Meet the Editor: Susan Schader of Story Services 4 Wrriters

photo by Michelle Seixas

Susan Schader has worked as a freelance Story Analyst/Story and Development Consultant/Editor on feature film and television projects for companies such as DreamWorks, New Regency Productions, Village Roadshow, DeLuca Productions, Donner-Shuler-Donner Productions, Icon Films, Jagged Films, Showtime, Lifetime, Turner Pictures, among others, including private clients and international film brokers and producers (covering such film festivals as Cannes, Berlin, Toronto, etc.). She was Assistant to filmmaker Albert Brooks on Defending Your Life, from project’s inception (scripting writing and editing), pre-production, and casting, to production and post-production, publicity and marketing research.

In the publishing industry in New York and San Francisco, she worked as a Developmental Editor, developing, co-authoring, editing major college textbooks, including all ancillary and audio-visual materials, from planning through publication) for Harper & Row (now Harper Collins) Publishers.  She also served as a Marketing Analyst, Research and Development, Harper College Division East. As a freelancer, she did developmental/substantive editing, copyediting, research, proofreading, redlining for such major publishing houses as Prentice-Hall, McGraw-Hill Book Company, and Abrams.

She has a background in graphic design and photography as well, and has loved “Words & Images,” which is also the title of her blog at sschader.blogspot.com. She is currently writing a Middle Grade novel  -- a new creative challenge. 

For information on Susan's rates and services, check out the Story Services 4 Writers gite here.

What is the last good book you read?

The debut novel of Brit Bennett, entitled The Mothers, which is due out this fall but I had the chance to read in advance. It’s a coming-of-age story about two young African-American teenagers and the book’s central question as Ms. Bennett describes it is, “how girls grow into women when the female figures who are supposed to usher you into womanhood aren’t there. How girls come of age with that absence. And it’s about how communities are shaped by loss… how in moments of grief, community can be both a source of comfort and a source of oppression.” It’s beautifully written, touching, and timely.

Who are your favorite writers? 

That question is hard to answer given that I read so much “professionally” that I rarely read for my own pleasure. When I can sneak in a read for “fun,” I tend gravitate toward crime/detective tales. I don’t know what that says about me, although I hope that instead of indicating I have a penchant for dark, dastardly deeds, it suggests that solving a crime or mystery is rather like solving the puzzle of what’s missing in a manuscript or screenplay, what needs to be there or needs to be removed to make the narrative soar. I do like the writing of the Scottish writer, Ian Rankin, who has penned the Detective Rankin novels. One of my all time favorite novels is Harper Lee’s, To Kill A Mockingbird, and my favorite children’s book is, Charlotte’s Web, by E.B. White, which I’ve seen described as a nearly perfect book. I agree with that assessment.

Paris! Crime! A book with my name on it

I don't really enjoy contemporary true crime, but I very much enjoy the books of Ben Macintyre and Erik Larson. This new book about the first police chief of Paris sounds like it deserves a place at the top of my TBR pile. Alas, it will not be available until next year.

I love the cover line--Murder, Magic, and the First Police Chief of Paris--who isn't going to read a book that offers all that?  Holly Tucker is a professor at Vanderbilt University (not to be confused with the singer of the same name), and has written several other historical true crime books. I can't wait to dig into them.

Another Great Cover from Laura Gordon of Book Cover Machine

I have been on a writing binge lately, mostly turning out short stories and novelettes. I find it's a great distraction from the political landscape and it's also nice to be crossing items off my "to do" list.

One of the projects I've just finished is a reworking of the story "Tiger Bone Wine" I originally wrote for John Donald Carlucci's Astonishing Adventures Magazine back in 2007 when I was first starting out as a fictionista.

I've always been fascinated/appalled by the trade in tiger parts, and every time I see that sobering statistic--less than 3,200 tigers remain in the wild--I want to weep. Three thousand two hundred was the size of my graduating class at Duke. We could all fit into the Duke Chapel. Granted, tigers are bigger than people, but factor in the parents and friends who were also squeezed in and I think that's a pretty good spatial representation of how many tigers are left. One large auditorium's worth if packed nose to tail. Sigh.

At any rate, the new version of the story is called "Tiger Bones" and I found this great cover from Laura Gordon of the Book Cover Machine. Check out her pre-made covers (which are very affordable) or hire her for custom work. Because as you know, people judge books by their covers.

Romeo & Juliet--Vampire Style

Shakespeare's plays are durable. They can withstand any number of modern adaptations, permutations, and mutations. The whole Underworld movie mythos is based on the vampire/werewolf love story. so I was not surprised to see this book in one of the daily "book dump" newsletters I get.

Author H.T. Night has more than half a million books in print and several are vampire-centric. He has multiple series out there, along with half a dozen standalone novels. He definitely seems like a writer to check out if you like paranormal romance.

This version of the oft-told tale is set in 2099 in a New York now renamed Verona. It has an overall 3.8 star rating in reviews, which is not awesome, but more than half of those who reviewed it gave it five stars and really loved it. I've seen myself how a couple of low-star reviews can REALLY mess up a rating, so I'll definitely see for myself.

Participatory Democracy: Fiction by Katherine Tomlinson

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I don't write much political fiction, and this story, strictly speaking, is more of a noir-ish kind of tale. But after binge-watching the RNC and the DNC, I re-read the story (which I wrote several yaers ago) and felt like it suited the times a little too perfectly. And sums up why I'm With Her.

 

Nora had been working on the Congressman’s campaign for eighteen months. His neighborhood office was within walking distance of her apartment and going there every day gave her something to do with her unemployed hours; injected purpose into her otherwise

Heartblaze 2: Vampire Rising by Shay Roberts

This is the second book in Shay Roberts' Heartblaze Trilogy, and unlike some series that seem to go through a "sophomore slump"  with sequels, this second outing with heroine Emma Rue is bigger and better and takes the story to a place where the stakes are monumental. (Yes, in this book, we face TEOTWAWKI,)

I read a lot of paranormal romance and urban fantasy and books with vampires and werewolves and witches seems to fall into two categories. There are those that simply mimic what's come before, and give us the same old/same old tropes that make readers want to roll their eyes at the very thought o reading another vampire book. And then there are the paranormal stories that give us something new. The Heartblaze series is in the latter category.

In this story Emma Rue comes to realize that she has a purpose and a destiny far beyond anything that she could have imagined. (Yes, I know, all heroines of paranormal romances are supposed to be special, but here, she really is special.) Just as the Heartblaze world is special. This is a dark fairy tale of a story, and when you learn what the dagger in Emma's hand (see cover) can do, you'll be stunned. Roberts teased it in Heartblaze 1, and he paid it off BIG TIME in this sequel.

New Orleans, Prohibition, and a mystical speakeasy. I'm there!

I've only visited New Orleans once and it was before Hurricane Katrina devastated the city. But it really is one of those places that isn't like any other. I'm a sucker for stories set in the big easy, and this one, V.R. McCoy's The Merchant, looks like it's right up my alley. The author cites Walter Mosley, James Patterson, Stephen King, and Tom Clancy as his inspirations, and just reading the blurbs of the other two books he's published, I believe his work has "commercial" encoded in its bookly DNA.

This is how The Merchant begins:  It was the year 1187 after his death. It had been raining fire for most of the night ..."  I don't know about you, but there's no way I'm going to stop reading after that. Kindle "look inside" tool--you just made a sale!