And our Sue's Clues Mystery Author is:

Our Mystery Author this round is Suzannah Dunn. This lady makes her home 'across the pond' in the UK. She writes contemporary, historical and short fiction. I think you'll agree that once you read her interview with us, you will need to know more.

You can visit Suzannah at her website: http://suzannahdunn.net/

Thank you, Suzannah!

1. Tell us about your family? Are you married? Children? Siblings?

I’m one of four children – the eldest – but there was a biggish age-gap between all of us  (four years each time, nearer five with the last one) and we were never close – or even indeed friendly!  I moved away from home to go to college when I was seventeen, but the others all stayed close to home.  My parents retired to Spain but return to the UK every few months for a couple of weeks at a time:  they kind of live between Spain and the UK, really.  (…whereas my ‘in-laws’ are the exact opposite, living within a mile of where they both grew up next door to each other, but they come from farming families).  I live with my partner and we have an eight-year-old son  (a ‘late baby’ for me – I was 39 when he was born – so I could sympathise with ‘Bloody Mary’, Mary 1, in that respect, when I came to write THE QUEEN OF SORROWS!).

2. What does your family think about your writing? Do they read your novels?

The family I grew up in?  No, I don’t think they do;  they’re not readers.  But they seem to find it exciting, all the same (!), and my mum gets photos taken of herself holding copies of my books wherever she comes across them  (latterly, last December, on a cruise ship, going through the Panama Canal.)  Of my own, present-day family:  yes, my partner reads them  (he’s a big reader – he works in ‘reader development’, in fact  i.e.  encouraging people to read) and his favourite one, which seems to be most people’s favourite  (or, at least before THE CONFESSION OF KATHERINE HOWARD), is THE SIXTH WIFE.  My eight-year-old is, of course, too young to read them  (big reader though HE is, too!) but has recently ‘done’ the Tudors at school, and although he was very anti-, at first, because he regards himself as a classicist  (if it’s not ancient Greece, it doesn’t count), he is now utterly won over!  For some reason that I can’t fathom, he’s particularly interested in the reign of Edward VI! – perhaps because he was a ‘boy king’, although rather older than my son.

3. I imagine you get quite a bit of fan mail from readers in both the US and the UK. Is there a notable difference between the two?

Sue, you’re too kind!  I DON’T get fan mail – certainly not from the States  (so far?!).  I get the occasional letter or e-mail from readers in the UK, and they’re always nice to me, which I’m very grateful for (I dread being taken to task on some historical detail!) – the most recent one was from a student who was writing a paper on the depiction of Mary I in historical fiction and she wanted to know why I’d given her such a sympathetic treatment…  The problem was, I didn’t think I HAD given her a sympathetic treatment!

4. I read that you taught creative writing at the University of Manchester. Do you still?  What do you like about teaching.

I did, for about 8 yrs, but I don’t do it any more; I was able to give it up about 5 yrs ago, which was a relief because I was trying to ‘commute’ there  (about 250 miles each way), write novels, and do my share of the childcare for my son who was then a toddler.  I’d always  (over 20-odd years) done quite a bit of tutoring outside the university system, though – day-long workshops, residential courses etc. – but have recently stopped that, too, so that I can get these books done.  I came across interesting writing and interesting stoires, some of which have really stayed with me, but, to be honest, what I liked most about all that teaching was the people whom I met and with whom I spent enjoyable and often productive time.  Most of us don’t get a lot of opportunities, perhaps, in our daily routines, to meet new people and spend good, ‘quality’ time with them.

5. You've written contemporary fiction, historical fiction and short fiction.  Do you have a preference?

I loved writing short fiction  (love reading it, too!), but haven’t done that for a lamentably long time.  I do prefer writing so-called historical fiction, I think, to contemporary, because in some ways it’s harder – but that’s a challenge – and in other ways easier…  It’s harder because of the historical detail that I need to know – but I loved having to discover all that, indeed am still very much discovering that.  It’s easier because – oh bliss! – you get ‘given’ the plot!  I could never think of plots, but now they’re already there for me.

6. It seems to me short fiction may be more challenging than a full length novel. Your thoughts?

In some ways, yes, definitely.  It’s hard to make something work – or at least work enough, if you know what I mean – in a couple of thousand words;  hard to bring the characters to life and have enough happening to interest a reader.  But the long haul of a novel is frankly a nightmare, let me tell you.  It’s like forever writing your dissertation.

7. Of your novels, do you have a favorite.

You’ll think I’m just saying this, but, really, I assure you, I’m not! – it IS the latest one, The Confession Of…

8. Tell us about your newest novel, THE CONFESSION OF KATHERINE HOWARD?

It’s the story of Henry VIII’s fifth wife, her rise and fall.  She came from nowhere – she was a Howard, a member of England’s richest and most powerful family at that time but she was the bottom of that particular pile, the tenth child of the ill-starred second son – to be queen for less than a year and a half before she was executed for having an affair with one of the king’s favoured young gentlemen.  In one sense, we know so very little about her – not even approximately when she was born  (although various clues suggest she was still only a teenager at the time of her death) – but, distressingly for her, what we do know about her, and in startling detail, is her lively sexual history, which was recorded by her interrogators.  She’s portrayed by historians as having been a silly little girl, and although what she did was undoubtedly  (astoundingly) silly, I do think that if you have a good look at her, as it were, you can see that she was much more interesting than that.  What she was, was a sexually confident young woman;  and her girlhood friends were very much in thrall to her, which is how she managed to get away with it for as long as she did.  It was one of those girls who betrayed her in the end, though, and that’s what my novel looks at.

9. What is next?

I’m writing about Henry VIII’s third wife – Jane Seymour, whose family home was Wolfhall - but before she became queen.  Back when she was a teenager, a horrible scandal happened in her hitherto quietly respectable family, and I’m having a look at how that might have happened, what her role in it might have been and the repercussions on her for the rest of her life.