Susan Coryell

Susan and I have known each other for many years. She and I are in a critique group together. Thank you for the interview and congrats to your success! 

A career educator, Susan has taught students from 7^th grade through college-level. She earned a BA degree in English from Carson-Newman College and a Masters in Interdisciplinary Studies   from George Mason University. She is listed in several different volumes of Who’s Who in American Education.  Susan belongs to Author’s Guild, Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators, South Carolina Writers, OLLI Writers at Clemson University, and Lake Writers. She loves to talk with budding writers at schools, writers’ conferences and workshops. 

Susan has a large social media following of over 12,000 contacts on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Instagram. She participates in several critique groups, both online and in-person.

When not writing, Susan enjoys reading, boating, kayaking, pickle ball and yoga. She and her husband, Ned, love to travel.

Where are you from? A native of Northern Virginia, I grew up in Herndon and graduated from Herndon High School. After college in Tennessee, I spent two years teaching at Hawaii Baptist Academy in Honolulu, then returned to Virginia where I taught Language Arts for 17 years at Thoreau Intermediate School (now middle school). I retired after eleven years teaching English at Centreville High School. My first retirement home was Smith Mountain Lake, Virginia, before moving to Clemson, South Carolina where my husband and I now reside near family.

What did you do before you became an author? I actually wrote my first YA novel, Eaglebait, while teaching 7^th and 8^th graders. I did not get back to writing until I retired from teaching, however.

How long have you been writing? I originally published Eaglebait in 1989. You do the math! That’s a long time!

How do you handle rejections? No author likes to see their hard work rejected, but I have learned to see rejections as primarily a way to improve my writing. I find today’s publishing process to be a challenge.

Tell us about your books. Eaglebait is a YA anti-bully book with the theme of raising self-esteem. Originally published in hardback by Harcourt, it is now in its third edition, released by The Wild Rose Press June 12, 2024, for their new YA line. I have updated cyber-bullying and added some modern touches. Eaglebait won the NY Public Library’s “Books for the Teen Age,” and the International Reading Association’s “Young Adult Choice.”

A Red, Red Rose, Beneath the Stones and Nobody Knows (2013 – 2016) compile a Southern Gothic, cozy mystery series, The Overhome Trilogy, with contemporary characters in the historic setting of an 18^th Century Southern Virginia historic estate full of spirits. Published by The Wild Rose Press, the series deals with long-held, heart-felt Southern ideals that sometimes clash with modern thought. As Southerners, our ghosts that haunted us in the past still dwell with us in the present and, if we do not come to grips with the reality of the horrors and ramifications of slavery, they will remain in our future. The trilogy is archived in the Library of Virginia.

A Murder of Principle, 2018, The Wild Rose Press, concerns the murder of a toxic principal in a modern high school. Practically every character has a good reason to do her in.

In the fall of 2022, along with co-author Kathy Graham, a certified yoga instructor, Susan published children’s picture book Spooky Yoga through KDP. 

Kiki’s Dream, a picture book about a little Hawaiian girl who dreams of playing in snow, published by Two Sisters Press, released in November, 2023. The publisher donates a portion of their proceeds to Maui wildfire relief.

Where do you get your ideas from? Inspiration leads me to write. While teaching middle school kids, I was inspired to write Eaglebait because of the bullying I observed. I wanted young readers to realize that there are ways to thwart school bullies and raise their own self-esteem.

 An ancient estate in the hunt country of Virginia, rumored to be haunted, inspired The Overhome Trilogy. An avid reader of Civil War history, I did extensive research on various battles that occurred in Virginia as well as on slavery, our “peculiar institution.” 

Over my extensive teaching career, I had some excellent principals, some average, and one real stinker. She dies on page 8 of A Murder of Principle. Yes, it’s fiction, but what an inspiration for me!

My yoga teacher and I based Spooky Yoga on a routine she offered our adult class. I wrote the script and she provided the very inspirational zen.

My young grandchildren in Hawaii provided the inspiration for Kiki’s Dream, with their intense desire to play in snow, which will never happen in Hawaii.

What has your publishing experience been like? I would call my publishing experience a slow but steady success – some based on pure luck. I found a terrific agent with a big Chicago agency when I sponsored my school literary magazine for the Scholastic Press contest at Columbia University in New York. The agent landed me a contract for my first novel, Eaglebait, with one of the “Big Five” publishers of the time, Harcourt.

I also consider it my good fortune that Amazon republished A Red, Red Rose for their “Amazon Encore” line. This first book in The Overhome Trilogy rose to #1 best seller on Amazon’s ranks at one point.

I was surely at the right place at the right time when Two Sisters Press took on Kiki’s Dream at the time of the horrific wildfire disaster in Hawaii.

What has been most challenging for you as a writer? Like most writers, I struggle with submissions to literary agencies and publishers. The process is often daunting in the volume of detail and complexity of protocol involved. It all takes TIME, which we writers feel could be better used for our own writing.

I also find marketing and promoting my published works to be way too time-consuming; yet, it must be done if we expect to get our work out to the reading public.

What is your process of writing a children’s book? Do you already know the story line or do you write it as you go? I’ve been told that there are two kinds of writers: plotters – those who rely on a pre-conceived plot and “pantsers” – those who write “by the seat of their pants,” or as they are led moment-to-moment by their Muse. I am a plotter, in that I am inspired by a theme, I plot out, at a bare minimum, the beginning, middle and end of the book and fill in the gaps by flexible planning.

As I said previously, for me inspiration is key. I cannot simply sit down at the computer and write a coherent story. I find my own process is especially crucial for children’s books since I know that every single word must be perfect. Children’s authors do not waste words. We have to constantly be aware that our illustrators will carry out the old maxim: a picture is worth a thousand words.

What is next for you? I’ve been working on another children’s picture book about an adoption day celebration for Lani, a five-year-old girl living with her mixed-race family in Hawaii. Lani wonders if her birth mother in Japan remembers her adoption day.

Please visit Susan Coryell’s website: www.susancoryellauthor.com and blog: www.susancoryellauthor.blogspot.com or contact her on Facebook:

https://www.facebook.com/susan.coryell.7

https://www.facebook.com/susan.coryell.73997

Thank you, Susan. Best wishes to you! 

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LESLIE’S July Free Book Giveaway Winner is Joan Lucera from Virginia. Congrats! 

LESLIE’S events the rest of the year are listed below. For more information, please contact me at letayloe987@gmail.com

July 6-7, 2024, Vendor at Blue Crab Arts and Crafts Festival, Hartfield, Virginia.

September 21, 2024, Vendor at the Old Town Manassas Art Show & Craft Fall Fair, Manassas, VA, 10-4.

September 28, 2024, Signing at Read with Carylee Road Trip – Celebrating Diversity in Children’s Literature, St. James in Springfield, Virginia, 12pm to 4pm.

October 12, 2024, 7th Annual Fredericksburg Book Festival. Riverfront Park, Fredericksburg, VA. 10-4, Participating in a Panel Discussion.

November 9, 2024, Presentation at Williamsburg Library, Event: Picture Book Workshop for Adults, Creating Your Own Picture Book, Hands-on workshop, 1-4pm. Bring lined paper, pencil, and color crayons, and be ready to think, write, and create.

December 7, 2024, Book Signing at Turn the Page Bookshop, Williamsburg, Virginia, 12-4.

Until Next Month –