Cleveland native Susan Spess Shay was 10 years old when she read a book that sparked a dream. The book was Louisa May Alcott’s “Little Women” and she identified with the bold and outspoken sister, Jo, who had a passion for writing.
“Jo and I have a lot in common,” Shay said. “It just took me a little longer than it did Jo [to become a published author].”
Shay’s book, “To School a Cowboy,” has been published by Wild Rose Press. Softbound copies of the 288-page book will be available at the book signing Friday, August 17, atCleveland’s Jay C. Byers Memorial Library at 6:30 pm.
With fondness, Shay recalls her “very first” published piece. As a teenager she worked at the Cleveland American and while the newspaper’s women’s editor was on vacation she got to write the “personals”—which were personal accounts of visitors, trips taken, etc.
Later, she sold her first story that she considers the “most fun” was when she sent a story online to the magazine True Romance and received an acceptance just 20 minutes later. “I loved that turn around time,” she said.
She has sold several additional stories to True Romance as well as to True Love and True Confessions.
Convinced that “romance” is what makes the world go round, Shay continued her journey into the world of romance writing.
“First, it’s what I love to read. Second, whether reading or writing romance, you can depend on two things—a central love story and a happily-ever-after ending,” she explained.
Shay said joining an organization known as Romance Writers of America “was the smartest thing I could have done…I learned all the grammar and punctuation I missed in school!”
After joining RWA, she helped form a critique group of women in the local chapter. “Marilyn Pappano, who has authored over 60 books, has been there for me with a huge amount of patience,” Shay said. “Margaret E. Reid, who sold her first book just before I did, has been the other constant in the group.”
She said RWA enables romance writers to have a great support group with 9500 members around the world offering “networking” opportunities. The group also provides its members a monthly publication, holds an annual conference and a variety of local chapter activities. Shay is a member of the Tulsa RWA chapter, Romance Writers Ink, which has a conference scheduled Oct 12-14.
Shay noted that from a business perspective, writing romance fiction is a good choice as such books boast a $1.4 billion in annual sales, which is more than a fourth of the consumer book market.
She said her book, “To School a Cowboy” is about all the aspects of falling in love, including the physical attraction that comes with real-life romances. “The love scenes in the book aren’t there to titillate or to meet a requisite number of scenes,” she said. “They’re an integral part of the story.”
The setting for the book is “Carson,Oklahoma” which Shay says is loosely based on her hometown ofCleveland. “It’s a great little make-believe town with wonderful characters.”
A brief synopsis of Shay’s book, reveals its theme, “When Boone Dalton invites Julia Seymour to start a day camp on his ranch nearCarson,Okla., it’s so he can keep his daughter close to home. Little does he know how much the beautiful teacher will change his life…until the day Julia steals his daughter.
Julia Seymour vowed she’d never love another soul—until she finds herself growing dangerously close to her student, Annie, and Annie’s father, Boone. When she realizes the jeopardy Boone is putting Annie in, she’s forced to make the second hardest decision of her life.”
Shay said that years ago a young girl she knew was molested, with the ordeal weighing on her mind, “I wondered how far I would have gone to prevent it, if I had the chance. I built my story around that theme.”
She hopes “To School a Cowboy” is just the first of more published books to come. She has just finished a novella called “Knitted Together” about a woman who’s determined to never marry or have children. She inherits a knotting shop in a smallTexastown where she moves and falls in love with a doctor who has five children.
Additionally, she said she has two more books in the works. “Masquerade” is a story of a woman who moves home after her father and sister are in a car wreck. And on a lighter note, “Make Me Howl,” is about a woman who was born a werewolf.
The first person listed on the dedication page of Shay’s book is her mom, Mary Sue Spess who died tragically in 1991 with four other members of her family as a result of a highway collision caused by a drunk driver. Just as Jo’s “Marmee” attempted to guide the morals and shape the characters of her “Little Women,” Shay views her mother in a similar light and knows if she was here, she’d be the first in line at Friday’s book signing.
Susan Shay
