the authorship process, from writing to getting published.

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The Reading Light : What influenced you to write this novel?

Joana Bastos : I've always loved to write and I've always wanted to be an author. I had a teacher in third grade who used to tell me how talented I was and she used to tell me that one day she was going to read one of my books and I was definitely going to become an author. So I've had that idea in my head since I was nine years old, so I just decided to write one. And at first I didn't really know what to do with it. I didn't write thinking I was going to publish it but I decided to send in the manuscript to see what happened.

TRL : So how did the story idea come about?

JB : It's completely fiction. None of it is, at all, based on anything out of my life and that's what people like to ask, Did this really happen? But it's fiction.

TRL : Can you talk about Samantha's Summer a bit?

JB : The company categorized it as a romance. There is a synopsis of it on PublishAmerica.com.

TRL : PublishAmerica is the company that put out the novel?

JB : Yes.

TRL : How did you find out about them?

JB : I asked my aunt about and she found it for me.

TRL : Can you go through that process? Making contacts, submitting the manuscript, what was that like?

JB : On their website, they have something like a survey where you give them a basic synopsis of the story and they sent me an email that they wanted the manuscript, so I sent them the manuscript and about a week later they told me they wanted to publish it. And I signed a contract with them and they have the author look at it first to make sure it's ok, then they send it to an editor and then they send it back to the author. This is all done by email, I didn't meet with anyone. It took about eight months in all.

TRL : How long did it take you to write the book itself?

JB : Probably about two or three months because I started over Christmas break my sophomore year and I wrote for hours every day and on the weekends I wrote a lot.

TRL : As a writer, did you have a routine, did you have a page quota for every day?

JB : Nope. I just wrote as much as I felt like writing. I got into it and wrote whatever I wanted.

TRL : What made you want to write this kind of romance story? Was it just a story that you knew you could tell well?

JB : I don't think there is, I just think it was sort of the idea I had in my head so I just went with it. I had the basic plot line in my head and it just evolved.

TRL : Some writers go about planning their works differently, like mapping out characters first. Or sometimes authors build a story around a theme. But you started with the plot. You knew what you wanted to have happen. Was there a theme you wanted to put in or did you have the story and everything else came after that?

JB : I think everything just came after that. I just had the basic idea of what I wanted and it just evolved from there. I didn't really have a list of what each character was going to be like. I think I just developed the characters as I went along.

TRL : Did you find writing it more work than you thought it'd be?

JB : Oh not at all. I enjoyed it so much.

TRL : And so are you planning on trying to write another? Or are you already writing another one?

JB : No, not yet. But that's what I want to do. I plan on being an author. I'm majoring in English and minoring in writing and so I definitely want to write more books. I'm just too busy in college to do anything else.

TRL : Did you write short stories before? Or did you just tackle to novel?

JB : I wrote little things just for fun, for like family and school. But I always got positive feedback from teachers people in my family so I just decided, we have weeks for Christmas vacation, instead of watching TV for two weeks I'd do something I knew I'd enjoy.

TRL : In the future, when you write another manuscript, will you look for an agent and bigger publisher?

JB : I think I would want to do something a bit bigger. But since this is the first one I didn't know whether or not [those bigger companies] would even ant to publish it. I guess I'll see how this does.

TRL : What have you learned from the whole process of writing a novel and getting published?

JB : Just that, this is really what I want to do and that I really enjoyed the whole process and it made me realize even more that this is what I want.