Meet the #author – Suzanne Whitfield Vince

Today I’m pleased to be welcoming my good friend, author Suzanne Whitfield Vince, to answer a few questions about her writing journey. Her debut novel, The Many Lives of June Crandall, was released yesterday on Amazon, the culmination of hard work and perseverance, to say nothing of the over-amped imagination all of us who write are prone to.

Suzanne grew up in Park Forest, Illinois—twice an All-American City—in a large and chaotic but loving family. After graduating from Loyola University of Chicago with a Bachelor’s degree in Business Administration (major in Accounting), she said goodbye to snow shovels and ice scrapers and followed her parents out to California.

She wrote her first book by accident, but found the process so exhilarating that she has since completed several more manuscripts. In writing, she says, she has discovered her true purpose.

Currently, Suzanne lives in Sacramento with her husband, step-daughter and four furry children. She still has her day job, for now, but spends most of her free time writing.

Here are some fun facts about Suzanne, in her own words!

Yvonne: If you could invite any author, living or dead, to dinner, who would it be, what would the meal be, and why on both counts?

Suzanne: This is a really tough one because I’m related to so many great writers including F. Scott Fitzgerald, Henry David Thoreau, Ralph Waldo Emerson, John Steinbeck, even Jane Austen. But when I think about the author whose book that has had the most profound impact on my life, it would have to be Eckhart Tolle, who wrote A New Earth and The Power of Now.

In terms of what I’d serve? I didn’t inherit the cooking gene that my mom passed down to several of my sisters, so I’d have to resort to the one gourmet meal I can prepare: a scallop and asparagus risotto in a saffron cream sauce. I’d serve it with a spinach salad, some good crusty sourdough bread and a bottle of Rombauer Zinfandel.

Yvonne: Tell us about how and when you began making up stories.

Suzanne: I began making up stories when I was a little girl. I’d blank out whatever television program I was watching—I Dream of Jeannie or Gilligan’s Island (I’m showing my age)—and would retreat inside my head where, even as a young girl, I’d imagine myself my heroine as the damsel in distress, being rescued by a dark-haired knight on a white horse.

I didn’t put pen to paper, though, until about four years ago.

Yvonne: You’re an accountant, not a profession typically known for encouraging imagination. How do you help your two worlds to sing in harmony?

Suzanne: I know, right? Until I started writing four years ago I thought I’d been gypped in the creativity department, but it turns out I have a right brain after all! I’m a plotter and I used Excel spreadsheets to plot out my books. My advanced accounting professor would be so proud.

Yvonne: What’s the craziest story you ever made up about yourself that people believed?

Suzanne: A few years before my mom passed, she and I went to Kauai for a week. Every day we were someone different. We were Thelma and Louise, Wilma and Betty, and I was always a doctor. People sometimes looked at us funny when we told them our names, but they never questioned it.

Yvonne: If you couldn’t be a writer (or an accountant), what would you be and why?

Suzanne: I feel most at home in nature, and I love a good adventure. I’d probably be some type of expedition leader. That or a doctor. I’m pretty sure I was one in a past life (I’m addicted to all those gross medical shows on television).

Thanks for joining me today, Suzanne! Learn more about her by visiting http://suzannevince.com. And here’s more about her exciting first novel!

Shuffled from one orphanage to another and finally abandoned into foster care, Grace Adams finds comfort only in her dreams, only these dreams are unlike anything Grace could ever dare to imagine. From a Nazi concentration camp in World War 2 to a Geisha house in Feudal Japan, in her dream world Grace is loved and protected by one person: a woman named June Crandall with a face she is unable to forget.

Years later, Grace publishes a book about the woman from her dreams. At a book signing, a stranger appears and offers a clue to the mystery surrounding Grace’s birth. Putting her skills as an investigative journalist to work, Grace uncovers a web of secrets and betrayal that threatens to destroy her dream of being reunited with her birth family. Will she find the woman from her dreams? Will she solve the mystery of her birth? Will she be able to put the past behind her and find forgiveness for the family that abandoned her?

Pick up your copy at Amazon today to find out!