Interviews with Susan Tepper

Why is writing important to you and why do you think it’s an important medium for the world? Writing was the first attempt at more than just the most basic communication in our earliest civilizations. Even then people had this urge to share or explain something to their primitive community. There is great beauty in that. Down through the ages it evolved into art and literature. Today, with the encroaching censorship that is attempting to darken our creativity, it’s more important than ever to keep writing and keep the arts alive and thriving.

What are your tried and tested remedies to cure writer’s block? I don’t get writer’s block. And I don’t say this in any sort of bragging way. I wake up with words thrumming in my mind that usually begin a poem or a story. Often waking from a dream is the catalyst for a new piece. I write pretty much in the same way that I eat. It’s necessary to my existence. I’m sorry I don’t have a remedy except to say that something must be getting in the way of the creative process when people experience writer’s block. One tip just hit me: when I take a long walk lots of ideas for my current project come into my mind. So maybe being in nature in this benign way would be helpful to other writers.

What is your favorite time to write? I always start my day writing. It’s been like that for over twenty years unless there is some emergency. The only time I don’t write is when I travel. I think it’s because I’m soaking up a new place and I find the world so fascinating. I began as a TWA flight attendant at 19. It was my first time out of the country. I was mesmerized. Often my travel experiences are given over to characters in my novels. Not intentionally. They seem to pop up at certain times in the story and fit well so I use them. I say: Use everything at your disposal. When you revise, you can decide to keep something or let it go. But always be true to your characters and plot.

What’s the best piece of writing advice you’ve ever received and would like to impart to other writers? “Don’t be less so others can be more.” That came from a very famous writer. In other words, don’t hold back anything that is pushing to come out, don’t tape shut the mouths of your characters. I’ve written dialogue that stunned me so much that I’ve sat back in my chair with my mouth open. But I left it in the story. And it’s what made the story so dangerous and memorable. It was my first Pushcart Nomination.

What excites you most about being a writer in today’s age? Not AI. That really disturbs me a lot. I started writing when we were mailing out our submissions. Today it’s great to be able to hit a button and over it goes. That certainly has increased our chances of being published because we don’t have to wait months / years to hear whether the work has been accepted. That’s a big boon for our times.

Susan Isla Tepper’s Hair of a Fallen Angel is out now with ‎Spuyten Duyvil Publishing.

lindaibbotson | March 19, 2023 | Uncategorized

Award-winning Writer, Actress, Cable TV Producer, Tour Guide, Air Stewardess – Susan Tepper also curated the reading series Fizz at the KGB Bar, East Village.

Native New Yorker, Susan is more than familiar with the quirky side of corporate industry. Her latest novel OFFICE is satirical, timely, seasoned with humor and described in the excellent 5* reviews as a wild ride.

BIO Susan Isla Tepper is a twenty years published writer and author of 12 books of fiction and poetry, and 2 stage plays. OFFICE, her novel satire, centers around a handful of office workers in a NYC skyscraper during the pandemic.

Trailer https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IZsS_d_Jvdw

How traveling has influenced your writing?

When I was just 19 I started working as a ‘stew’ for TWA and have continued travelling ever since. The world is a giant cornucopia from which the writer can pick and choose.  I’ve been most everywhere except the North and South Poles. When I flew with the troops during the Vietnam War my entire perspective on life changed. 

From Chapter 11:  Quinn In Love

He’s in love with a woman who hates Americans, who says they’re cheap tippers and cause trouble when they come to the pubs in the tour groups. How will that work out? Will he be living with her in Ireland? Quinn says he’ll never go back to stay. “Well how will this be arranged?” I say. “Same as any other love affair. You see her when you get the time to steal away. Usually from your wife.” Quinn laughs heartily and takes two cigars from his top pocket. “From a big do for my sister’s new bub— I saved one for each of us to smoke together when I got back.”

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See the original interview here: https://lindaibbotsonone.wordpress.com/2023/03/19/susan-tepper/

CRC Blog Analysis on ‘What Drives Men’ by Susan Tepper
“Between Two Men”

The book was designed by Steve Glines.
https://www.facebook.com/steve.glines 

The official summary of What Drives Men:  “Susan Tepper's new novel is a picaresque romp. A Gulf War vet battling PTSD is tricked into chauffeuring millionaire country music legend Billy Bud Wilcox from Newark to Colorado. Everything goes wrong. Tepper expertly skewers a vast collection of characters on a wildly entertaining road trip from hell.”

Even though most of What Drives Men takes place on the roads between Newark, New Jersey and Colorado, Russell’s own struggles and traumas are not contained in the United States, but across the ocean to Iraq and across the waters in his own brain. What Drives Men has all of the conflicts that the book cover suggests: conflict within one’s self, between one another, and with nature itself. 

Susan Tepper describes the book cover as bringing all of these conflicts the main character Russell faces into one metaphysical image: “As for the cover, we did a lot of talking about it, me and my publisher Steve Glines, and we didn't want it to be an obvious cover, because the book doesn't start out as a road novel. It's about a man in search of himself, a man who has lost himself during the Gulf War. We also wanted the cover to elaborate on the title what drives men? And so we chose this cover of a man attempting to navigate an impossible universe, using a gondola, a universe with many moons and choices.We wanted a metaphorical cover that sums up Russell's confusion and ambivalence regarding his place in this world.” 

Click on the link below to read more about Susan Tepper
https://www.susantepper.com/ 

Russell is a disabled Gulf War Veteran suffering from PTSD, living in a childless marriage with wife Maggie. Then two things happen in his life that change it for the worse: while in a park he is attacked by a squirrel who he believes is a weapon of mass destruction, especially when the squirrel causes him to bleed. Then his wife Maggie decides to leave.  

This sets the stage for the vulnerability of the soon to be 50-year-old man – he’s lost just about everything when he comes across an ad of a car service office requesting a driver to drive the legendary country-western singer Billy Bud Wilcox from Newark, New Jersey all the way to Denver, Colorado. His new boss Nina loans him her brother Leo’s vehicle, a bright and shiny black Lincoln Continental for the journey. There is just one requirement or warning about driving Leo’s car – if it receives even one scratch or has the scent of cigarette smoke, Russell is dead meat. Russell promises to treat Leo’s car with the utmost care and respect; and with a promise of a big tip from the legendary singer, Russell is set to go on the journey.

Billy Bud Wilcox otherwise known as BBW is an obscene, grouchy, mischievous, cussing, pussy obsessed old man who demands he gets his way at every possible moment, and, along with a suitcase containing $40,000 in case, it’s almost guaranteed BBW will get his way. But not with Russell, within the same day he meets BBW he is wishing he never took the job and considers BBW like an enemy, or a bee buzzing in his brain, and Russell cannot wait for this driving job to be finished. 

Throughout the drive the two argue about everything and almost all of the time: when they are driving, when they stop to eat, stop to gas up, or stop at a hotel for the night.  One of the many things they argue about is BBW’s inability to not flirt with women, oftentimes, calling each woman by the name Shelley Lee, and then sobbing for Shelley Lee to not leave him, which convinces Russell that the old man is senile. 

Soon Russell is more than BBW’s driver but his brother’s keeper, making sure the old man doesn’t walk on ice, much less walk away and disappear.   He even encourages BBW to bathe and shave but receives a big fat no.

The two men have their first decent or amicable conversation while driving through Pennsylvania.

       “Tell me about the love of your life.” As if none of the morning drama had ever occurred.

       “Are you talking to me?” said Russell.

“Who else is in this car? Just you and me. Me and you. Right or wrong?”

“I guess so.”  Russell feeling uncomfortable. It didn’t strike him as the sort of thing he wanted to share with Billy.

“Come on, now. Don’t be shy. You saw my crocodile tears. Let’s see some a yers.”

“You want me to cry?”

The old man chucked. “Not cry. Bare your soul, boy.”

Bare your soul boy. A song he might’ve sung at the height of his career. Except Russell never bared his soul. Never. Asking Stan if he considered Maggie nice was about as far as he ever got baring his soul. He wasn’t even sure he had one. If people asked:  Do you believe in God?  Russell always said:  I don’t know.  No point agreeing to something that felt unimaginable, extreme, even far fetched. The day the squirrel jumped out of that tree, if someone had asked:  Do you believe in God?  He would’ve said: I believe in the devil. The devil jumped out of that tree and bit me. Of course nobody asked. 

“Cat got your tongue?”

“What was the question?”

“You gotta ask twice, no point askin’.”

Russell groaned. “Do we have to talk about this?”

“Yep.  If you want to clear the slate.”

Clear the slate! What a joke.

He listened to an ad on the radio for Listerine. He thought about telling the old man how he was walking along minding his own business when this rodent (as Clara called it) flies out of a tree – this virtual Batman attacking him on the neck.

“Her name is Maggie and she left me,” he said.

“When?”

“Some time ago.”

“What season?”

“I don’t know. Winter I guess.”

“Ah-ha! I knew you had issues with winner. You don’t like it. Maybe you used to, now you don’t. You and Maggie husband and wife?”

Russell groaned again.  “Do we have to do this?

“If you want to get your mind free. Or do you want to be daft in your old age?”

As if you’re not? thought Russell. “I feel like having a pepperoni pizza.”

The old man cracked up laughing. “That’s Maggie talkin’ from your gut.  She’s still got you hot inside. Still smokin’ for her.  You want to eat her pepperoni, that’s what you want.” He made obscene noises with his lips.

Things completely change when they come across three drifters in a cowboy bar in Ohio:  pretty blonde Sonia, African American beauty Peaches, and blonde-headed man Tad. At BBW’s insistence and Russell’s strong displeasure, the three join Russell and BBW on their journey to Colorado, in what they believe is BBW’s lucrative ranch where a white stallion is waiting for them to ride upon. BBW is ecstatic to be sitting in the back seat between Sonia and Peaches while Tad sits upfront with Russell; the whole time Russell regretting he took on this job and as impatient as ever for the job to end.   

Soon the five individuals must face the greatest conflict of all while they visit Iowa’s Crane Pelon Falls. By the time Russell drives to Nebraska, he reexamines his and BBW’s relationship: Are they enemy or foe or something in the middle?  

Susan Tepper has been a writer for twenty years and is the author of nine published books. She writes in all genres, with stories, poems, interviews, essays and opinion columns published extensively worldwide. An award-winning author, Tepper has been nominated nineteen times for the Pushcart Prize and has received a Pulitzer Prize nomination for the novel ‘What May Have Been’ (currently being adapted for the stage as The Crooked Heart). 

Her story "Africa...then" was published in Gargoyle Magazine 2020 issue #72 and has been nominated for the Best American Mystery/Suspense Series. Other awards include Second Place Winner in Story/South Million Writers Award, 7th Place Winner in the Francis Ford Coppola sponsored Zoetrope Contest for the Novel (2003), Best Story of 17 Years of Vestal Review, a nomination for NPR’s Selected Shorts Series, and other honors.  

Additionally, Tepper has been an editor at Wilderness House Literary Review and Istanbul Literary Review. For seven years she was panel moderator of the SMALL PRESS PANEL at Marymount Manhattan College Writers Conference, which eventually morphed into the Hunter College Writers Conference. FIZZ her reading series at KGB Bar, NYC, ran for a decade, and showcased the talents of our literary stars as well as many first time authors. 

Before settling down to the writing life, she worked as an actor, singer, flight attendant, marketing manager, overseas tour guide, TV producer, interior decorator, rescue worker and more. She blames it all on a high interest range. Tepper is a native New Yorker.

Susan Tepper’s ‘What Drives Men’
interview in the never-ending series called Inside the emotion of Fiction

by Chris Rice Cooper

Name of fiction work? And were there other names you considered that you would like to share with us? 
What Drives Men is the title of my latest fiction, a road novel. It had an earlier title: Where You Can Find It.

What is the date you began writing this piece of fiction and the date when you completely finished the piece of fiction? It started out as a short story written about 7 years ago. Then each time I looked at it, I wrote more, and then realized I had a novel on my hands. I played with it for about 7 years and last summer I decided ‘enough is enough’ and sent it to a publisher who did two other books of mine.

Where did you do most of your writing for this fiction work?  And please describe in detail. 
All the writing of this book was done on both my laptop and PC. I have a small writing room, 9 by 9, off my back hallway and convenient to the powder room and kitchen. So I could write, then run in and cook a bit, then go back and write. I write wherever I can.  

I wrote some of it while sitting next to my mother’s hospital bed when she was ill. She was a poet and loved hearing what I’d written. It was a nice thing for both of us and broke the dreary hospital routine.  It also calmed me because I was so worried about her. I think in a way I was trying to entertain her, and she had a zany humor, like I do. We both laughed like crazy over these characters. So the book is pretty zany.  
But I don’t outline, or pre-think the work. I don’t have a special routine except that I do write almost every day. When this material grew into a ‘novel’ the first winter I was working on it, the weather happened to be very cold and icy. The plot seemed to move quickly in that direction, starting out during pleasant fall weather and going straight into the dead of winter. I had so much fun with these characters that I didn’t want to let go of the MS.  But eventually, it was the right time. I’ve come to believe that timing is everything.

What were your writing habits while writing this work- did you drink something as you wrote, listen to music, write in pen and paper, directly on laptop; specific time of day? 
Music, never. It gets in the way for me.  I drink tea, lots of tea. I’m English at heart from living there during my first marriage. I like silence, but my dog did bother me periodically because he likes a lot of hugs. And his persistence generally rules.

Please include just one excerpt:                                               

Prologue
Should I come with you he thought of asking then knew it would sound idiotic. Maggie. Magpie. Good ole Mags. Marching room to room shoving clothes and other things in suitcases. He watched her put her address book and little tin recipe box into an already jammed bag; kneeling on its canvas side in order to get it zipped. Maggie was strong – he had to give her that. Russell followed behind, room by room, refusing to help. Why should he?  None of it was his idea. Not that she’d asked for help. Not her. When she was done, bags zipped, coat on, she phoned for a taxi. Dark-blue suitcases like sentries standing guard in the kitchen. Russell stood in the hall, just past the archway. They waited it out in silence.  When the taxi finally got there its horn blared.  Russell stepped further back into the shadows. Let her leave all alone, he thought. Let her wonder what will become of me. He heard the back door slam. Went to the living room and sat on the sofa. He heard the taxi start up then pull away, down the long hill of their driveway.  He could feel the taxi driver's foot on the brake pedal all the way down to the road. Hesitation he thought; hoping. The taxi noise fainter and fainter. After that Russell felt nothing.

Why is this excerpt so emotional for you as a writer to write?  And can you describe your own emotional experience of writing this specific excerpt? 
I feel empathy for people who are deserted by a loved one for no apparent reason that they can understand. It happens to all of us, therefore it’s a universal kind of sadness.  It certainly has happened to me, in various ways, and I don’t think it gets any easier as time goes on. Pain is pain. In this book it happens to my protagonist, Russell. When people are deserted, it tends to undermine their self-esteem which is a terrible thing. It can lead to all sorts of bad choices. As a fiction writer it’s my job to figure things out on the page. Not in advance, but as I write and move along in the story. If you figure out plot in advance, you’re writing with one arm tied behind your back. So much comes forth in spontaneous writing that would never even enter your mind if you outline a plot. So, spontaneous writing presents the reader with a basket full of emotions. A novel is like a huge cornucopia of fruits: sweet, bitter, mushy, tart, dry, juicy, bland. It’s all part of the mix of a really good story. 

Were there any deletions from this excerpt that you can share with us? And can you please include a photo of your marked up rough drafts of this excerpt. 
I did so many drafts, probably 50 or so full drafts over the 7 year period. I didn’t save them, but replaced with the new material as I went along.  I generally don’t save, I don’t see the point. Your mind has re-decided things, so I stick to the new material and move along with it. I will add that it should always be fun to write.  It should be a joyous outlet for the writer. If the writer is struggling, something is off. If it’s not fun, why bother? Life is fraught with difficulties. Art should ebb and flow as naturally as the oceans.             

Marcelle Heath, Curator of Apparel for Authors Interviews Susan Tepper

What do you wear to readings, conferences etc.?

For readings, I always have this idea that I’ll dress up in something really funky-feminine, such as this swirly, swishy, multi-colored surreal patterned dress I bought and love. But in the end I sort of chicken out, worrying that the audience will think I’m showing off. So I mostly put on jeans and a long sleeved black GAP T-shirt. I have a dozen of them.

What are your expectations for how an audience perceive...s the way you dress?

Well, I know for instance that at KGB Bar in NYC, where I ran a reading series for a decade, and I often read in other people’s series, everyone comes in dressed super-sloppy East Village style. I think dressing up for that crowd would feel odd. Though I have seen readers show up looking very glam from time to time. But my damn personal insecurities always kick in! Once I did wear my leopard skirt with a deep side slit. But with black tights and a black top I bought at Marks and Spencer.

Did the garment cost $, $$, or $$$?

Even on sale that skirt cost me a bit of cash. Mostly I shop at GAP and J. Crew when the stuff is discounted. I love clothes and have accumulated some gorgeous things. Once in a while I’ll wear this huge silver necklace of a gargoyle that is from Chini of Italy. It looks very good against black and gives a kind of punch. Plus the gargoyle around my neck feels like a lucky charm.

Linnet’s Wings