Welcome to our New Faces column! We're delighted to introduce some of the newest romance authors making their debut at your local bookstore and library. This iss ue we welcome Susan Squires, whose first romance is Danegeld, "a gritty paranormal with lots of historical detail. In Dark Age Britain a Saxon wicce meets a Viking warrior and their love changes history." It's a Dorchester Heartspell release.

Susan, welcome to TRR! Tell us about yourself.

I am a California girl, born and bred. I grew up in little towns in Northern California like Susanville in the Sierra Nevada mountains and Redway over on the coast in the Redwoods--great places. I finished high school in Sacramento and graduated from UCLA where I also got a Masters in English literature. Actually, I was working on my Ph.D. when I noticed that no one I knew was getting jobs! Worse, I was already doing exactly what I would be doing all my life if I did get a job teaching college: publishing articles, doing research for my professors and teaching classes, grading papers.....it all seemed pretty pre-determined.

So I went out and got a job in a small health insurance company, "just for a little while." Twenty-five years later, I'm an internal consultant for Aetna. I've been married for twenty-four years to a wonderful guy named Harry who writes occult mysteries We don't have children, but we do have three Belgian Sheepdogs and a thoroughbred mare. We still live in Southern California.

What brought you to writing romance?

I started writing during one of my many mid-life crises as a sanity break from a job that was consuming too much of my life about ten years ago. My husband encouraged me to try my hand at it. I grew up loving Jane Austen and Wuthering Heights. Harry was the one who introduced me to Georgette Heyer, believe it or not. I didn't start out to write romance consciously. I just wanted to give readers a good time, telling stories that I would want to read.

Tell us about researching your first book.

I wrote a Regency Vampire, Sacrament, using the research skills I had developed in college, as an homage to Georgette with sex added. I think it started at 275,000 words--totally unpublishable. My first epiphany was that, while I could finish a story and I loved to write, it was going to take work to get good at it. So I joined a critique group, took classes at UCLA extension, went to writer's conferences and tried to get better. I re-wrote Sacrament.

When Sacramentdidn't sell, I wrote another one, which turned out to be Danegeld. This time I was researching Viking East Anglia--good for a couple of trips to England with all my frequent flyer miles from work. I got an agent who loved my work through a writer's conference and thought I was set.

A year later, my agent couldn't sell Danegeld. I was crushed. I planned a sequel to Danegeld, but just wrote the synopsis and the first chapter, since there wasn't much point if "Danegeld" wasn't going to sell. I started another book, called Ghost in the Machine.

But I just couldn't let Danegeld sit in a drawer. I joined Romance Writers of America (the Orange County Chapter) and entered contests with it all last summer. It was the only way I knew to get attention. To my surprise I won six or seven and placed in many more.

How did Danegeld come to be published?

Danegeld was bought by Dorchester off the contest from my home Chapter, Orange County. (I was first in paranormal, but only third overall!) It had been sent to several editors at Dorchester from other contests within a space of weeks. I think they routinely acquire from the contest circuit. So the house was familiar with it by the time my editor wanted to buy. This was only last November, so it got into the schedule really fast to be coming out in July. It's now a finalist in the Golden Heart for Paranormal.

What's next?

I immediately became afraid I would never sell another book. Are writers naturally neurotic? I knew what my editor wanted. He wanted me to sit down and write two more Viking novels to build an audience. But I sent him Ghost in the Machine, a crazy Sci-Fi that breaks all the rules about a woman who falls in love with the artificial intelligence she's created. He bought it the first of May for release in 2002. When he called my agent to talk about Ghost she mentioned Sacrament, and he e-mailed me immediately wanting to see it, willing to put off my next Viking book. We'll see if my re-write worked.... Then there's the proposal for Danelaw, waiting to be completed after I finish prepping Ghost for publication.

What does your husband and family think of having two novelists in the family?

My husband is thrilled for me. His own first book What Rough Beast will come out on Time Warner/AOLs newly launched i-books venture this September. He has always been my first critiquer and staunchest supporter. Our marriage even survived being in the same critique group for about three years! My brother is a computer designer and helped me with Ghost in the Machine. He and his wife have written how-to computer books together. My parents both passed away before they could see me published, but I know they would have been proud. They were avid and wide-ranging readers. I was always too shy to have them read my manuscripts while they were alive (maybe I could have censored the sex?) I'm sorry about that now. The people at work are a little non-plussed. But they are all planning to attend book signings and getting into the spirit.

How can readers contact you?

I would love to hear from readers. The web-site I share with Harry, squiresbooks.com will be up in late May. In the meantime, sdsquires@pobox.com reaches me.

Susan, best of luck with your future books! Readers, we have a review of Danegeld on our Tiime-Travel/Fantasy page.

July 6, 2001