Suzanne Simmons passed away 12/28/08.
"The Skinny on Suzanne"
I'm a paradox. Always have been. I was born in a small town
(Storm Lake, Iowa), but I love living in the city. (Okay,
so there are those among my friends and acquaintances who
will argue that Fort Wayne, Indiana isn't a city. But it
is, of course. We have a museum of art, a zoo, a botanical
conservatory, a symphony orchestra, the ballet, lots of
wonderful theater and wonderful restaurants, a baseball
team, a hockey team, a basketball team and -- count them --
three skyscrapers.)
Back to the paradox part. I'm worldly and naive. Smart but
dumb. Right brained and left brained. It was a toss-up for
a while: Did I want to be a lawyer or a Broadway star, a
cloistered nun or a romance writer? (I think we all know
the "road less traveled" that I took on that fateful day
when I picked up my first Harlequin and started to read,
and then eventually to write romance.)
Other things you might like to know about me (or not ....)
I have beautiful handwriting. (The kind of handwriting that
got me the highest grade of any sixth grader back in our
public school in Fort Lee, New Jersey. It's also what my
friends still kiddingly refer to as "convent" handwriting.
Of course, I feel I must mention that their own is
practically illegible.)
I failed my first driver's test. (I knew I was doomed the
minute I hit that darned tree.)
I have the wanderlust. (In my case, that means I love to
travel. Maybe it all started when I was a girl and my
parents would pack up the car and drive us cross country
during summer vacation. As an adult I once traveled 17,000
miles in one week: from Indiana to Manila via Tokyo and
back again.)
I live the fairytale. (I met my Prince Charming when I was
eighteen, married him after college and we still live
happily ever after. We have one son, who is also happily
married.)
I can't tell jokes. (What's more, I frequently don't
even "get" them.)
I'm the only romance writer I know who has a hole-in-one
plaque hanging on her wall. (For non-golfers, a hole-in-one
is quite a feat for a hacker like me. {A hacker in the golf
sense, not the computer whiz sense.} And, yes, I have seen
Tiger Woods play. It was at the 1995 British Open in St.
Andrews, Scotland. {Please don't ask me about the day I
spent snapping away with my camera, the camera WITHOUT any
film in it, or the lovely case of food poisoning I
contracted the night before in Edinburgh.})
I vividly recall the first grownup "romance novel" I ever
read. (It was "Gone With the Wind" which I bought for 50
cents at a garage sale in Adel, Iowa. I was nine years old
at the time.)
My secret passions include watching "Stargate SG-1" (I'm a
huge Richard Dean Anderson fan), documentaries on almost
any subject and the BBC.
I've traveled to every state but Alaska. (Refer back to the
paragraph on wanderlust.)
I remember reading that "The Thorn Birds" author Colleen
McCollough once said there were two types of people who
write (and I'm paraphrasing here): Those who can't talk to
other people. And those who have have so much to say that
there aren't enough listeners to go around.
It's no secret that I love to talk almost as much as I love
to write.
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