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| photo: Charm Cataag | |
Samantha Sotto Yambao is a professional daydreamer, aspiring time traveler, and speculative fiction writer living in Manila, Philippines. She is the author of Before Ever After, Love and Gravity, A Dream of Trees, and The Beginning of Always. Her new novel, Water Moon (Del Rey), is a dreamlike fantasy about a charming young physicist who embarks on a magical quest.
Handsell readers your book in 25 words or less:
What if I told you that I know about a pawnshop where you can sell your regrets? Would you like its address?
On your nightstand now:
I'm currently working on my edits for my next book, and so the only things I have on my nightstand are my phone charger, water bottle, and hand cream. I have the worst memory, and I would hate to read someone else's amazing book and have their lines creep into my writing by mistake!
Favorite book when you were a child:
Green Eggs and Ham by Dr. Seuss. I owe this book my mantra in life: try anything (as long it's legal, cruelty-free, and not a questionable mushroom) once.
I'm a strong believer in living outside your comfort zone and that green things, except mold, are good for you.
Your top five authors:
Agatha Christie. Anne Rice. Douglas Adams. Anthony Doerr. Emily Brontë.
Book you've faked reading:
The Shining Girls by Lauren Beukes. I had to read it for a book club and wasn't able to finish it in time for our meeting. I spent that evening nodding, sipping wine, and forming vague sentences. I'm sorry.
Book you're an evangelist for:
Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes. It's required reading before departing this planet. Completely and utterly depressing, but also beautiful and beyond perfection. And did I mention that it was depressing?
Book you've bought for the cover:
Griffin & Sabine: An Extraordinary Correspondence by Nick Bantock. I'm a simple person. A parrot, a strange postcard, and a handwritten letter? Take my money. I'd frame the cover and every page of that book and hang it on my wall if I could.
Book you hid from your parents:
The Sleeping Beauty series by Anne Rice. Explaining how this was not the Disney fairytale version would have been very awkward.
Book that changed your life:
I'm sorry, but I'm going to have to break the rules and choose two books. The Belgariad series by David Eddings (I know, I know. It's a series, not a book. I'm a rebel.) and The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger.
Minutes into a date that wasn't a date, my now husband of 25 years and I geeked out over The Belgariad and our love for Aunt Pol's bacon and realized that we had met our person. So yeah, I'd say The Belgariad pretty much set the course of my life from that night forward.
The Time Traveler's Wife, meanwhile, gave me the worst book hangover. I felt so bad about Henry's death that I swore if I ever wrote a book, my main character would never die. And so I did. And it became my debut novel, Before Ever After.
Favorite line from a book:
"Time is an illusion. Lunchtime doubly so."--Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
Five books you'll never part with:
My library is mostly digital because dust and I are not friends--but allergies be damned, I will never say goodbye to the storybooks my kids insisted that my husband and I read to them on repeat. Goodnight Moon (Margaret Wise Brown), Jesse Bear, What Will You Wear? (Nancy White Carlstrom), Disney's Mickey's Alphabet Soup (Wendy Wax), Golden Books' The Good Humor Man (Kathleen N. Daly, illustrated by Tibor Gergely), and Green Eggs and Ham will forever have a place on my bookshelf.
Book you most want to read again for the first time:
Agatha Christie's Murder on the Orient Express. I remember reading this book as a kid and having my jaw drop on the floor. There are few things I enjoy more than a plot twist that catches me completely by surprise. I live to gasp.