Bio

Hi all! I’m Lindey (she/her), also known as Sam Burns, writer of queer fantasy romance novels.

As much as I absolutely love my job, I keep burning myself out by working 60+ hour weeks until I land myself in bed with pneumonia. Three times. Or maybe it’s because I love my job.

Point is, I needed something to distract me from working myself into getting sick once a year. I’ve always been a crafter, so this was the obvious answer as something to focus on that would also let me relax a little.

I’ve been crocheting since I was nine, when my adopted mother taught me to keep me out of her hair when she was unpacking after a cross-country move. Her mother-in-law taught me how to knit when I was seventeen by teaching me a cast on, the knit stitch, and the purl stitch, and then setting me loose on a pile of stiff acrylic with a plastic needle and no idea what “gauge” meant. The resulting sweater somehow fit, but was stiff enough to double as kevlar, and I believe I finally got rid of it in 2023 when Mr. Burns and I moved from Iowa to North Carolina.

After the ugly armor sweater of doom, I lost interest in knitting for a few years, until I went back to college and needed something to do with my hands instead of just sitting there in class staring into space—I’m an auditory learner, but it helps if I have something going on in my hands at the same time, and if I start writing, I’ll ignore class altogether. During my stint in college, I knit a lot of lace shawls, most of which have since been gifted to friends because how many lace shawls can you wear regularly? Still, knitting in the early 2000s, I found a revitalized knitting community that I didn’t have when I was a teenager, and kinds of tools and fiber available I’d never even imagined.

Knitting led to spinning, and I now also own two gorgeous spinning wheels and an e-spinner; a Lendrum DT, a Kromski Polonaise, and a Hansen minispinner, all of which are well used and well loved.

In 2017, I published my first Sam Burns novel, and it’s become a career I love attached to a wonderful, loving community of writers and readers I wouldn’t be the same without. This blog isn’t about that, though. If you want to know more about Sam, click the Books link in the header.