Connie Suttle

Each job I worked has taught me the most valuable thing I've ever learned as an author: No experience is wasted. Do I know what it's like to lose a job I loved? Yes. Have I dealt with the worst of customer complaints? Yes. Have I ever been overwhelmed working any of my jobs? Also yes. I have experienced the gamut of what any employee can feel while working for someone else, including that of someone else taking credit for my work. Each and every time, it gave me knowledge and experience, which transfers directly into my writing. I don't have to imagine what any of that felt like on a personal level; I can write from personal experience.

I started writing seriously while sitting in my husband's ICU hospital room. He nearly died; in fact, several doctors considered his survival a miracle. Writing in that hospital room, and during the months of hospitalization afterward, writing gave me a sense of control when I had none in my real life. Once my husband was on the mend, the writing didn't stop. In fact, it was all I could think about during the times I wasn't caring for him or taking him for doctor visits or dialysis treatments. That meant while he was sleeping, much of the time. For several years after his hospital stay, I may have slept between two and four hours a night. The rest of it I spent awake, writing steadily.

So much of my writing involves visualizing the scenes and conversations in my head. I hope to tap into that same imagination in my readers—they access those same things, I think, whenever they read a book. It's like exercise for your brain, which comes with how the scenes and characters look, how their voices sound, and definitely whether they cheer or boo what happens in the books.

Who doesn't want to be someone or something else once in a while? And, if that creature or person is more powerful and better equipped to handle tough situations, how can that hurt?

I see the Hermit's Stone as a promise. That we are not forgotten or forsaken, even while we hold the tenuous line between truth and those who wish to destroy it. In a world where truth has taken a beating and is discounted daily, it has always been my hope that one day, it will be valued again.

Lissa and I are both from Oklahoma, so we share many things in common. Our journey has been a long one; she and I know what it's like to apply for a bank loan and be told that we can't qualify as a woman without our husband's permission, even when we have good jobs and great credit. We've been told that we were passed over for promotion, the job going to a man because "he has a family to support." Things have come a long way for women, but recent events threaten those accomplishments. I pray that everything that's been achieved in making women equal won't crumble into dust.

I believe in reincarnation. Period. Most likely in a spiritual sense. I don't see it as symbolic at all.

Who among us hasn't been forced into something we didn't like or want? From taking a spelling test in grade school to being laid off or repurposed in a job, we all face that adversity, I think. How we handle it defines who we are in the end.

This is a hard question to answer. We're considered part of the South, but not one hundred percent southern, I think. Not the South everyone thinks of as the South, anyway. Maybe we're South Lite or something, LOL

Short stories allow me to give insights on characters that don't quite fit into a book. For instance, the story I wrote of Merrill's turning? There was no place for it in the Blood Destiny series, but I wanted to write it just the same. A short story addition to an anthology is the ideal place for things like that.

I think everybody has a public face and a private face. Shapeshifters give a literal sense to that part of us. They appear human to humans around them, but their other persona is only known to themselves and those closest to them.

Who is too far gone to change? To maybe see things in a different light, or, to finally recognize the truth? Redemption travels strange paths, sometimes, and some of us might never guess where it will appear next. As for hope and love, those things are gifts that few of us are willing or able to refuse when they are presented without reservation.

You have no idea how many times I've wished I could be Lissa.

I love AllAuthor. You seem so honest and forthcoming in what you do for authors, and I appreciate it more than I can say!