Samantha Ripley (just Ripley, please) writes female-forward sapphic fiction with sharp edges and soft centers. Stories about capable, complicated women who are very good at dangerous things and very bad at saying how they feel.
She has been telling stories for more than twenty years, and has written over a million words in that time, learning her craft the way writers do: by writing constantly, reading voraciously, and finding out what keeps readers up past their bedtimes. Her work moves between genres or blends them into delicious soup, from comedy-thrillers to gothic romance to fantasy, but it always comes back to the same base notes: loyalty, found family, banter, and love that has to be earned.
As a veteran living with PTSD, Ripley brings a respect for service and its aftermath to her fiction. Her characters carry their histories honestly, without glamour and without pity, and they are allowed to be funny, flawed, and whole.
A lifelong devotion to film and music shapes how she builds a scene. She thinks in camera shots and tempo, listens for the rhythm of a line and hears the score rise to meet it. John McClane, Ellen Ripley (same name!), Indiana Jones, and Sarah Connor are the bedrock on which her love of character is built.
Her debut series, Las Playas, follows two women who find missing people for a living in a fog-bound Northern California beach town, where the danger is real, the banter never stops, and payment occasionally consists of tamales.
Ripley is rarely seen without Freki, a large White Swiss Shepherd service dog who is frequently mistaken for a wolf and has the temperament of a Golden Retriever. Don’t worry, Ripley keeps a lint roller on hand if you want to say hello.
She writes the books she wants to read, and hopes you’ll want to read them too.
