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Susan Abel Sullivan Interview

Tuesday, March 6, 2012


1) What was your main inspiration for this book?
Since the book is a collection of stories, each one had its own inspiration, such as a record album remembered from childhood, a talent show accident, a train smothered in kudzu, and vacuuming.

2) How did you decide you wanted to be a writer?
It started as a challenge to write a better novel than the drivel sold at the TG&Y (a forerunner of WalMart) I worked at during my senior year in high school.  I spent all summer banging out the manuscripton the electric typewriter I’d received as a graduation present.  Once I started college, I was hooked on fiction writing. 

3) I've heard your writing has appeared in a few magazines, could you send over some links?
None of my work is currently archived online, but my stories and poetry have appeared in such print and online publications as Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine, Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine, ASIMBest of Horror Volume II, Beyond Centauri, Alien Skin, Writers’ Journal, and New Myths.

4) What makes a character "hard to write about?"
Actually, characterization is one of my strengths as a writer.  For me it’s like method acting.  I put myself in the character’s shoes and become one with them.  I have an aptitude for Drama/Acting, so creating characters is fun for me.

5) When creating your characters, do you base any of them off of your friends/family/enemies?
Absolutely, although they are always composites drawn from several people rather than just one.  I might use the physicality of one person, add the personality of another, and draw from the life experience of a third.  Sometimes a character will spring from my head like one of Zeus’s children without any real life basis. 

6) How did you choose the title of this book?
My publisher and I knocked around several ideas.  In the end we selected CURSED from the fact that each of the characters is cursed in some way and WICKEDLY FUN STORIES so that readers would know it was a collection of, well, wickedly fun stories, as opposed to a novel.  And I’ve been told I have a wicked sense of humor, so there you go. 

7) What new book or short story are you creating next?

I’m currently revising an urban fantasy novel titled THEWEREDOG WHISPERER.  Think NATIONAL LAMPOON’S VACATION meets AN AMERICAN WEREWOLF IN LONDON. And I’m writing the discovery draft of a YA novel about thesupernaturally challenged.

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