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Tired of your expertise staying hidden? "Writing & Influence," hosted by Elaine Acker, features interviews with accomplished writers and empowers business executives to confidently unleash their thought leadership through compelling content. Discover how to trust your instincts, silence your inner critic, and publish content that truly showcases your unique value. Each episode is packed with actionable insights to help you build your influence and grow your business using the power of words. Ready to turn your expertise into impact? Learn how to transform your knowledge into a powerful content strategy that leads to real results—all with the help from Elaine and her guests!
Ep17_SusanWiggs
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[00:00:00]
Elaine Acker: Today I am excited to welcome bestselling author Susan Wiggs to the show. Now Susan is the author of more than 50 novels. Including some of my favorite titles like the Apple Orchard, Family Tree, and The Lost and Found Bookshop, which I'm rereading right now because I love it so much.
Her books have touched millions of readers and they regularly land on the New York Times bestseller list. She's writing stories from the heart that I think give us an extraordinary sense of human connection at a time when I think we need that more than [00:01:00] ever. In this particular episode, we're going to talk about the writer's journey and the power of storytelling and what it takes to build a creative life that will last.
So Susan, thanks for coming on with me today.
Susan Wiggs: Elaine, this is such a pleasure. We've known each other for a long time, but we haven't seen each other in forever. So
Elaine Acker: Years.
Susan Wiggs: to be with you.
Elaine Acker: Thank you so much. You know, as a publisher, we were just talking about the nonfiction side of things. You work on fiction, you know, a highly popular commercial fiction, but I'm just gonna dive in and say, you know, what are the elements of fiction that you think nonfiction writers could really use to make their work more powerful?
Susan Wiggs: That's actually something that I embarked on back when I was in graduate school. I was working on, graduate level papers and reports and things like that. And the graduate students in [00:02:00] my study group were such poor writers because they were so didactic, they were dry and everything. And so we actually formed a group to make ourselves better storytellers. And so what we did was we tried to figure out the elements to apply to our nonfiction work that would make it more readable, more accessible. And indeed that was the kernel of my fiction writing career.
I didn't make stuff up to put in my graduate papers, but I used those technique, you know, make it a page turner. You know, leave the reader wondering about something. And also probably the number one key is be a storyteller who elicits emotion.
Elaine Acker: Mm.
Susan Wiggs: a, a report on some dry topic, I don't know, aluminum extrusions or sales report. I don't know. And it is possible to do. And so I. When I, and I read a lot of narrative [00:03:00] nonfiction for my work because I, I read
Elaine Acker: Mm-hmm.
Susan Wiggs: and the ones that really hold my attention and stick with me are the ones where the writer didn't just report something to me, but instead they involved me on more than one level, not just my intellectual level, but emotional level or my social level or something like that. And so I think see yourself as a storyteller. 'cause everyone's a storyteller. And so, take your nonfiction and make sure that it's relevant on more than one level, not just a factual level. Does that make sense?
Elaine Acker: Yes. That makes perfect sense. And I'll tell you another thing that I see a lot in your work and I was gonna touch on that later, but maybe we'll just touch on it now. When I think about your work, I see description and your settings that come through and this sense of place. And I think [00:04:00] description may be another place where some nonfiction writers could really, have more of a literary nonfiction feel by adding in more distinct description.
Do you agree with that?
Susan Wiggs: do, I do you wanna bring this scene to life, whether you're, you know, in an office complex or, you know, I, I read a lot of history for some of my books for the backstory. You kind of wanna bring the setting to life and descriptions. One way to do that and something that I learned from one of my favorite. I guess now retired, many years. Retired romance writers. Her name was Laver Spencer, and she was very, very popular in the, I guess in the eighties. And I remember I went to a workshop and she said that one of her favorite senses. To access was called synesthesia and it was when you activate more than one of the five senses [00:05:00] at once. You know, like, I don't know, a green wind when you know you're standing in a field of cut grass or something like that and you feel the wind and you smell the grass, you know, something like that. So the more you can give the reader that sensory involvement, the more you're going to draw him or her into your story.
Elaine Acker: Awesome. And this next question's a little more tactical. But I find myself having a conversation over and over, especially with first time writers, and they can be brilliant people. You know, CEOs who are working on their first book because they're trying to capture this knowledge and expertise they've accumulated over the years and put this into a book, and so it's all in there.
And then they, they get hung up, not so much even on getting their knowledge out, but on [00:06:00] how to organize their day. And it's really a funny thing that that trips them up. So for you, what does your writing process look like? You know, tell me a little bit more about what it looks like, what times of day. I mean, is there anything predictable there?
Susan Wiggs: I think that we all talk about this endlessly because every writer is convinced that everybody else has the answer and we've just been
Elaine Acker: Yes.
Susan Wiggs: all along. And I'm not a good person to ask because I'm, it's funny, I'm sort of arbitrary in the way I go with things, and it's weird because I shouldn't be in my former life I think back when we first met, I was a teacher. Teachers are very much on a schedule. You know, the school
Elaine Acker: Yeah.
Susan Wiggs: and the, you follow a schedule. And in fact, when I was a new writer and I was doing both, I was teaching, writing and mothering. It was, it was kind of a, a, a juggling time in my life. But I was, I was just, I had the [00:07:00] discipline imposed on me. I could write during my lunch hour if I didn't have lunch duty and I could write on the weekends and in the summers. And that was kind of how I organized my writing projects when I became a full-time writer. challenge was to impose that on myself, and it's, it's a hu for me. It's a huge challenge.
I do know writers who stick to a strict schedule and so I think now I feel like I'm lucky if I can put, words down on the page every day. And I say every day, I mean five days a week, even better if I can do seven days a week. Definitely spend, it's a 40 hour work week for me, but it's not like 40 contiguous hours, like a
Elaine Acker: Yeah.
Susan Wiggs: I go to and from and being a woman with first a kid and now grandkid, husband, elderly parents, I've had the whole journey that we all have, and for [00:08:00] me, I've had to make writing.
Sometimes during my life, I've had to make writing my life rather than my life fit writing. And I remember reading, I think it was
Elaine Acker: That's good.
Susan Wiggs: or an excerpt by John Irving, the author. And he said, well, you know, get your wife to do this for you so that you can write and get a job like a rural mail carriers where nobody interrupts you and you can just, you know, you can write, and I thought. That's not the real world of a, typical writer, is it? To kind of navigate and sometimes it's a wavy road. However, as anybody who's tried to write knows, there's no shortcut. You've gotta get the words on the page.
Elaine Acker: Yeah.
Susan Wiggs: a lot of times it involves me just kind of blocking everything else out. And I am that writer who writes everything out in long hand
Elaine Acker: Oh, do you?
Susan Wiggs: I started that way when I was a kid and I never quite outgrew it. And there were [00:09:00] times when I tried to discipline myself to compose right on the computer
Elaine Acker: Yeah.
Susan Wiggs: know, I thought, well, I'll skip that step of having to, to transcribe. But now with all of the distractions that the computer offers. It's
Elaine Acker: Mm.
Susan Wiggs: I'm actually more efficient when I'm, it's only me and my notebook. And here, here's one that I can show you. It's, it's kind of a mess, but it works for me, but that's kind of what my,
Elaine Acker: That is so interesting.
Susan Wiggs: Well it used to be more awful than it is now because I used to hate to transcribe 'cause I don't love to type.
Elaine Acker: Yeah.
Susan Wiggs: you just read it. You just read it into your phone, email it to yourself and there are your words on the page. I mean, you gotta read over it and make sure that there's
Elaine Acker: Yeah.
Susan Wiggs: recognition errors. But I think there's no shortcut and there's no way to completely [00:10:00] eliminate distractions, but I think you eliminate as many as you can. Block out some hours. When I did have some really tight deadlines I did make a calendar for myself and I xed out every day where there was an appointment or some other competing thing that I had to do or I had to be away. But any blank day I would, you know, kind of highlight and make sure that I spent my time writing that day.
Elaine Acker: Awesome. Well, and I love that you said, you know, the point is you have to get words on the page. Consistently to get to the end of the story. And that's just one of the things I've tried to convey too, is even if you only did 500 words a day, which is not much, I mean, people are writing social media posts longer than this, right?
So if you just sit 500 words a day in six or eight months, you'd have a book draft that you could then [00:11:00] start revising and editing and doing something with. So it's not out of reach, however that happens for you. So that's awesome. Now we've referred to knowing each other a little bit and you and I owe so many moons ago.
We're both part of that, you know. What was it? Society of Children. It was such a long acronym. Society of Children's Book, writers and Illustrators. And so that's where we went and we've both gone wildly different directions since then. Tell me a little bit about, you know, what were you imagining as your path back then and how did that kind of evolve? And tell me, tell me about that.
Susan Wiggs: Yeah. You know, I was one of those writers, almost literally out of the womb. I mean, my, my mother. I don't know why she saved these, but she, no, I do know why she saved these. She saved these little drawings and stories that I made starting at age two. And I know why she did it because I'm the middle of three [00:12:00] little kids.
And so she was like surrounded and drowning and little kids. And so when she would write to her parents, 'cause this was back in the sixties, you know, when she would write to her
Elaine Acker: Yeah.
Susan Wiggs: who lived in Florida, she would just tuck our little stories or whatever, scribbles into the, and my grandmother saved them.
And so I have these little
Elaine Acker: Yeah.
Susan Wiggs: where used to make the stick figures and the scribbles and I would tell my mom the stories and she would write them down. so I actually have some of, you know, my very like earliest things. And so I'm one of those writers that just thought the whole world was a story and always thought that way. And, and the reason I, I can't remember why we were both members of that. I think that any writer's group, whether it's a genre or anything like that, I think it's a way for writers to get together and it, that's really key for a lot of writers because it's such an isolating kind of pursuit. [00:13:00] You know, you, you
Elaine Acker: is.
Susan Wiggs: in a room, but it feels really validating and supportive to reach out and be with other people who kind of are on that same path. And so I, didn't really ever think I would be a children's book author, but I guess because of my connection to children through teaching and because probably the main reason was it was like right in my neighborhood where we used to meet. It was just a way to connect with other writers, and there's so much, as you mentioned earlier, Elaine, there's so much in common. The process doesn't look that different whether you're writing a children's book or a nonfiction book or a novel or a poem even. It doesn't look that different for any writer.
And so. For me, I always pictured myself writing the kind of books that I love to read because every writer that I know, I'm just a passionate reader. In the eighties when I really got serious about. [00:14:00] I wanna write novels, I wanna publish fiction. I was, I paid very close attention to the kind of books that I was reading, and I was reading a lot of super, super commercial, bestselling fiction romance fiction, family sagas you know, the big juicy emotional big reads that you know, the thornbirds and, and, and Danielle Steele, and, and you know, all the, all the big bestsellers, Kathleen Woodus, I was reading all those and so I always saw myself as somebody working on those. And indeed those are the sort of books that I found myself publishing.
Elaine Acker: Yeah. Are you part of a writer's group now?
Susan Wiggs: Not an organized one. This one is just
Elaine Acker: No.
Susan Wiggs: our homegrown, we call it a critique group because we read each other. There's only five of us. We read each other's work. We're very diverse. We've got somebody who writes children and adults. We've got a literary fiction author and a, magical realism author, and we've got me and, I'm like, hyper realistic.
Only [00:15:00] with better endings. Right. I have a book that's coming out on July 15th. I hesitate to say it's historical, but it starts in 1968 it's based on a true story of a horrible Magdalene Laundry. Do you know what those are? Or they, the
Elaine Acker: I don't.
Susan Wiggs: homes where they used to hide, you know, wayward Girls away. It's called Wayward Girls.
Elaine Acker: Oh, I do know what you're talking about. Yeah.
Susan Wiggs: One of the worst ones. most people are familiar with them in Ireland. You know, that small things like these. And there was a book called, or a movie called Philomena, about this. Situation in Ireland. But what I discovered was that they were very pervasive in the US and the worst one was in Buffalo, New York. The actual building is still there. So people go to my Instagram for example, you can see a little video of, the actual place where all of
Elaine Acker: Wow.
Susan Wiggs: took place.
So, wayward Girls starts there, but it kind of follows these women through their lives to [00:16:00] present day. And it's super dramatic and you know, it will, it will make my readers happy and maybe surprise them as well. Surprise me when I was
Elaine Acker: Yeah.
Susan Wiggs: it,
Elaine Acker: well, how did you find out about that story?
Susan Wiggs: That's actually a good um, story 'cause I often don't remember how I came up with my ideas.
You know, people
Elaine Acker: Yeah.
Susan Wiggs: do you get your ideas? I don't know. But this one was very specific because it was my big brother John and I, we, we lived near Buffalo when we were kids, and then we moved away and never came back until we were adults. And so in 2021 we went on like this nostalgia tour, you know, with his
Elaine Acker: Yeah.
Susan Wiggs: The four of us went on a nostalgia tour to go look at this little bitty small town outside Buffalo, New York. And we went to our church, our Catholic church, where we, we both went, and I had, I don't know if you would call it a recovered memory, but it's something, it's something that I forgot and then it was triggered.
We were standing in front of this [00:17:00] church and I think there's actually a picture of that on my Instagram too. And John and I were standing in front of this church and I had. For some rea or, and then we went inside and there was a smell, you know, I mentioned synesthesia earlier.
You know, smells can trigger memory, things like that. And it must have been the incense, the, or something like that.
Elaine Acker: Yeah.
Susan Wiggs: and I remembered right before we moved away, we moved away to Europe. But right before we moved away, he got to be an altar boy for like five minutes, you know, and, um, and he was the there's a word for you, fer. He's the one who carries the durable and the th the thal is that it's usually a brazier, like a, a brass vessel on a chain. And it's got the incense in the.
Elaine Acker: Oh, the swings? Yeah. Okay.
Susan Wiggs: all the way up the aisle during high mass. And so that was like his job. And he's wearing the, he was probably small for his age or something, and he was wearing the red [00:18:00] cassock and the robes and all that, and dragging.
And I remember he had like his Converse tennis shoes underneath his altar boy. And as he was going up the aisle hit him and his sleeve caught on fire.
Elaine Acker: Oh no.
Susan Wiggs: I never thought of that again. And I asked him, I remember, I was like, did that happen? And he said, yeah, I remember that.
You know, and he, slapped it out. It was no, not that big a deal. But I remember I started thinking about the Catholic church in the sixties and the influence that it had on, on kids and families and everything. I just went down a rabbit hole of research and I discovered this incredibly harsh, abusive system against girls who didn't have just unplanned pregnancies, but girls who had been failed by the foster care system. Who were deemed inappropriate in some way by their own families. And they were just kind of parked in these institutions. And there were, about 38 of them at least, and across the US. [00:19:00] And they were basically workhouses and they were forced to do laundry and, menial work.
There was really no education going on. And so my girls, it was called the Good Shepherd. It was run by the Sisters of Charity, nuns. And girls in my book put together a scheme to escape and carry on with their lives. And there's much, much drama. But yeah, I was really pleased that my publisher, my editor, embrace the idea.
I was afraid she would push back and say, well, that doesn't sound like a Susan Wiggs book, but,
Elaine Acker: yeah.
Susan Wiggs: She let me forge ahead with it and really supported me and I love how the book turned out. I can't wait to what
Elaine Acker: And, and it comes out on July 15th. Right. But we can pre-order now, so,
Susan Wiggs: do. You know, I like
Elaine Acker: yeah.
Susan Wiggs: there's a special place in heaven for readers who pre-order books because that tells the publisher that there's anticipation
Elaine Acker: Yeah.
Susan Wiggs: on their, their print run orders and the more information they have about, who's [00:20:00] might be interested in this book, the more accurate they can be.
Elaine Acker: Yeah. So was that hard? I mean, this is a hard story to tell. So how did that, how hard was that for you as a writer?
Susan Wiggs: was really emotional and one of the pieces of my research that I did was I found a, a Facebook group of survivors of this particular one
Elaine Acker: Oh wow.
Susan Wiggs: their story, and, and a few of them are now in a lawsuit because New York State has one of those lookback laws where they removed the statute of limitations.
If you were abused or harmed no matter how long ago it was,
Elaine Acker: Yeah.
Susan Wiggs: you could still find justice. Because of this. I guess it's called the Lookback Law. That's the one that was accessed by Eugene Carroll to ultimately, you know, take action against Trump for what he did to her. And a lot of the ones, I don't know probably people are familiar with that film Spotlight about the
Elaine Acker: Hmm.
Susan Wiggs: I think the Boston Globe [00:21:00] reporters who pursued the, the clergy abuse. So a
Elaine Acker: Mm. Mm-hmm.
Susan Wiggs: were involved in clergy abuse, which is what this was, were able to find justice because of these laws that removed the restrictions on when you can
Elaine Acker: Mm-hmm.
Susan Wiggs: Because as you know, trauma freezes people from taking any kind of action at
Elaine Acker: Oh, sure. Yeah.
Susan Wiggs: Wake up call 50 years later and, you know, they still deserve justice. And so anyway, that was the, and, I have to admit that some of the things that I learned that happened in this institution I couldn't use in the book because they were too awful. It's not a soft book and I didn't soft pedal anything, but there were a couple of things that, you know, I didn't want 'em in my head and I didn't wanna put 'em in anybody else's head, but,
Elaine Acker: yeah.
Susan Wiggs: The ones that I felt like people could relate to and that would evoke the emotions and the drama of the moment.
They're definitely there. And then the other [00:22:00] thing that I love about reading nonfiction and doing the research for my books is you get these little nuggets. And I, I a librarian. In Buffalo A, his history librarian told me that, or sent me an article that showed that the library Bookmobile used to go to this institution every month.
The Good Shepherd and I didn't get a lot of information about that, but it was really cool that I found out about the Bookmobile because it got to have a role
Elaine Acker: Yeah. Cool.
Susan Wiggs: Yeah.
Elaine Acker: And as I think about some of the themes of your books that I have read, it seems like there's always a sense of either belonging or resilience. Or even sometimes healing that comes through in the story. So I guess the first question is, do you agree with, that kind of takeaway, and second of all, do you see that [00:23:00] showing up in Wayward Girls?
Susan Wiggs: I do. And I'm glad that you noticed that. And it's something that I think it's an element in my book or in any book that I would enjoy reading because as we know, a character's journey is the. The narrative thread of the book. And so you want her to end up in a different place in the end, versus where she was in the beginning.
And since my books are commercial and I like to think that they're aspirational and uplifting and things like that, you know, I would hope that she would gain wisdom and insight and end up in a different, better place. And what was fun about writing Wayward Girls is that I got of a cast of Charact, not just one, there's one main character, but all of the girls we get glimpses of their journey along the way over their whole adult lives.
And it was really cool to kind of, imagine and predict where they would [00:24:00] end up. know, where am I gonna
Elaine Acker: Yeah.
Susan Wiggs: in 20 years, in 40 years, whatever. And so, I liked showing that, and obviously, it was not all, a bed of roses for all of them, but
Elaine Acker: Yeah.
Susan Wiggs: seemed like always they ended up in an appropriate place.
Elaine Acker: Nice. So you said you don't always, well, the question's about to be, do you know what's next? Because you said you don't always know where your stories come from, but do you always kind of have something brewing that's next?
Susan Wiggs: Yeah, I do. There's the, and I'm at a crossroads right now because I've finished Wayward Girls and now I have a blank page in front of me, and that's one of my favorite places to be as a writer. of a scary place because I feel like the stakes are high. You know, I don't wanna, I don't wanna make a, misstep here and go down the wrong road and, end up spending months and months on something that's not gonna be
Elaine Acker: Yeah.
Susan Wiggs: to me [00:25:00] or my career or my readers.
And so, one of the great pleasures of my life, and I think you must know this is my relationship with my sister. Sounds like you've got two sisters, is that right?
Elaine Acker: Yes. Yeah.
Susan Wiggs: I am a sucker for a really good sister story. I haven't written
Elaine Acker: Yeah.
Susan Wiggs: I think my favorite sister story took place in Texas, in the Texas Hill country.
It was called Home Dark. And that was about two sisters. And so, but that was many years ago that I published that book. And so I, I don't know, for some reason I've been thinking about my sister a lot. She lives very far away. She lives in Australia
Elaine Acker: Oh my.
Susan Wiggs: island Washington, so.
Elaine Acker: yeah.
Susan Wiggs: a lot of this, we do a lot of FaceTime, you know, visit when we can at least once a year.
But I don't know. I'm, I, I feel like gonna maybe hang my story on some, you know, on some sisters. So we'll see where that goes.
Elaine Acker: That's fun. Yeah. I recently dug into some of my past published [00:26:00] articles. 'cause I used to do a ton of freelance writing and articles for magazines, including Texas Parks and Wildlife. And so I did a article that we called Four Wheel Drive Sisters and we had taken my middle sister's four wheel drive and, and so there's, we're wide in ages, so there's 17 years total between me and my oldest sister.
And we did this whole Big Bend trip and it's still one of my favorite. Articles 'cause there's,
Susan Wiggs: I, I had a chance to go to Big Ben. We drove
Elaine Acker: have you not been
Susan Wiggs: we drove to Austin, well to Dripping Springs to see the eclipse last April, 2020. We drove there from Washington 'cause we had a camper and we had a chance. We had to decide, oh, do I to Big Bend or do I go to Marfa?
You know, we were on a tight schedule because the
Elaine Acker: yeah.
Susan Wiggs: a very specific, you know, 10 minute event. So we had to make a hard choice. So, I'm, I, that's one of my regrets. I [00:27:00] think we probably should have done Big Bend, but probably we're gonna do it in the future because I'm very drawn to that area.
But it,
Elaine Acker: I, I told you I'd only published one novel and it was set in Big Bend. It was Big Bend is just an extraordinary place and it will always have a special space in my heart.
Susan Wiggs: on my list then.
Elaine Acker: Yes. You will love it.
Susan Wiggs: Okay, good.
Elaine Acker: Okay, next question. I'm not sure you're allowed to have a favorite, but what's your favorite bookstore?
Susan Wiggs: My favorite bookstore,
probably Liberty Bay books in paul's Bow, Washington. Because it belongs to my best friend, so, yeah. yeah. She's a very, very well published and decorated children's book author Suzanne Selfers. And we met when she was just getting started and became writer friends first, and then later became best friends.
A few years back, oh God, it was right before COVID. She bought this little indie [00:28:00] bookstore from the person who was retiring from it, and I think it was in February, 2020. And so suddenly she's got this bookstore in this very cute little small town. It's like a Norwegian town in, in Washington near my home.
And she did, I mean, she managed to sustain and launch this bookstore. And it's very vibrant now, and I just love it because it's one of those bookstores that feels like home when you walk through the door, you know,
Elaine Acker: Yeah.
Susan Wiggs: It's really well organized. It's small enough that you don't get overwhelmed.
I do love a big grand bookstore that feels like a cathedral. But the ones where I spend the most time are more manageable size, I would say. But I've
Elaine Acker: Yeah, I love it.
Susan Wiggs: yeah, I've been lucky to be to bookstores, like all over the world, but you know, that one's just near and dear to my heart.
Elaine Acker: Yeah. So when you're not writing and you're traveling what is feeding your [00:29:00] creativity?
Susan Wiggs: Probably. Probably friends and family more than anything. I love spending time with friends and family. Jerry and I are lucky that we live on the beach on an island, and so we get to have a lot of adventures. We have a boat and we can explore Puget Sound in our boat. We have two cute little dogs, and so there's a daily hike. We went on a road trip. We bought a camper that's not giant, but it's got everything we need in it so we can bring the
Elaine Acker: Yeah.
Susan Wiggs: so we've been, you know, seeing the country. And of course we love foreign travel, so I think just staying open anything and everything.
Somebody that you meet I was caregiving for both of my parents. They passed away now, but my mom. Care helpers that, you know, came to the house to, to help me. Bond with people that, that are, you know, a part of your journey and, and I feel like. The stories just come out if you stay open to them.
And [00:30:00] so that's, I, I don't ever like go looking for something, but I wait for like the moment that I described with my brother, you know, looking at our childhood church.
Elaine Acker: Mm-hmm.
Susan Wiggs: And suddenly I think you learn to pay attention to the signs. You feel like a little, you know, a little gut punch and you think, well, I need to look into that.
Or it, yeah, it's a mysterious process, but I think it hits us all. And if you're a writer you know what to do with that. So.
Elaine Acker: Yeah.
Susan Wiggs: In that, some people are a little confused by that. What? Write it down. No, thank you. But for us it kind of comes naturally.
Elaine Acker: What kind of dogs do you have?
Susan Wiggs: I have two rescues. One of 'em is from Texas, Doug.
Elaine Acker: Oh,
Susan Wiggs: Yep. He I met him on a Zoom call like this. He was from a puppy mill.
Elaine Acker: oh.
Susan Wiggs: unfortunately, I think in Texas it's still, there are still pet shops or something. They're illegal here in [00:31:00] Washington because it.
Elaine Acker: I don't think we have pet shops, but we definitely have the mills. Yeah.
Susan Wiggs: he's a, he's a chiweenie and you know Yeah. Like a, yeah, like a wiener dog chihuahua. And then our other one is a chiweenie daisy, daisy bella. She's a chiweenie with Pomeranian. So she, we've got a long
Elaine Acker: Oh my.
Susan Wiggs: board here. They're very cute. They're so cute. In fact, they both Doug's inspired a whole book because I was, you know, in between books and my publisher came to me and they said, we want you to write a Christmas book. And I was like, nah, I've done it. I've written Christmas books. I need to have a really good story to hang it on. And I, and I remember we had just got Doug and the way that. You get a dog who's from away from outta state is they gotta transport the dog to you. And sure enough, the shelter had a pet transport.
It was like a tall Ford Transit van and it was filled with dogs and they took [00:32:00] like two or three days to drive up here with the dogs. And we all had to meet them in a, parking lot in Olympia, Washington to get our dogs. And it was the cutest thing. And I kind of went down that rabbit hole.
Oh, pet transport is kind of a thing. And so I wrote the 12 Dogs a Christmas and it was kind of fired by that. So, yeah, that came out in paperback last Christmas and then the Christmas before it came out in hardback, the 12 Dogs of Christmas. And I always wanted that to be my Hallmark movie. The Hallmark movie people said, 12 dogs, no thank you. They didn't wanna have to juggle all that, you know.
Elaine Acker: They know what they're talking about when it comes to dogs.
Susan Wiggs: Yeah. That was like a really kind of warm hearted romantic comedy.
Elaine Acker: Yeah. So before we wrap up, if you think back to that creative storytelling little girl in [00:33:00] Buffalo if you were kind of looking back and offering advice to her now, what would you tell her?
Susan Wiggs: I think I probably would tell her you know, don't listen to the critics, listen to your inner critic because she's you. But don't listen to the critics who say, you know, that's not good enough. That's not gonna work. And I do think that maybe I'm, I didn't trust myself enough. I, that's so common with writers.
We question ourself. A writer is such a divergent thinker because we think the story could go this way, the story could go that way. And so I think I kind of slowed myself down by questioning myself and. Doing too much listening to critics. And the other thing is you know, listen to your heart when life is pulling you, you know, in one direction, don't clinging to the past and, and, you know, insist that it's gotta be some way.
So [00:34:00] I would probably tell her that, on whatever level she could understand it.
Elaine Acker: Yeah. And, and those are so good. And so that makes me think one more thing. So what did it feel like when you finally held your first book in your hand?
Susan Wiggs: It was kind of surreal. I think most writers will tell you that it's like, and you also feel kind of distant from it because these are the words that you wrote probably the year before or, you know, some months before. And so it's a little bit surreal, but you flip it and you think, wow, where did all these words come from? And I love it. And I have to say, I'm not one to read my books once they're published. I mean, I'll read
Elaine Acker: Yeah.
Susan Wiggs: bits of them, but number one, I'm so sick of the story. I've spent so much time
Elaine Acker: Yeah.
Susan Wiggs: going over and over and over it. And so, you know, I've been there, done that. But I do love to read. My books on in audio format [00:35:00] because audio books are they're such a, they're such a good format for, because it feels like a, a fresh a fresh take on something that I've done.
So I always listen to my audio book and so that's my that's my go-to and it always sounds better that, that I'm a better writer than I am when a really good voice talent reads it.
Elaine Acker: Well Susan, thank you so much for being with me today and reminiscing a little. And you know, I love hearing your heart for storytelling and we will absolutely be looking for Wayward Girls this summer, and I'll make sure everybody knows how to find you.
Susan Wiggs: Well, thank you for finding me. one of the nice things about the internet. We have lots of complaints about it, but the way to connects people after many, many years can be really magical. So, thank you, Elaine. It's been a pleasure.