Tell us about yourself and how many books you have written.
I am a former operatic soprano, music critic and feature writer, voice teacher and performance coach. Now I’m doing some publicity writing. I have published one book “Sam (a pastoral), which is a tale about people missing each other almost entirely, and a horse, Sam, who interprets the meaning of life for them. I am almost through writing another one, which is a comic-farce murder mystery, starrring a very famous composer as the sleuth, and no I am not going to tell you who.
After some years of writing music reviews at 10:30 pm with an 11:00 deadline and an editor yelling at me across the newsroom, I became a very glib writer. Writing a long form novel was much more difficult. Considering the bazillions of books I had read, I thought making a big structure would be easy. Ha.
The second book is easier, mostly because things in a mystery have to happen at times. Like a murder. Then another murder. Suspects. Red herrings. Clues. A reveal. I needed a time line to keep stuff straight. Since it’s set in the late 18th century, the age of endless and witty conversation, it’s largely in dialogue form with some action scenes thrown in. Think Jane Austen, who wrote just a little later. No descriptions. Heroines never are caught eating anything. But in my book people drink endless coffees and eat Viennese pastries and try to solve the mystery at the same time.
What is the name of your latest book and what inspired it?
Sam (a pastoral) is sort of an odd title I will admit. What the heck is a pastoral? Several things actually. A pastoral, in olden times, was a poem or story that had shepherds and shepherdesses in it. City people had the idea that the ideal life was a shepherd’s life. If you have spent time around sheep you know this is not true.
A pastoral can also mean pastures, or the rural scene, as in a pastoral retreat.
Pastoral also refers to the duties of a minister or rabbi or priest toward his flock. He is their shepherd, and guards them from whatever. The extended meaning of this is the way people care for one another. In my story the horse takes care of the kid, and she takes care of him. Out of this love bond grows her ability to take care of other people in her life. She is sort of a slow learner, but she does figure it out.
Do you have any unusual writing habits?
I am a musician by trade. When I paint at my easel I listen to music. When I write I may turn on music but I never hear a note of it. Whatever part of my brain I use for processing music it’s the same part I use to write. Finally I gave up. I write in total silence, but I hear the words. I have a record of birdsongs that i can hear OK.
What authors, or books have influenced you?
When I was young I read ‘Bambi’ and ‘Black Beauty’ over and over. Also ‘Heidi,’ which has two worlds operating simultaneously: the child’s world and the adults’ world. When one re-reads it as an adult one reads an entirely different book. In both ‘Bambi’ and ‘Black Beauty’ the animals speak for themselves. The deer think that humans are gods, who kill animals at will but never die themselves. Bambi discovers this is not true, and that mankind is mortal and suffers as the animals suffer. The fact that we humans do not rule the natural world, nor own it, made a huge impression on me! This revelation is not in the Disney movie.
As a pre-teen I was devoted to Anne of Green Gables. L.M. Montgomery’s love of rustic humor and racy gossip has been an influence on my writing about country people. I loved ugly duckling stories, square-peg stories.. Anne and Heidi have a lot in common, since they both heal their adoptive parents. I read lots of animals stories too. As a teen I started the grownup classics. The Bronte sisters, Dickens, Mark Twain, Nathaniel Hawthorne.
Then Eliot, Austen, Fielding, Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, the real Beef Trust authors. Middlemarch is a book I re-read every few years. Melville, Conrad, all that good stuff. Tolkien, right in the middle of all that. I still love it, because of its rich descriptions of nature, and the way he creates this ache of nostalgia for lost worlds, ruined cities, extinct peoples. It’s still a good read when one has a bad cold and wants to go far far away…
Dorothy Sayers made me love mysteries. Nowadays I read a lot of American history, anything by Bill Bryson, Jennifer Haight, Michael Gruber’s thrillers, Marianne Wiggins. Kate Atkinson. Best horse book? “Horse Heaven’ by Jane Smiley. the Kate Shugak mysteries. Rohinton Mistri breaks your heart. Hilary Mantel, OMG. Dona Leon; I read her with a map of Venice on the computer so I can follow the action around Venice. She has a nice cookbook out too. In Florida I like to read Carl Hiassen for the local color. John Wideman for poetic prose. I gotta stop….
Now I read
What are you working on now?
Operatic Murder Mystery. I can say no more. Backstage backbiting, secret societies, modern versus conservative, quite a lot of sex, lots of suspects at the scene of the crime, people denouncing each other and incriminating themselves, the secret police arrest the wrong man twice….I can say no more. It’s almost done. Be patient.
What is your best method or website when it comes to promoting your books?
I am on Author’s Den and Goodreads, and I have a blog on WordPress, very unblogged lately. The Kindle Freebie five-day giveaway has been good to do. After I run this one I am trying taking out a Goodreads ad to see if I can sell some, for, you know, money. I have no expectations of wealth or even profit from this book-writing thing, I just would like somebody else to read it. It’s a desire I acquired working on the newspaper. I write something, and BOOM, it’s published the next day and everyone is reading it and sending me angry letters or sometimes even nice letters.
I want to share my writing with lots of people and not end up living on the street, that’s all I ask…
Do you have any advice for new authors?
Do not write while asleep or riding a horse.
What is the best advice you have ever heard?
“Five hundred words, exactly, not one more or less.” “Take out ALL the adverbs and most of the adjectives,” then throw out fifty percent of what’s left.”
What are you reading now?
“One Summer,” by Bill Bryson
“The Sand Child” by Tahar ben Jelloun
What’s next for you as a writer?
more writing. And after that…reading. writing. reading. writing.
If you were going to be stranded on a desert island and allowed to take 3 or 4 books with you what books would you bring?
Middlemarch, War and Peace, Paradise Lost, The Iliad. Can I please bring some more?
Author Websites and Profiles
Susan Larson Website
Susan Larson’s Social Media Links
Goodreads Profile