Thanks for stopping by.
I’m guessing you’re a fellow writer, and if you’re like me and live in a rural area, sometimes online connections are the ones most accessible to you.
My name is Sue Reynolds, aka Suzie O'Flaherty, and I believe that writing is a means of carving order from chaos, of challenging one’s own beliefs and assumptions, and facing the world with eyes and heart wide open, even when the rational mind argues that this isn't possible.
Writers are at the very least interesting, but I believe we are perhaps courageous. How much easier is it to lead an unexamined life than to confront yourself on the page, to risk opening yourself to criticism and judgment?
Who Is Suzie O'Flaherty?
For as long as I can remember, I have had my nose in a book. As an adult, I have a book beside my bed, my lounge chair, in my handbag, my car, and my husband’s car, because you never know when you will have five spare minutes to read. Often, that is the only chance you'll get. And if you can instil in your children an enquiring mind and a love of reading, well done, you parent, you. If you can use reading as a carrot to motivate yourself, to use the treadmill, to bring yourself to do the floors or go into the dreaded kitchen – good job. It works for me because reading is my chocolate.
I haven’t been writing since I could hold a pen, perhaps because I was busy leaving home at thirteen, marrying at eighteen, having three babies, earning two degrees, working for twenty-three years in trauma counselling, and I was in my fifties before life allowed me the time for this love. But they do say that the best time to do something is decades ago, but the next best time is now.
But once writing became a priority, oh, the joy of creating characters, watching them take off and live a life you could live with them, discovering plot holes and finding ways to fix them. Discovering that awful man who was going to be your antagonist is really only being horrible because of that thing that happened, and he’s suddenly speaking, and now he’s sorting himself out and instead of hating the world, he’s doing everything he can to keep nice old Mrs Everingham out of that terrible nursing home and … sorry, I was off again. Which is exactly why I have five completed novels in a range of genres, women’s fiction, suspense, coming of age, all edited dozens of times, beta-read, critique group analysed, a few professionally edited, and I’m 50,000 words into a sixth. However, while I was lucky to win a Varuna residency and a Byron Writers residency, and to be shortlisted and longlisted in multiple Australian and overseas competitions, I am as yet unpublished, apart from articles and anthologies.
But given the next best time is now, excuses about no time before, because we all have them, and it’s called ‘life’, this year I have decided my characters can hang on a bit, while for the first time I create a publishing plan. I have set goals for myself with timelines to do this, and I'm excited, if a bit nervous.
But whatever happens, whether I find an agent or self-publish, I love the life of being a writer. I've volunteered as the BookTrib listicle coordinator for Women’s Fiction Writers Association US for four years, established and voluntarily taught a local creative writing group for three years, which is still running, and I have a wide group of writing buddies that I do Beta reads for, swap critiques, edit and support writers who also support and encourage me. My writing has given me the opportunity to connect with people I would never otherwise have had the benefit and joy of meeting, and I consider myself very lucky.
This website is one of the many steps towards my publishing goals, so hello. I hope we’ll see more of each other as I travel (stumble) down this tricky road toward publication.