Samantha (Sam) Mills
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samtasticbooks.com
Samantha (Sam) Mills
@samtasticbooks.com
2.9K followers 570 following 2K posts
SFF Author | Nebula, Locus, Sturgeon winner | Archivist | Repped by Lisa Rodgers | THE WINGS UPON HER BACK, Compton Crook winner and World Fantasy finalist, out now! (she/her) www.samtasticbooks.com

Newsletter at https://subscribepage.io/samtasticnews
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my lord... this one is out April 21... it's packed full of imperfect parents, imperfect sisters, fantastical settings, and feminist rage... my lord, you can find some of these shorts for free at the link if you want a preview...

samtasticbooks.com/short-fiction/
Cover for Rabbit Test and Other Stories by Samantha Mills, featuring the title in bold white and pink font with embedded silhouettes of a rabbit and a pregnancy test
January 7, 2026 at 4:48 PM
samtasticbooks.com
[most enticing vizier voice] my lord... this one was a World Fantasy finalist and Compton Crook winner... it's about hero worship and deprogramming from your fascist upbringing... and accepting that sometimes your gods don't love you back...

bookshop.org/p/books/the-...
Cover for The Wings Upon Her Back by Samantha Mills, featuring a stylized mechanical wing in copper and red
January 7, 2026 at 4:43 PM
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This movie will explain things not known to any President or Pope or anyone on this Planet. 🙏
Same over the top review as above with the title included: the Muppets From Space collection
January 4, 2026 at 11:46 PM
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This is an amazing review and I'm going to wait a bit to post the movie title so you can all ponder what it might possibly be for.
Screencap of an Amazon review stating: "This movie collection is one of my favorites....It is really great..It is a family film...It is fabulous and is a great film set...The film set will show you things not explained anywhere on this Planet.....It is a work of true genius....It is great for the whole family..It will explain thing not known to any President or Pope....You will learn things not know to anyone on this Planet.....It is colorful and is really great.....It is a great family film.....It is like Star Wars....You could search the whole Planet and not find things shown in this film..It is really great..Affordable.."
January 4, 2026 at 11:15 PM
samtasticbooks.com
Cackling at my big boofy 5yo cat trying to sit in a basket like our 8 month old.
Photo of two cats sitting in baskets on a desk, with bookshelves in background. The farther cat, a little tuxie, fits easily into his basket. The foreground cat, an enormous black cat, has his sizeable butt in the basket but the front of his body supported by an adjacent stack of books.
December 31, 2025 at 12:36 AM
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Is Ring-bearer a job??
White text on teal background: You are now forced to have the same job as the main character in the last book you read. What is the job?
December 29, 2025 at 8:05 PM
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How I'm walking out of 2025
December 27, 2025 at 3:34 PM
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I just went digging through my high school diaries trying to confirm a memory for an essay and...my god. MY GOD. It was a crime to hand 17yo Sam a journal. What a mortifying mess of teen drama, horniness, and disaster. I barely recognize the person in there. These must never see the light of day.
It's that meme of a vacant-eyed chihuahua interposed over an image of his traumatic war memories
December 16, 2025 at 12:13 AM
samtasticbooks.com
Here it is! My 2025 award eligibility post!
"10 Visions of the Future; or, Self-Care For the End of Days" is a love letter about life under a doomsday cult, and a quick read! I'd be delighted for anyone to consider it for their short story ballots. ;D
www.uncannymagazine.com/article/10-v...
Uncanny Magazine story tile for Samantha Mills' "10 Visions of the Future; or, Self-Care For the End of Days" with the opening paragraph, "There is a future in which a hellgate opens off the coast of California. It happens at midnight on the first day of the new year, which is sooner than anyone expected. The waters rise and we are forced to abandon our home, but one of the neighbors has a spare raft we can borrow until the rescue boats arrive, so there’s that." Photo of a line of cars passing a traffic sign that says "ROAD CLOSED - COSMIC HORROR"
December 9, 2025 at 5:44 PM
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FYI if you're getting books for the holidays, and want to bypass the big box/online juggernauts, you can't go wrong with 30% off direct from Tachyon! ;D
Year End Sale graphic for Tachyon Publications. 30% off sitewide until end of 2025. Use code YEAREND30 on tachyonpublications.com
November 28, 2025 at 3:25 PM
samtasticbooks.com
Happy Addams Family Values Day to all who celebrate 🙏
Screencap from Addams Family Values: Pugsley in an enormous turkey costume singing EAT ME!
November 27, 2025 at 4:26 PM
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Everyone post your hometown slop!

When you're up late drinking with friends... nothing hits like a mountain of loaded carne asada fries 🤤
A paper-lined styrofoam container of loaded carne asada fries -- it's when you take a crapton of french fries, and cover them in carne asada, cheese, guacamole, and sour cream. PRIMO SLOP
November 18, 2025 at 6:40 PM
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"Ooh look at that!!"
a room splattered all over in blood (it looks like old videogame graphics??) with the words "caption this with the 2nd to last text you sent"
October 26, 2025 at 5:21 PM
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ARCs! They exist! I'm in love with the layout, and there is a beautiful introduction by Meg Elison @megelison.bsky.social that made me very emotional! 🥹
The cover for Rabbit Test and Other Stories by Samantha Mills (featuring a big bold font with sillhouettes of a rabbit and a pregnancy test in the words) against a hot pink backdrop and the announcement "now on netgalley and edelweiss"
October 19, 2025 at 4:34 PM
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Preorder links!!
B&N - www.barnesandnoble.com/w/rabbit-tes...
Amazon - www.amazon.com/Rabbit-Other...
My local shop, Mysterious Galaxy - www.mystgalaxy.com/book/9781616...
Cover for Rabbit Test and Other Stories by Samantha Mills, featuring the title in a big, bold font in white and red on black background, with outlines of a rabbit, pregnancy test, and heart monitor line going through the text
October 7, 2025 at 7:43 PM
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IT IS ALIVE!! Behold the cover for Rabbit Test and Other Stories, out in April! Preorder while it is still legal to distribute through the mail!
Sam grinning and holding up a huge board version of the Rabbit Test and Other Stories cover, featuring the title in striking white and red font against black backdrop, with a rabbit, pregnancy test, and heart monitor line through the text Rabbit Test and Other Stories cover, featuring the title in striking white and red font against black backdrop, with a rabbit, pregnancy test, and heart monitor line through the text
October 5, 2025 at 7:28 PM
samtasticbooks.com
Tomorrow!!
Graphic for invitation: You're invited to Tachyon's 30th anniversary party! Sunday October 5th, 12 pm - 5pm. San Francisco Public Library. 100 Larkin Street, San Francisco CA. Open to the public. There will be raffles! Book giveaways! Plus award-winning authors and special guests Joe R. Lansdale & Samantha Mills.
October 4, 2025 at 4:21 PM
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Heyoooo! This evening, 5pm Pacific/8pm Eastern, we're doing a really fun batch of mini readings and a Q&A for Tachyon's 30th anniversary, live on C.S.E. Cooney's Twitch stream: twitch.tv/csecooney
Promo graphic for Tachyon 30th Anniversary Virtual Reading and Q&A, with pics of the authors: Samantha Mills, Mary G. Thompson, Naseem Jamnia, Auston Habershaw, Josh Rountree, Kimberly Unger, Mia Tsai, Pat Murphy, and Sam J. Miller, plus editor Jaymee Goh. Thursday October 2, 8pm Eastern, live on twitch.tv/csecooney
October 2, 2025 at 5:00 PM
samtasticbooks.com
Look what I snagged early from a Tachyon sales table at ArmadilloCon ;D ;D SNEAK PEEK
Sam's hand holding up the book Audition for the Fox by Martin Cahill. The cover features a VERY jaunty fox.
September 14, 2025 at 4:52 PM
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All this signature talk reminds me of a short-lived comic strip I made for my literary theory professor in college, called Derrida Goes to Denny's, in which Jacques Derrida keeps trying to get out of paying his bill using literary theory. (Debbie the waitress is real tired of his shit)
A four panel comic barely better than stick figures. In the first three panels, Jacques Derrida says, "By definition, a written signature implies the actual or empirical nonpresence of the signer. In order to function, that is, in order to be legible, a signature must have a repeatable, iterable, imitable form. It must be able to detach itself from the present and singular intention of its production!" And in the fourth panel, a visibly irritated waitress named Debbie yells, "Sorry, Derrida, but you still have to sign your check!"
September 9, 2025 at 7:39 PM
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I'm Guest of Honoring at ArmadilloCon this weekend. O: Come chat about memory, resistance (spoiler: writing is important but it also has to be more than writing), and female raaaaage
More deets at armadillocon.org
Friday September 12 Panel: Writing as Resistance, Ballroom E, 4pm-4:55pm ArmadilloCon Opening Ceremony, Ballroom D, 7pm-7:30pm Panel: Storycraft 101: Basic Storycrafting, Southpark A, 8pm-8:55pm Saturday September 13 Panel: Burn It All Down: Female Rage in SFF, Ballroom E, 1pm-1:55pm Autographing: Mills, Tsai, Williams, Dealers Room, 2:30pm Interview with Guest of Honor Samantha Mills, Ballroom D, 4pm-4:55pm Panel: Tachyon Publications 30th Anniversary, Ballroom D, 7pm-7:55pm Sunday September 14 Panel: Memory, Identity and Trauma in SFF, Ballroom F, 10am-10:55am Reading by Guest of Honor Samantha Mills, Sweetwaters, 11am-11:30am
September 8, 2025 at 5:44 PM
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Retreating to my corner whenever litfic/genre discourse gets rolling again
The infamous taxidermy fox photo -- a very janky and pained looking fox with a thousand-year stare, posed inexplicably like a person sitting on a metal chair
September 7, 2025 at 4:54 PM
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is it happening
The DVD cover for the movie "Dave" starring Kevin Kline and Sigourney Weaver. In which the president has a stroke, and a lookalike is recruited to take his place.
August 30, 2025 at 3:05 AM
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Fuzzy VHS looking capture of the colorful title screen for THE DRAW SQUAD Screengrab from The Draw Squad showing Mark's hand sketching some 3D shape
July 12, 2025 at 2:00 AM
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I log back in for one evening...
Screencap of bluesky's "trending" sidebar. What's trending? Why, it's MechaHitler, Supreme Court, IRS, and Big Brother 27
July 9, 2025 at 2:05 AM