This is a printer-friendly version of an article from Zip06.com.
03/09/2016 07:30 AMHow does reluctance to go on family boating trips lead to a successful career as a novelist? Susan Strecker can tell you. Susan’s second novel, Nowhere Girl, a tale of suspense and psychological drama, has just been published. She will talk about the book on Sunday, March 20 with John Valeri of Hartford Books Examiner at the Essex Library.
Susan’s debut novel Night Blindness, released in 2014, earned praise from critics, who called it “engrossing,” “fast paced,” and “filled with layers of emotion.” One reader’s review on Amazon described the book as a “fantastic look at grief, love, and redemption.”
Now back to the boating. Susan didn’t like it. The rest of the family did. On holiday trips on the water, her mother bought her notebooks and pencils so she could compose stories while she was aboard. That she loved.
These days Susan writes on land at her home in Essex, often rising at five o’clock in the morning for a few hours of work before her husband Kurt and children Cooper and Ainsley, and perhaps the two cats, get up.
“I love my job; it’s a short commute and I can wear my pajamas,” she says.
Susan likes to start her novels with a title in mind, and popular songs have been her inspiration. Night Blindness was the title of a David Gray song of the same name.
“I was moved to tears when I heard it,” she says.
The Red Hot Chili Pepper’s song “Scar Tissue” inspired her second book.
“I thought Scar Tissue was a great title and I created a whole book around it,” she says.
When the book was finished, she got a call from her agent, a good news, bad news call. The good news was the publisher loved the book. The bad news was they wanted a new title.
“I sat down on the kitchen floor and cried. I cried for an entire week,” she says.
When the tears were done, the book was renamed Nowhere Girl, a riff on Bruce Springsteen’s “Nothing Man,” and a reference to the dislocation Susan’s main character feels as she tries to put together both her own life and the clues to the long-ago murder of her twin sister.
Susan grew up in Madison in the house where her mother, Nancy Moroso, still lives. She found what she thought she wanted to do with her life in a freshman psychology course at Daniel Hand High School.
“I always knew I wanted to be a therapist after that,” she says.
But Susan didn’t finished at Hand. An avid rider, she had a serious accident when her horse reared up and fell over on her. She suffered a traumatic brain injury, had serious memory problems, and needed a smaller school to help her cope. She finished at the Hammonasset School, a private school that closed in 1991 (The buildings and grounds are now the Madison Town Campus).
After graduating from Drew University in New Jersey, Susan began work as a therapist, but her father’s illness intervened. She went to Florida to help nurse him and, when he died, continued to run his motor sports business. Even after marriage and children, she divided her time between Florida and Connecticut, taking her young children with her on her business trips. When the children reached school age, Susan realized she could no longer operate the same way. She sold the Florida business and decided once again to do something she had done as a child.
“I had something to say and I wanted to write it,” she explains.
Susan writes not only in the early morning but any other time she can. When she picks her children up at Essex Elementary School on the days they have riding lessons, she has her computer with her as she waits. At the lessons themselves, the children ride; she writes, and then she often discards what she has written.
“For a 300 page book, I have 150 pages in my cut folder,” she says. “What gets published is nothing like the first draft; that is unrecognizable.”
Writing is one part of the equation; getting published is another. Susan got 63 rejection letters over a period of a year and a half before selling her first book. That happened only after she had made editorial changes suggested by an agent. Some 11 days after she signed a contract with the agent, five publishers had bid on her book, and Susan had a two-book contract with Thomas Dunne Books, a division of St. Martin’s Press, a publishing house well known for putting out mysteries.
“I signed for a two-book deal and I had no idea then that second book was going to be,” Susan says. It turned out to be Nowhere Girl.”
Though there is murder and mystery in Nowhere Girl, Susan doesn’t think of it as a classic murder mystery.
“It is an accidental mystery; more a mystery to the family in the book than to the reader,” she says.
Susan has already finished a third novel, tentatively titled Night Falling. This book originated from a misreading of a sign in downtown Essex. Susan read it as Wicked Kitchen, and the phrase inspired her plot. Then, several years later, riding her bike in Essex with her son and daughter, she took another look at the store. The name is actually Weekend Kitchen.
“Look, it was a very fancy font,” she explains.
Susan has also some most of her fourth book written, and has started on a prologue for novel number five. Book number four has been a challenge.
“It’s a slippery sucker; I can’t seem to get it right. This is the third time I’ve changed the title, but now it seems real,” she says.
The current title is One Foot on the Path. The solution for the problems of novel four may well be novel five.
“Number five is like a carrot at the end of a stick. I wrote the prologue to make me get through number four,” Susan says.
There is even more to come. Susan says at this point she has the plots for nine novels in her head. Not only does that give her a lot of books to write, but it also gives her a way to think about herself.
“I guess I can call myself a novelist,” she says. “That’s a fun word to say.”
Susan Strecker, author of Nowhere Girl, at the Essex Library
A Conversation with John Valeri of Hartford Books Examiner on Sunday, March 20 at 2 p.m. For information, call 860-767-1560 or visit www.youressexlibrary.org.