Susanna Kearsley
Susanna Kearsley
Susanna Kearsleyis a New York Times best-selling Canadian novelist of historical fiction and mystery, as well as thrillers under the pen name Emma Cole. In 2014, she received Romance Writers of America's RITA Award for Best Paranormal Romance for The Firebird...
NationalityCanadian
ProfessionNovelist
CountryCanada
fact ignore north people speak winter
In my book 'The Winter Sea,' set north of Aberdeen, I couldn't just ignore the fact some people there - especially the people in the past - would speak the Doric.
against defend longer nearly needs neither people telling themselves unjust writer
Even a writer like me, who, in 'The Firebird,' is telling the story of people who've been dead for nearly three centuries, needs to take care. Those people may not be around any longer to tell me what actually happened, but neither are they able to defend themselves against unjust portrayals.
beneath beside cotton hang lovely might museum people plain wear wedding wore
People didn't just wear wedding dresses in the past. They also wore plain cotton shifts beneath them. As pretty as the dresses might be, and as lovely as they might look on display, if a museum doesn't hang the shifts beside them or acknowledge that the shifts existed, that exhibit's incomplete.
carried convinced easily facility might museum people played silver storage walk wedding wore worked
A walk through the storage facility of the community museum where I worked might easily have convinced you that people in the past wore only wedding dresses, carried silver candlesticks, and played with porcelain dolls.
absolutely bearing image mind people romantic term writers
When you say that you write romantic fiction, there are a lot of people who have an image in their mind of the 'bodice ripper.' It's the one term that most romantic fiction writers absolutely hate because it has no bearing on what people are writing.
decide eventually history learned lessons people preserve primary seek shaped student summer worked
In the years that I worked in museums, first as a summer student and eventually as a curator, one of the primary lessons I learned was this: History is shaped by the people who seek to preserve it. We, of the present, decide what to keep, what to put on display, what to put into storage, and what to discard.
attracting characters consumed keeping lives meeting people resolved stop telling
How much of our lives is consumed with meeting people, attracting people, keeping people and missing people? Usually, when everything is resolved romantically in one of my books, the characters stop talking in my head, and I stop telling the story.
memories people causes
Tis never the place, but the people one shares it with who are the cause of our happiest memories.
past people seductive
It's too easy, you see, to get trapped in the past. The past is very seductive. People always talk about the mists of time, you know, but really it's the present that's in a mist, uncertain. The past is quite clear, and warm, and comforting. That's why people often get stuck there.
best emotion page putting reader smallest
The best way to show an emotion is not through a character's words, but their smallest expressions - to take what an actor would visually do and try putting that down on the page for the reader to 'see.'
beauty brought darkest left lives loss love sister time touched tried
After the loss of my sister - my darkest time - I tried to think of the beauty she'd brought to this world and the lives she had touched and the love she had left behind.
brought embassy great home ken portrayal recent responsibility staff stories taylor telling writers
The recent controversy over the portrayal of Ken Taylor and his embassy staff in the movie 'Argo' brought home to me the great responsibility we writers have when telling stories that involve real people.
both came far fixed growing home houses last lived matter moved point regular sale sets uncles various
Brantford was the fixed point of my universe, growing up. Both sets of grandparents lived there, with various cousins and uncles and aunts, and no matter how far we'd moved off, we came back there for regular visits. In a way no other houses have ever been, my grandparents' houses were 'home,' and the sale of the last of those houses was hard.
came five including port spent
I spent five years of my childhood in Port Elgin and came back to spend another five years of my young adulthood there as well, including the years in which I was first published.