My Guest Today: Susie Black, author of RAG LADY

My guest today is Susie Black, an amazing woman who’s parlayed an improbable—and successful—career in clothing sales into the premise for her clever second act, a four-book cozy mystery series based on the retail clothing trade. 

Tell us, Susie, how did this unexpected career path come about?

My maternal grandmother had two favorite expressions: Man plans and God laughs, and nothing turns out the way you think it will. She believed things happen for a reason, even if we don’t always understand why. She warned me to be careful what I wished for since I might get it. That sometimes God punishes us by granting us our wishes, and other times God saves us by not granting them. And that God helps those who help themselves. As I’d come to learn, my wise nana had the secret of life down pat. 

At the end of my college freshman year, my dad, a ladies' apparel sales rep, got a huge opportunity and moved my family from Los Angeles to Miami. Relocating from hip LA to “God’s waiting room” failed to excite me, and I chose not to go.

Three years later, armed with my journalism degree and a blind idealism only the young can sustain, I dreamed of being a writer, but fate had other plans. A family crisis threw me into an improbable situation. Baptism by fire got me into the rag biz. I accepted a job working for my dad as a ladies’ apparel sales rep traveling the deep southern states. My life veered off in a completely different direction than I intended, and it would never be the same.

As a woman in a traditionally male-dominated industry, I had to prove myself every day. When I started my career, no other woman did what I did in the deep southern states. Depending upon who you spoke with, I was either famous or infamous-but one thing was for sure: I was the talk of the apparel industry. No one-except my mentor father and me- thought I’d last a season traveling a six-state territory as a manufacturer’s representative for five companies.

Grit and stubborn perseverance to prove them all wrong kept me going, no matter how daunting the challenge. And prove them wrong I did- and succeeded beyond my wildest dreams. I took a sledgehammer to every glass ceiling I encountered and smashed it to smithereens. And the bonus? I opened many doors for the next generation of women executives to succeed in male-dominated industries.

But if it wasn’t for my nana urging me to “Keep a journal. Get all your experiences down on paper. Maybe this is the reason you’re in the rag biz. This must be the story you’re destined to write,” I doubt if I ever would have leveraged my successful ladies’ apparel sales career into a writing gig.

It was my daily journal entries chronicling the interesting, quirky, and often challenging characters I encountered and the crazy situations I got myself into and out of that gave me the stories I’d ultimately write.

Thanks to Nana’s advice, so far I have written and published four humorous cozy mysteries in The Holly Swimsuit Mystery Series. And the series prequel, Rag Lady, is released mid-November of this year.

Tell us about this new book, RAG LADY.

Recent college graduate Holly Schlivnik dreams of being a writer, but fate has other plans. A family crisis throws her into an improbable situation and her life will never be the same. Determined to make her own luck when things don’t happen the way she plans, the irrepressible young woman takes a sledge hammer to the glass ceiling and shatters it to smithereens. The wise-cracking, irreverent transplanted Californian takes you on a raucous, rollicking rollercoaster ride of her hysterical adventures as a ladies apparel sales rep traveling in the deep South as she ends up finding herself along the way.

RAG LADY buy links:

BookBub:  Rag Lady (Holly Swimsuit Series Book 1) by Susie Black - BookBub

Goodreads: Rag Lady by Susie Black | Goodreads

Amazon: Amazon.com: Rag Lady (Holly Swimsuit Series Book 1) eBook : Black, Susie : Kindle Store

Barnes & Noble: Rag Lady by Susie Black, Paperback | Barnes & Noble® (barnesandnoble.com)

For more about Susie, here’s her bio:

Named Best US Author of the Year by N. N. Lights Book Heaven, award-winning cozy mystery author Susie Black was born in the Big Apple but now calls sunny Southern California home. Like the protagonist in her Holly Swimsuit Mystery Series, Susie is a successful apparel sales executive. Susie began telling stories as soon as she learned to talk. Now she’s telling all the stories from her garment industry experiences in humorous mysteries.

She reads, writes, and speaks Spanish, albeit with an accent that sounds like Mildred from Michigan went on a Mexican vacation and is trying to fit in with the locals. Since life without pizza and ice cream as her core food groups wouldn’t be worth living, she’s a dedicated walker to keep her girlish figure. A voracious reader, she’s also an avid stamp collector. Susie lives with a highly intelligent man and has one incredibly brainy but smart-aleck adult son who inexplicably blames his sarcasm on an inherited genetic defect.

Looking for more? Contact Susie at:

Website: www.authorsusieblack.com

E-mail: mysteries_@authorsusieblack.com

BookBub: www.bookbub.com/authors/susie-black

Facebook:    https://facebook.com/TheHollySwimsuitMysterySeries

Goodreads: Search results for "Susie Black" (showing 1-9 of 82 books) | Goodreads

Instagram:   Susie Black (@hollyswimsuit) • Instagram photos and videos

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/authorsusieblack-61941011

Pinterest:  https://www.pinterest.com/hollysusie1_saved/

Twitter:    http://twitter.com/@hollyswimsuit

If you enjoy humorous cozy mysteries, be sure to check out Susie’s books. She’s an amazing lady! And thanks for stopping by!

 

Book Spotlight: RIGHTSIDE/WRONGSIDE by Cathy Hester Seckman

With women's rights and threats thereto a hot topic in the news these days, no one should be surprised by the plethora of sci-fi, fantasy, and dystopian literature dedicated to exploring the what-ifs of the issue. One such intriguing entry available now from The Wild Rose Press is RIGHTSIDE/WRONGSIDE by Cathy Hester Seckman. 

Here’s the blurb:

On Rightside/Wrongside, women are in charge and men live behind a 200-mile Border Fence. Their only interactions are for sex, which women control with force and long-entrenched law. Mothers raise daughters, and fathers know nothing of them. Women send sons across the Fence to their fathers and never know if they live or die. New Rightside president Alanna Olaffson believes, along with her countrywomen, that female empowerment is a good thing, a necessary thing, right up to the time it goes frighteningly wrong.

And an excerpt:

The old man dozed over his paperback. Even in a busy week his job was boring as hell. What made it worthwhile, besides the status and the pay bag, was the free bed. Old Willie lived right in the Transfer Cabin, backed up against the Border Fence in Cody, and that suited him fine. He took his meals at a bar down the street - had a few good friends there - and spent most of his free time nodding over a book or stoking his small stove.

It was a nice quiet life, a safe life. Nobody bothered the man in the Transfer Cabin. Yeah, it suited him fine.

The bell rang, startling him out of his doze. It wasn’t a simple ring, for boxed goods or vehicles through the big Door, but the four-note flourish they used for a baby. It sounded again, signaling two to transfer. “It never rains but it pours,” he mumbled, and limped over to answer the bell.

When the ready light flashed on, Old Willie pulled out the heavy metal Drawer set into the back wall of the cabin. He smiled down at the two sleeping babies.

“Welcome to Wrongside,” he said softly.

 This is such an intriguing concept. How did you come up with the idea?

Rightside/Wrongside began 14 years ago as the glimmer of an idea about the societal interactions between women and men. I’m old enough to remember when fathers worked, cut the grass, and drove the car while women stayed home, had babies, and cooked dinner every night. What would it be like, I wondered, if those 1950s roles were reversed? In fact, how would society work if women and men were so alienated from each other that they lived in separate countries? What would happen…?

Sci-fi requires a lot of worldbuilding. How did you go about creating the physical and political setting?

Rightside and Wrongside are on a planet that had been colonized from Earth 71 years earlier. I wasn’t interested in seeing how odd and alien I could make the planet, so it mostly looks like ours. The flora and fauna were named by the colonists after the Earth plants and animals they most resembled. I dropped alien hints once in awhile, though. There are two moons. Each day has 27 hours, and each month has 34 days. Puppies have blue fur.

I wanted the language to have evolved a bit in 71 years, and figured the easiest way to do that was to change their exclamations and curse words. For instance, instead of saying ‘my own damn country,’ the men say ‘my own Yong country.’ Instead of saying ‘thank God,’ the women say ‘thank Milina.’ You can probably guess those are proper names, but you’ll have to read the book to find out who they are.

I'm fascinated by the map you included. How did that come about? 

I’ve had a map of the planet in my head for years, and just before publication I asked my friend Susan Dexter, an artist and fantasy author, to draw it for me. There are locations on the map that are not used in the book, and that’s because at least two sequels are coming: Oceanside and Mountainside.

Now let’s hear about you:

I took a winding road to the writing life, but here I am. As a teenager I was too shy and backward to admit to anyone that I wanted to be a writer, so I followed my sister into dental hygiene. Ten years later the road took its first bend when I had the opportunity to work for my local newspaper as a lifestyles editor. I climbed the (very short) ladder available to me there and eventually became wire editor, features editor, and columnist. When I left the paper I took my writing skills with me to work for other newspapers and for magazines. The most fun I ever had as a magazine writer was working for the True magazines. Remember those? True Love, True Story, True Romance – I wrote for them all, until they folded. Sigh.

The next bend in the road took me to nonfiction, and I became a book indexer. Twenty years later I still index on a limited basis. I eventually had one middle-grade novel and two nonfiction books published, plus three indie books written with writers’ group friends. Rightside/Wrongside is my newest (and best) effort.

My husband and I live in Ohio, and our activities include gardening, canning, hiking, traveling, camping, and motorcycling. I’ve had a motorcycle license since 1985, and presently ride a three-wheeler because of bad knees.

Visit me at

Cathy Hester Seckman - Home (cathyseckman.com)

(20+) Facebook

Purchase links for RIGHTSIDE/WRONGSIDE, a book that is sure to stretch your imagination and provide plenty of food for thought:

Rightside/Wrongside a book by Cathy Hester Seckman bookshop.org)

Amazon.com: Rightside/Wrongside eBook : Seckman, Cathy Hester : Kindle Store

Rightside/Wrongside by Cathy Hester Seckman | eBook | Barnes & Noble® (barnesandnoble.com)

Recommended Reading: Two New Fairy Tales

If you grew up loving fairy tales like I did, you will not want to miss these two wonderful 2023 releases: THORNHEDGE by T. Kingfisher and THREE TASKS FOR A DRAGON by Eoin Colfer. To whet your reading appetite, here are my reviews of both.

THORNHEDGE:

Once there was a tower wrapped in a wall of thorns, and in that tower a princess lay sleeping...

We all know this story, recounted in many versions from Disney's animated Sleeping Beauty to Shrek and even Maleficient. The beautiful, innocent princess cursed by the angry fairy to punish the king and queen who hadn't invited the fairy to bless the child on her christening. But this version, as the author tells us, isn't about the princess.

This version is about her guardian, the lowly, ugly half-fae called Toadling, who is as much a prisoner of the thorns as is her charge.

Toadling is a simple creature who's spent centuries making sure the sleeper sleeps and the thorns keep out the curious until almost everyone has forgotten the tower exists. Almost, it seems, she herself has forgotten the why and the how of her task.

Of course, nothing lasts forever, and sure enough there comes a ragtag knight, adventuring alone, who loves stories. What follows is a sweet friendship as the two, initially frightened of each other, are drawn together out of their loneliness. But the tower and its secrets remain between them, binding Toadling to her duty and the knight to the satisfaction of his quest. Something has to give or the yearning they share will go unfulfilled. But as they tell each other what they know and what they believe, Toadling remembers precisely why she was given this task and how dangerous allowing the knight to break the curse will be. Each chipping away of the thorns exposes them to both possibility and threat.

This is a masterful tale that draws the reader straight into the heart and mind of Toadling as she discovers she may in fact have a choice, dangerous though it may be.

THREE TASKS FOR A DRAGON: 

Once there was a dragon who'd stolen away a girl, and a prince who did not really want to be a king, and a great evil upon the land that someone had to risk everything to fix...

So begins an age-old story with some surprising twists and characters with great hearts. A lovely, lovely illustrated book, it reminds me of the Golden Books of fairy tales I read as a child. The text is lyrical and each page is a water color artwork that depicts the characters and events. It's a magical blend that feels timeless, like all good archetypal stories of a dragon and a prince and a quest, although this one blames not the stepmother but the stepbrother, a nice change. A good book to share and/or read with a beloved child.

Happy Reading!