Multi-published author Susan Page Davis talks about writing and her newest venture.

I welcome multi-published author, Susan Page Davis, to my blog. Susan, tell us a little about yourself.

I’m a native of the state of Maine, but when my husband retired we moved to western Kentucky. We have six grown children and ten grandchildren. My hobbies include needlework, reading, and family history.

How did your writing career begin?

I used to work as a newspaper correspondent. Then I started branching out into magazine articles. After I wrote my first novel, but before it was published, I sold quite a few short stories to magazines like Woman’s World and Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine.

What was your first “big break” in having your fiction published?

One evening I watched a television program I enjoyed, but I wasn’t happy with the way it ended. I kept thinking, “They should have done this.” I kept returning to it in my mind, and after a while I was plotting out a story. It had nothing to do with the television program that sparked it, but I invented my own characters and had them working on a totally different mystery and ended it in a way I found satisfying. After a week or so, I said to my husband, Jim, “I have a story in my head. It’s complicated, and I think it may be a book.” His reply: “You have to write it down.” That summer he took over the grocery shopping and shuttling the kids to karate and other activities, so I would have more writing time. This was during the time I worked for the newspaper out of our home. To my surprise, by the end of summer I had a complete 100,000-word novel. That one (The Priority Unit) didn’t get published for a long time, but after realizing I could write novels, I never looked back. Four years later, my first book (a historical romance, Protecting Amy) was accepted by a publisher.

What genres have you written, and how many books have you had published?

I now have more than 80 books published. They run the gamut from romantic suspense to a couple of children’s books. I have the most titles in historical romance, cozy mystery, and romantic suspense.

The book we’re talking about today is a new venture for you, I believe. Tell us about it. What inspired it, and what is it about?

The Purple Plague is a fairy tale without fairies or magic—a medieval-style “once upon a time” type story. It’s fun to read with kids. I know, because I tested it on my own grandchildren. I started writing it about 12 years or so ago, at a writers’ group in Maine. We were all given a few items to include in a short story for the next meeting. One was the color purple, I remember that. Also a boat, and maybe a ladder. Beyond that, my memory fails me. Anyway, I started writing this story, but I didn’t finish it at the time. 

     Alaric, a cook’s helper in the palace, is the only one who doesn’t get sick with the Purple Plague. The king’s evil brother chooses this time to oust the king and take over the throne. He throws the king in the dungeon. Alaric wants to rescue the king, but he’s too short to reach the key to the dungeon. He has to get creative to help his sovereign.

      The group loved my premise, and I tucked what turned out to be about half a story into a folder. Years passed. We moved to Kentucky. Many, many books were published. 

      Then a few months ago, I was looking online at a calendar of special days. I noticed that February 26 was National Tell a Fairy Tale day. That struck a chord with me, and I remembered The Purple Plague. I found the folder in my file cabinet, and I decided to finish the story and publish it on Feb. 26. Over Christmas, seven of my ten grandchildren visited, and I read it to them. They liked it a lot, and they were able to give me a few suggestions for making it better. On February 26, I published my story. I hope you and the children in your life love it!

I often ask writers about their routines. Do you use an outline approach, a “pantser” approach, or a combination of both?

I started out as a pantser, but my first publishers required a detailed synopsis before they would even look at a book, so I was trained to do that first. Now I find it very helpful to start with careful planning. I also realized that even in my “pantser” stage, I was doing a lot of mental planning. I just wasn’t writing a formal synopsis, so I told myself I was working seat-of-the-pants. But I was actually doing my outlining in my head. Not planning well enough got me into literary trouble a couple of times, so now I don’t launch a new book without a synopsis.

I have heard that established writers are often able to query without having completed the entire novel before a company agrees to publish it. Has this been the case for you?

Yes, that’s true with companies I’ve worked with previously. If I haven’t worked with them before, I still need a complete manuscript.

Which resources for the craft of writing are your most helpful? Books, conferences, writers’ groups, anything else?

I have a lot of books that I use, and I turn to them often. I also do a lot of online research. Websites like timeanddate.com save me a lot of time and headaches. I can print out calendars there for any year or month, and it can tell me what the phase of the moon was on a particular date.

 Two of my favorite books are English Through the Ages and The Timetables of History. The first, ETTA, tells me when a particular word came into common usage, which is a big help with my historical novels. TTOH helps me if I want to quickly look up something like important happenings in a particular year or decade. For example, I can look in the Literature and Art column and see what books came out recently, so I don’t have a character in the 1880s reading something that didn’t come out until 1895. And it helps me rough out my story against a background of historical events.

One of the hardest things for writers to accept is a developmental edit that takes out a favorite part. Describe how the author-editor relationship works with a large publishing house.

It’s different at each house. Sometimes the editors are quite cut-and-dried in their editing methods. They take what’s submitted and shape it to best fit their standard. At other publishing houses, the editors work with the authors more in developing a story before the author begins writing, but that’s usually when you’ve worked with a house quite a bit and they know what they’d like to see you produce next. If you stick with one house for a while, you will develop a closer relationship with the editors there.

Do you have any works in progress right now?

Always! I just finished the first book in a historical series that my agent is marketing, and I’ve started a new mystery. I also just re-launched a novella that was reverted to me, Love Comes to the Castle. 

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07NJ7891C/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=love+comes+to+the+castle+davis&qid=1549669031&s=Kindle+Store&sr=1-1-catcorr

 

Please share below how we can stay connected with you.

Visit my website at: https://susanpagedavis.com

You can sign up for my occasional newsletter there, enter my monthly drawing for free books, and read a short on my “Freebies” tab.

Find The Purple Plague at: https://amzn.to/2Gl1zpL 

My Facebook author page: https://www.facebook.com/pg/susanpagedavisauthor 

Thanks, Susan, for answering my questions. I’m looking forward to reading your newest book!