Author Talk with Sandi Smith

What inspired you to write – THE ADVENTURES OF A.R.ACHNID

Conversations With Authors

We asked Sandi what inspired you to write A.R. Achnid 

All of this started about ten years ago. There was no indication that books were headed my way. There were no thoughts in my head that I might want to be an author, although I had always loved to write when I was in high school, but most of that was poetry. A large black spider started the whole thing. One night, when I couldn’t sleep, I got up to get a drink of water. I noticed a large spider on the wall.

Being afraid of spiders, I went to smoosh the spider with a shoe, but he fell down onto our dark blue rug. I could not find him, and was horrified that he was walking around somewhere where I could not see him. I did stop to think what that poor spider was thinking, because there was this large human being trying to hurt him, and he was just a small spider not causing any trouble.  I sat up for a little bit, but decided to go to bed, because I kept looking and wondering where the spider was.

I went to bed and fell asleep. Shortly after, I woke up with all of these words running through my mind, like a ticker tape. I shrugged it off, and went back to sleep. Again, I woke up with all of these words running through my mind. I couldn’t quite understand what they were, but they did involve a spider. I got up and grabbed a piece of paper, writing every word down. I went back to bed, fell asleep for a short while, but then I woke up. Another set of words was running through my mind. Insistent, different words.  Once again, I got up, wrote the words down, and then proceeded to go back to sleep. This happened two or three times throughout the night, until morning came.  When morning came, I sat down, looked at all of the words that I had written down.

I said to my husband, “I think I have words to write a children’s story.”  A.R. Achnid was born.

The New Adventures of A.R. Achnid (Revised Edition)