Interview with Susan Marlow, day one

Susan K. Marlow is a freelance editor, teacher, and home-school mom. In addition to writing her Circle C Adventures series for ’tweens, she speaks at Young Authors conferences and teaches writing workshops for kids. She and her family make their home in Washington State.

Tell us a little about your road to publication.

I wrote stories since I was a child but never shared them. As an adult, I wrote my Circle C Adventures as a way to escape in the evenings after a long day home schooling. However, I never intended the stories to be published. An author-friend (and my mentor), kept prodding me to send them out. So I went to a writers’ conference, learned new words like “query letter,” “proposal,” and “rejection letter,” and kept persevering until Kregel Publications accepted the first book, Andrea Carter and the Long Ride Home.

When you first entered the publishing world, what surprised you the most?

The amount of marketing authors are encouraged to engage in for their own work. Kregel is a traditional, royalty publisher, but to make our books successful, authors need to partner with their publishers to get the word out.
Was there any aspect of the business that caught you off guard?

Not necessarily with the business aspect, but I was caught totally off guard when I saw a photo I had taken of my main character on the cover of the book. I’d sent the photo in as an idea to help them create a cover. When I saw it on amazon for the first time a couple months before the book’s release, I was astonished. Talk about a surprise!
Why historical fiction?

There are two ways to really “escape” in my mind: into the past—to a simpler, seemingly more adventurous time, or into the future, i.e. Star Trek. Since I love both genres, I correctly figured that historical stories—especially if I included horses—would be more likely to find an audience with kids than space stories.

What are you working on now that you’d like us to know about?

I have recently submitted Book 5 of my Circle C Adventures to my editor. Tentatively titled Andrea Carter and the Trouble with Treasure, the story finds Andi, a couple of her friends, and her older brother Mitch on a two-week camping trip in the High Sierras. Instead of the back-country, gold-panning trip Andi imagined, the travelers have an unexpected encounter with a couple of on-the-run bank robbers. The camping trip turns into a nightmare for Andi and her friends as they fight for survival and try to save Andi’s critically injured brother.

Do you have a favorite historical novel?

My all-time favorite historical series for adults is The Zion Covenant, by Brock and Bodie Thoene. Set in pre-WW2 Europe the six books expose Nazi Germany for what it really was, well before war broke out. I was so impressed with this series that I wrote a year’s curriculum to accompany it for my two high school children.
My favorite kids’ historical is Caddie Woodlawn, by Carol Brink. What a great role model for young people.

Is there anything or anyone that inspires your writing?

I’m very visual, and I’m a child of the golden age of television—the 60s. I have to confess that the old westerns and science-fiction stories portrayed on the small screen inspired me to write dozens of stories as a teen. I guess that carried me over into adulthood. What we do and experience as children really does affect who we are.

What do you enjoy most about reading historical fiction?

The joy of escaping into the past—to live and experience a “might have been.” To live an adventure in an age that has gone by.


Once we become writers, we read with a critical eye. For some, grammatical errors in a book are like fingernails on a chalkboard. For others, weak plots cause them to lay a book aside without finishing it. What, if anything, annoys you about some historical fiction? (Without naming names!)
Come back tomorrow for the answer and part two of the interview with novelist Susan Marlow. Leave a comment to win a copy of her book, Andrea Carter and the San Francisco Smugglers. (Limited to U.S. Residents)