Suzanne Simmons

Pseudonym: Elizabeth Guest.

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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