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!