Another in the recurring series of quick profiles of characters from my novel THAT OCTOBER: Today, Sammi Bradford.

Sammi, like Toni in this space the other day, is the high school friend we all wish we’d had: Beautiful and popular but also unwaveringly loyal. There’s a reason Sammi is the last of the group of four that Jackie talks with in the book. Sammi is probably the closest of Jackie’s friends.

(Sammi is seen on the cover as drawn by my friend, artist Sara McKinley, who is saramckinleyart on Instagram.)

While Sammi’s look was inspired by Brec Bassinger – I’d watched the very fun superhero TV series “Stargirl” not long before, and she looked the way I wanted Sammi to look – Sammi has troubles that none of the other friends have, namely a father in prison.

Sammi’s mom is also the local newspaper editor in Middletown, where THAT OCTOBER takes place, and that gives my young protagonists access to the newspaper library files – the morgue, as some call them – that fuel speculation about one of the major characters in the young heroes’ life.

Sammi might also be the most courageous of the young friends, turning to face a deadly bad guy near the climax of the story, on Halloween night 1984.

Because I love returning to characters in my fiction, Sammi has a cameo in “The Devil’s Cut,” my short story in Hoosier Noir Volume 7. She’s a couple of years older, she wears her hair in an undercut and she has tattoos. Never mind that the time frame of THAT OCTOBER, set in 1984, and “The Devil’s Cut,” pretty much set in the present day, don’t match up.

That’s Sammi.