Interview with Author Susan Page Davis!

We are privileged to have author Susan Page Davis with us this week. Susan is a homeschooling mom (I can relate to that!) of six children, two still schooling at home. She lives with her family in Maine where she grew up on a small farm. Many of her stories are set in small towns in Maine.

Susan loves reading, history, and horses. She received her bachelor's degree in history and took a vocational course in shoeing horses. She doesn't shoe horses any more but horses and history come together often in her stories. One of her hobbies is genealogy, which she says had led her down some interesting paths!

Susan is a prolific author, receiving her first contract in 2004 and going on to receive 15 subsequent contracts from four different publishing groups - Heartsong Presents, Heartsong Presents Mysteries, Steeple Hill Love Inspired Suspense, and Harvest House Publishers. Her daughter Megan is co-writer for two upcoming cozy mysteries with Heartsong Presents Mysteries.

Tell us a bit about yourself, your writing, and your publishing journey.


I’m a home schooling mother, with two junior high students still at home. I worked for more than 20 years on a contract basis for a daily newspaper, writing everything from hard news stories to fluffy features. I loved writing stories as a kid, but didn’t start seriously writing fiction until 1999. My first published novel was Protecting Amy, a 2004 Heartsong historical. Since then I’ve done several more Heartsongs and ventured into fantasy, cozy mystery, and romantic suspense. I have a historical coming out with Heartsong in July 2007 (The Lumberjack’s Lady—my third Maine book), and my three Wyoming stories will be repacked in the spring of ’08 as Wyoming Brides.

What is the greatest historical novel you’ve ever read and why?

This is really tough. So many to pick from! I could choose a Taylor Caldwell or a Thomas B. Costain or a C. S. Forester. Some of the books I’ve loved for years were probably not “historicals” when they were written (To Kill a Mockingbird, for instance). But if you insist I pin it down, I guess I might say Janice Holt Giles’s The Believers. This book about a couple who went to live in a Utopian community made a huge impression on me. The characters were so real that I found myself cheering them on, even though I disagreed with what they were doing. (This book is part of her series about the Fowler family, starting with The Kentuckians.)

Did you have any experiences that prompted your love of fiction and historical fiction in particular?

My Dad was a huge influence on all of our large family when it came to history and the importance of family ties. He was a local historian of sorts and cherished the family heirlooms that came to him. Every ride down the road with Dad was an avalanche of information. He knew all about everyone living in the town and their ancestors for several generations back. A college professor got me interested in genealogy, and the hours of satisfaction I drew from that hobby paid off doubly when I began writing historical fiction. Many of my books contain snatches of family lore. A trilogy I’m planning on colonial New Hampshire was hatched from research I did on the Otis family. Richard Otis, my ancestor, was a blacksmith who lived in Dover, N.H., at the time of the Indian massacre there in 1689.

How much time does it take to research your stories – what balance would you say there is between research and actual writing?


It varies a lot. If it’s something I’ve read about before and mulled over in my mind for a long time (like the Dover massacre), the research doesn’t take as long. But if it’s all new material, that takes longer. And I might start the “research” for a book long before I know I’m going to write about it. A 2001 trip back to Oregon (where we used to live) gave me ideas for my Wyoming/Oregon Trail historicals. Even though the stories hadn’t formed yet, the factual background was coming together. But in general, I’d say a couple of months of my off-and-on style of research might do it for a short historical. That’s not constant research, but reading and online digging as needed.

Describe for us, if you will, your writing style, as in plotter vs. seat of the pants, and do you put more time into developing characters or plot or are they equal?

I started as a seat-of-the pants flyer, but now you couldn’t get me to start writing a book without an outline. Heartsong taught me (or should I say ‘forced me’) to do that. After writing several books for them and being told each time that I needed to submit the outline, I got smarter and started submitting the outline first. And it really does help the writing go forward more smoothly. Not so many stops, starts, backtracking, and new starts when I know where I’m going!

Thanks Susan - that's exactly how I feel. I couldn't begin to write a book without my synopsis outline! It would be like traveling without a road map - and I get lost too easily! :)

Join us tomorrow for part two of our interview with Susan Page Davis. Leave a comment to win a copy of either The Castaway's Bride, available now, or Susan's upcoming The Lumberjack's Lady, available at the end of July.

Until tomorrow...