First, a short video introducing Susan to her fellow Writing It Real members

and then an interview we did by email.

Sheila

I was more than thrilled when I learned you had a book deal based on your blog posts. That is the dream of so many writers. We’d like to learn how all of this unfolded.

Susan

The blog was originally a therapy tool to help me recover from my divorce. I was grieving and Susan Smith insisted I attend your workshop on writing short pieces. The class gave me good feedback and I realized the short pieces let me examine an incident in my life, analyze what I learned, and discover what was humorous. Humor has always been my best defense and I knew it would help me recover. The saying that Tragedy plus Time equals humor is true. I had someone help me form a basic blog and I began weekly postings. I didn’t promote it in any way—it was therapy.

After several years, I realized I had enough pieces to form at least a book. I contacted an editor in Southern Arizona to ask her opinion. She said this was definitely a book and told me I had to build a platform. I hired Ann Boland from Chicago, and she completely revamped the blog and began promoting it. We worked together to begin sending out book queries.

Sheila

What is Ann Boland’s title? She sounds remarkable. In what ways did she revamp your blog? Were the blog entries re-ordered and were some chosen over others for thematic reasons? Is she a book and author promoter who works with authors from the beginnings of their projects?

Susan

Ann provides support services for authors. She owns her own company, Ann Boland, LLC, and helps writers with whatever services they need. She worked for several years with John Cleese, one of the founders of Monty Python, so I felt she understood humor.

I realize this is not something everyone can manage. I have enough self-knowledge to know building a website and promotion are not my strengths. I made the financial sacrifice so I could focus on the writing. There was still a lot of work to do to get the blog noticed but having Ann gave me the luxury of spending my time writing and not promoting.

Sheila

And then she had ideas like an agent would of where to send the revamped blog which now read as a book?

Susan

We began sending it out to agents and got positive feedback on the writing but were repeatedly told there was no market for this and/or they did not know how to sell it.

We decided to try small, independent publishers and Black Rose Writing responded very quickly. On a side note, another publisher asked to see the full manuscript on the day I sent the first draft to Black Rose.

Sheila

Wow! Tell us more about your blog now.

Susan

Wine and Cereal chronicles my adventures as a suddenly single woman in her 60s. I had been married for 42 years when my husband developed a fondness for dating. It was a shock but as I worked through my encounters with friends and family, I realized if you looked at them from a certain angle, they were funny. That humor was therapeutic—I could make an upsetting encounter funny and that allowed me to conquer it. If you find the humor, you own that experience.

Wine and Cereal began as my personal therapy session but as the audience grew, I discovered it empowered other people to try and find the funny side of a story and to show them they were not the only ones going through these events and feelings. I recently returned from a trip to Scotland and gave our guide a copy of my book. The next morning, she ran up, gave me a hug and said, “How did you know about my life?”

Sheila

But how did you grow your audience before the blog became a book? Did Ann help you with that?

Susan

Yes, we began adding memes twice a week and advertising on Facebook. The memes are designed for my core audience and can be inspirational or humorous.

Sheila

How long had you been posting before the book publisher accepted the manuscript?

Susan

It was a little more than four years from when I began posting until I secured a publisher.

Sheila

Now you had to build your readership again. How did you do that?

Susan

This is a better question for Ann Boland. We meet by phone once a week at least. We discuss who’s reading the blog. We quickly discovered older women were our target audience. Facebook is a favorite of my core audience, so we began a series of ads. They are not terribly expensive (about $100) and the readership took off. I currently have 25,000 followers on Facebook. When Black Rose saw that I had 25,000 followers (actually it was closer to 20,000 when they agreed to publish), I suspect they knew they had a built-in audience for the book. Ann studies trends and analyzes how to market the ads.

Sheila

She sounds like every writer who wants to publish a book’s dream best friend!  What do you think the audience is looking for in your writing?

Susan

I think my readers are searching for a nugget of joy to brighten their day. Everyday life is hard for everyone, but being older and single has its own problems. People just want a reminder that you can find your own joy. It’s there; you just have to discover it. On a side note, married women enjoy the stories as much as single ones. I think it speaks to just being a woman and struggling with aging.

Sheila

What were the roadblocks for you both in writing and meeting the demands of being a blogger and finally the demands of having the blog out there in book form.

Susan

Writing is nothing but roadblocks. Everything is a potential distraction. It’s so easy to read a book, run to the grocery store, or do a load of laundry. Writing is hard. It takes complete concentration, mentally and physically. I’m exhausted after I write. But there’s nothing I love more. I trick myself by setting deadlines. I was trained as a journalist, so deadlines are written in stone. I don’t just say I’m going to write every day; I decide at the beginning of the week how much I’ll produce. And then I do it.

Having a physical book is exhausting in a whole other way. Every day I’m trying to figure out new markets and how to get their attention. I’ve been doing a few interviews and podcasts, and I don’t like talking about myself. My journalism training kicks in, and I tend to ask far more questions than I answer. I’d much rather be writing at my desk.

Sheila

Speaking about speaking about yourself and liking writer more, I want to be sure you mention that this is the first in a series—what kind of pressure does that put on you to continue to produce?

Susan

Wine and Cereal is a series of three books. Volume 1 is in print now, Volume 2 will be published in late November, and Volume 3 is scheduled to be published in March 2025. All three books were essentially written before I had a publisher. The stories existed, but in blog form. They had to be edited, curated, and matched with an illustration. In many ways, that took more time than the actual writing because this was for print. It had to make sense as a stand-alone book.

I continued to produce two new stories each month throughout this process. With the final stages of Volume 3 ending, I’ve set the goal of going back to writing one story a week. One 500-page story a week doesn’t sound like much, but each story takes about 3 weeks to complete. At any time, I’m working on at least three different stories, each in various stages.

Sheila

Let’s talk more about being a humorist—what does it take to laugh at oneself, especially in the face of awkwardness and betrayal?

Susan

In many of the stories, if I didn’t laugh, I would cry. And I often did cry when they happened. If I’m in a situation where I’m frustrated, crying, or completely embarrassed, I know that’s going to be a good story.

I see myself as a court jester—showing the silliness going on around me. I’m just a reflection of what I see and feel. My goal is to find the laughter in any situation. Sometimes things happen and I know right away they are going to make a good story. Usually though, I have to get some distance—there’s that Tragedy + Time formula again.

I’m blessed because I listened to my dad’s stories about growing up in small town West Virginia. And my mother’s sisters. Those girls knew how to tell a story! In both cases, their lives were difficult but when they told the stories, we laughed. Laughter is a survival skill, and my father and aunts perfected it. I just operate in their shadow.

Sheila

How have you changed because of being a blogger and writing about being divorced and single after 50?

Susan

Writing pulls me out of myself. I can’t sit around and feel sorry for myself if I have a deadline. Writing humor forces me to see little treasures of laughter in everything I do. It’s given me confidence—a divorce really knocks the wind out of your sails, but people tell me they enjoy my writing, and it gives me strength. I was walking the dogs the other morning and my neighbor drove by. She leaned out her car window and shouted, “I love your book!” It doesn’t get much better than that.

Sheila

Have changes in you changed your topics any?

Susan

My topics have shifted slightly. The grandkids are older so soon I’ll be writing about teenagers and not toddlers. I still write about the same things but from a slightly different perspective. I’m not as sad or as terrified as I was when I started. I worry that has taken the edge off my stories.

Sheila

I have a hunch writing about teens will provide lots of edge!

Thank you so much for sharing your book-writing journey. It has been such a pleasure to be in your company for this interview. I can’t help but wonder what your kids (I know they are both sons) think of this book. Perhaps that is for another time, but maybe we could end with a quip from them and how you received.

Susan

My older son, Justin, said, “Mom, I never knew you went through all that.” He’s always respected me (OK, most of the time) as his mother, but reading Wine and Cereal helped him to see me as a human who struggles with all kinds of nonsense and survives.

Sheila

To be seen, really seen, by those closest to us is a big reward! Congratulations and thank you again for this interview. And thank you for Wine and Cereal: An Irreverent Look at Sixty-ish and Single.