Introducing My Second Book, 'Samara'

Written and illustrated by me

I’ve been enamored with the beauty of maple keys since I was a kid, when I was introduced to them in my abuela’s front yard. We’d pick them up and toss them in the air, watch them come twirling down. I still take pictures of them whenever I spot them on the ground.

I was a strange kid. I struggled to connect with the people around me. To be honest, I couldn’t blame them. I just didn’t know how to talk, really, how to be a person. I was extremely sensitive and prone to tears. Other people frightened me. I absconded into the private worlds of my journals, where I doodled and wrote whatever I felt like writing.

Nature was a passion of mine. I would read books about dinosaurs, animals, and plants. I would go out in our massive backyard in the country and go looking for new and beautiful flowers, weeds, rocks, and so on. I would give these things names, as if I’d discovered them.

I eventually grew out of my journals and learned to “talk to people.” But my love of nature remained. I was reminded of my love for maple keys a couple years ago. I encountered a flock of them as I was on one of my long walks.

The maple key, otherwise known as the samara, has paper wings to catch the wind. It’s astonishing to me, how such seemingly fragile things can travel, as they do. I couldn’t help but compare the samara to myself, to my childhood. A story landed on me that day and took root, a story about a scared kid who struggles to put himself out there, but who’s also sure he was born to fly.

I can’t wait to tell you more about Samara, about the love story between Gabriel García Smith and Shay Foley that plays out in a rural part of the country where people don’t imagine gay people exist. I’ll be updating you, my Substack readers, as I go along!

But for now I just want to say I’m so excited that Samara has found a home in Farrar, Straus and Giroux (FSG) Children’s imprint and an editor in Trisha de Guzman. This is a house known for innovative, exciting work.

I’ve known from the beginning that Gabriel’s story mixed drawing and writing. Samara is, among other things, a love letter to those weird kids sitting in the very back of the classroom with their heads in the clouds, who doodle and take cracks at poetry and find comfort and refuge in language. For him, as much for me, the line between visuals and the written word is blurred.

That’s all I have to say for now. But I’m looking forward to sharing more, and thank you, thank you for being on this journey with me.

JP