Susanna J. Sturgis: Writer • Editor • Born-Again Horsegirl

Go, Travvy!

As 2011 comes to a close, Travvy has his RL2 and RL1X titles in APDT Rally. We hope to be ready for Level 3 in the spring. It's challenging, it's fun -- and it gets me off-island!

The Mud of the Place

Mud, my novel about year-round Martha's Vineyard (and other stuff), has its own website. It includes info about the book, along with several ways to order it. Check it out!

Norway

In mid-December 2010, I spent a week in Norway. More about my trip in the Bloggery, Dec. 7 through 17.

Trivia: Voices of Feminism

Trivia 10 includes my essay "And Will Rise: Notes on Lesbian Extinction."

Now the spider has two websites. For information about my novel, The Mud of the Place, check out the Mudsite.

I'm a freelance editor by trade. I work on fiction, general nonfiction, and scholarly nonfiction in the humanities and social sciences. My clients include trade and university presses, small presses, self-publishers, academics, and individual writers. If you're looking for a capable editor, copyeditor, proofreader, writing coach, or all-round bully to help you start, finish, or polish your project, check out the Editing page. Use the Contact page to send me an e-mail.

For biographical info, see About Susanna and A Writer's Resume. And for an idiosyncratic take on the place I call home, visit the Martha's Vineyard tourists and summer people rarely see. Many of my favorite essays from the 1980s and '90s, not to mention the '00s, can now be found under Essays & Articles.

Rhodry Malamutt -- who inspired Pixel, the canine sidekick of one of Mud's protagonists -- died in February 2008. He taught me that life is better when you have a dog to share it with, so Fellow Traveller moved in as a small puppy. He's already three! You can follow our adventures, with plenty of photos, on his page. And, yes, Travvy is on Facebook too.

The year just passed, 2010, was one of big changes. In March, I replaced Uhura, my old Mazda pickup, with a Subaru Forester, now named Malvina, after singer-songwriter Malvina Reynolds. On June 1, Allie, my equine companion for more than 10 years, left for her new home -- which was also her old home, Hartland Morgans of Windsor, N.Y. In July, I bought my first laptop computer, Hekate O'Dell, and in December I went to Norway on an editing job. Who knows what 2011 has in store?

Writing-wise, I've got two projects in play. Novel #2, The Squatters' Speakeasy, takes place about a decade after The Mud of the Place and involves some of the same characters. It concerns a disorganized gaggle of Vineyard musicians, iconoclasts, misfits, and weirdos who take over a trophy house and turn it into a coffeehouse. The other one is a personal/political memoir, To Be Rather Than to Seem: A Writer's Education.

Now a house that is built upon sand has a view of the waters,
And a rich man sits feasting his eyes on their power and might.
But El Nino remembers the poor, and their sons and their daughters,
And the waters reclaim what is theirs in the dark of the night.

Go, Travvy!

The Mud of the Place

Norway

Trivia: Voices of Feminism

rev. 22 June 2011