Author Birthday – 22 October – Suzy McKee Charnas

Suzy McKee Charnas was born on 22 October 1939 and died on 2 January 2023.

Suzy McKee Charnas Quotes

1. I used to swipe the blank booklets called ‘dummies’ that my illustrator father used to layout pictures for children’s books and I’d write in stories and I’d fill them with drawings and text of my own.
2. [My favourite genre is] anything with fantastic, supernatural elements — which includes much SF, fantasy, and some mainstream and thriller literature as well.
3. As a reader, I like to be shown something in fiction that I don’t ordinarily see in my daily world, something mysterious, grand, glorious, or terrifying; that’s also what I try to provide in my own work.
4. I over-write at first, to make sure that I’ve explored every aspect of my concept and not overlooked any crucial or valuable elements; and then I have to go back and slice out all the parts that turn out to be extraneous in the light of the final central emphasis and meaning of the story.
5. Everyone wants to write, but fewer and fewer people want to be readers as we grow more and more oriented toward quick visual messages fit for short attention spans in an increasingly frantic storm of images and sound-bytes.
6. In practical terms: if you get something published, IMMEDIATELY join the nearest and best professional writers’ organization that you can find. This will be your source of warnings against various predators (from your publisher to, yes, your agent) and of methods of self-defense.
7. Get plenty of exercise and exposure to the other arts; you need to keep the body vigorous and the soul nourished by the visions of others.

Source for quotes: SFF World

Suzy McKee Charnas was an American novelist and short story writer. She was the author of over a dozen works of science fiction, fantasy, and horror, including the Holdfast series, which began with Walk to the End of the World and the Sorcery Hall series of books for young adults. She was the winner of the Hugo Award (for her short story ‘Boobs’), the Nebula (for her novella Unicorn Tapestry) and won the James Tiptree, Jr. Award twice, once retrospectively for the first two Holdfast books and then for The Conqueror’s Child, final volume of the Holdfast series. Another of her major works was The Vampire Tapestry.

Source for photograph: Wikipedia

by Amanda Patterson
Are you interested in more authors’ birthdays? Please click here: The Complete Author Birthday Calendar