Home / Eleanor & Sam

A witty tale of ambition, friendship, and the delicate balance between chasing one’s dreams while holding on to what matters most.


Eleanor Wild has it all—except for a single good idea.

As a bestselling author with a bad case of writer’s block and a family on the brink of mutiny, Eleanor agrees to a family vacation in Las Vegas. But instead of relaxation, she finds herself sitting next to Sam Sutton, a twenty-three-year-old aspiring author with a knack for both storytelling and oversharing.
 
What starts as a mid-flight chat turns into an unlikely friendship, with Sam’s raw enthusiasm and bold ideas sparking the creative fire Eleanor thought she’d lost forever. But as their collaboration takes off, so do the complications. Between her neglected family, Sam’s growing resentment of her own struggling dreams, and a moral gray area that grows darker by the day, Eleanor’s balancing act is starting to look more like a high-stakes gamble.
 
Set against the neon-lit chaos of Las Vegas, Eleanor & Sam explores the complexities of ambition, the struggle for balance, and the power of second chances—proving that what happens in Vegas doesn’t always stay there…especially when it’s your career and family on the line.

Who it's for

Recognize yourself in the characters:
​
​THE WOMAN WHO HAS FORGOTTEN HOW TO WANT THINGS FOR HERSELF

You used to know exactly what you wanted, and had a specific hunger for it. And then somewhere between the school runs and the deadlines and the people depending on you, the hunger quietly went somewhere else. Now you sit at your desk and stare at a blank page, or a blank screen, or a blank plan, or a blank feeling, and you can't tell if you're blocked or just tired or if this is what it looks like when someone has given so much of herself away that there's not enough left to generate anything new. 



​
​THE WOMAN STILL UNTANGLING HERSELF FROM HER PARENTS' IDEA OF WHO SHE SHOULD BE

There is a specific kind of damage that comes from parents who love you but cannot accept you, who mean well but communicate it as disappointment, who ask questions about your future that are really just statements about your failure. You learned early to carry their doubt alongside your own, to hear their voice in every moment of uncertainty, to wonder if maybe they were right all along. 



THE WOMAN JUST NOW CHOOSING HERSELF

It didn't happen all at once. There wasn't a single morning you woke up different, a single conversation that rearranged everything, a single decision that finally felt clean and right and free of doubt. It happened in small, accumulating moments: the manuscript you kept returning to, the voicemail you didn't return, the door you opened and then closed behind you, the version of yourself you started saying yes to and the one you started leaving behind. 

​
​
THE WOMAN WHOSE AMBITION MAKES OTHER PEOPLE UNCOMFORTABLE

You've had to defend your need to work, to create, to pursue, to stay in the game, more times than you can count, and almost always to people who love you. You've watched a man's ambition get called dedication while yours gets called distraction. You've sat across from someone who says they support you, yet still makes you feel like choosing your work means choosing against your family. You've learned to apologize for closed doors and missed moments even when you were doing the thing that keeps you whole, the thing that pays the bills.



​​THE WOMAN REBUILDING A RELATIONSHIP AFTER SHE CAUSED THE DAMAGE

It wasn't his fault alone, or yours alone, or anyone's fault. The damage happened in increments, small absences, divided attention, a habit of choosing the work or the project or the distraction over the moment that needed her, and by the time anyone named it, a quiet distance had taken root. 




THE WOMAN CARRYING A MISTAKE SHE CAN'T STOP THINKING ABOUT

You did something you're not proud of. Maybe you didn't go through with it, maybe no one else knows, maybe the damage was quieter than a blow-up and harder to name because of it. But you know. And the knowing has been living with you, in the small hours, in the moments when you catch your reflection and feel a flash of something uncomfortable. You're a woman who had a thought she shouldn't have had, acted on it partway, and has to live with the consequences even when the worst of it was only in your own mind. 


​If You liked this, you'll like:


  • Centered on a successful female author facing a blank page.
  • Explores what happens to a woman's marriage and family life when a creative block quietly threatens everything else.
  • Asks what a writer is willing to trade for visibility, and whether literary success and literary merit are still the same thing.

    ​
Picture

  • Centered on a successful female author facing a blank page.
  • Explores what happens to a woman's marriage and family life when a creative block quietly threatens everything else.
  • Asks what a writer is willing to trade for visibility, and whether literary success and literary merit are still the same thing.

    ​

  • Warm, self-deprecating first-person voices of women holding everything together on the outside while quietly unraveling on the inside.
  • Highlight the gap between the life a woman presents and the life she is actually living.
  • Explores marriage with quiet fault lines that haven't been fully acknowledged.

    ​​

  • Feature women who have staked their identity on writing.
  • Analyzes how the wrong romantic partner can colonize a writer's creative process, and how difficult it is to reclaim a voice from someone who has taken up residence inside it.
  • Explores the intersection of desire and creative ambition, and how inextricably tangled the two can become.
  • Achieves a close, warm interiority that puts the reader fully inside a woman's mind at a moment when everything feels uncertain.
    ​

  • Warm, self-deprecating first-person voices of women holding everything together on the outside while quietly unraveling on the inside.
  • Highlight the gap between the life a woman presents and the life she is actually living.
  • Explores marriage with quiet fault lines that haven't been fully acknowledged.

    ​
​
  • Feature women who have staked their identity on writing.
  • Analyzes how the wrong romantic partner can colonize a writer's creative process.
  • Explores the intersection of desire and creative ambition, and how inextricably tangled the two can become.
  • Achieves a close, warm interiority that puts the reader fully inside a woman's mind at a moment when everything feels uncertain.


“A gifted and natural storyteller.” 
​—Camille Pagán, bestselling author of Dog Person