Michelle Jabès Corpora, Samantha M. Clark, and I discuss their new series AMERICAN HORSE TALES. We talk about Michelle's experience as an editor for Harper Collins, a concept developer, and a ghostwriter, as well as Samantha's experience as a journalist, a managing editor, and the regional advisor for the Austin chapter of the Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators. We also discuss comparisons between the Dust Bowl and the 2020 pandemic, working in Hollywood, gaining the confidence to be an author, treating writing like a job, two ghost stories, our ideal superpowers, and so much more.

Michelle Jabès Corpora is a writer, editor, community organizer, and martial artist. In addition to working in the publishing industry for more than a dozen years as an editor and concept developer, she has ghostwritten five novels in a long-running middle grade mystery series. American Horse Tales: The Dust Bowl is Michelle’s first novel under her own name. Her second novel, The Fog of War: Martha Gellhorn at the D-Day Landings (Pushkin Press), also publishes in 2021.

Samantha M. Clark loves stories about ordinary people in extraordinary circumstances because if four ordinary brothers and sisters can find a magical world at the back of a wardrobe, why can’t she? Until she finds her own real-life Narnia, she writes about other ordinary children and teens who’ve stumbled into a wardrobe of their own. She grew up in different countries around the world and now lives with her husband and two funny dogs in Austin, Texas. Samantha is the regional advisor for the Austin chapter of the Society of Children’s Book Writers & Illustrators and she explores wardrobes every chance she gets. Her debut novel, The Boy, the Boat, and the Beast, was lauded as “an unforgettable, life-affirming tale” by Booklist.