About Susan

Elevator Speech:
She was born in 1988, has twin older brothers and a younger sister, one sister married in, an adoptive sister that won't go away despite the insanity of the Markloff name, a nephew and niece, and an ancestry that's sort of mutt-esque.

And she can't do accents. Or whistle. Or touch her eye.

The long and short of it:
I hate talking in the third person. I feel like the Borg.

I was born on June 28, 1988 and for the longest time was the only person anywhere near the summer months within my family. My sister (in-law) changed a lot of that by being born in July and then having a boy in June and a girl in May two yeas later. Now I've got all sorts of company. My name means "graceful" or "lily" or both, depending on who you ask. I find it ironic as I'm neither graceful nor do I like lilies.

Getting into writing was a long process for me. When I was little I loved reading. It transported me to all sorts of places both real and imaginary. Then I was in middle school and thought only the smart kids read for fun. So I got into TV instead and watched a lot of Star Trek, Star Wars and really anything that had "star" in the name. I didn't get back into reading until about my senior year of high school and pretty well haven't stopped reading since.

Writing, however, was something different entirely. My first ideas of a story began to form when I was somewhere around eighth grade. I used to attempt to draw when I was younger because I had all these pictures in my head. The logical thing was to draw them. Obviously that would work best. It didn't. So I stopped trying. But the characters I attempted (and failed), to draw didn't disappear. So I tried to write their story.

I probably tried twenty different times. Nothing really worked. So I gave up. I assumed the role of starving artist and resigned myself to the hopeful career of photography. And then three things happened. 1. I took a creative writing class my senior year of high school and wrote out a short story that would turn into End Game: Genesis (and my teacher liked it). 2. I had a conversation with one of my brothers about the fact that I wanted to write (and he liked the idea). 3. About a week after the first talk, I wound up telling my other brother the same exact thing (and he liked it).

To my sheer amazement, they read the first draft of what is now Genesis.

Then I just sort of...let the book fester. I fixed things based on my brothers comments, but for the most part, I didn't touch it. I knew there were other books to follow. I knew there was a lot of story left to tell. But my motivation pretty well disappeared. I was 19 when I wrote the first draft of Genesis. I would be 23 when I started writing the second book. Then it was a little under a year later that I finished the first draft of all five books of the series and rewrote Genesis to a more presentable draft.

During a year of absolute writing insanity (which was this past year, by the way), I also participated in National Novel Writing Month. That's where this story of how I decided to self-publish started. I won the 50,000 word goal about 20 days into the month and was proud of myself. Still in school, I was capable of finishing something writing related that had some value.

But I didn't know what to do.

Flash forward to June 2012. It was the 25th when I realized that I could obtain five free copies of my novel through CreateSpace. Like any young writer, I jumped at the opportunity. Two consecutive days of hard work on a cover design and a haphazardly thrown together manuscript (that initially was missing page numbers - my bad), led me to my first real life book. Two days ago I got to hold it in my hands for the first time.

I'm still searching for an editor to go through traditional publishing. I think End Game has merit as a story. It's why I've kicked myself into overdrive to promote it as best as I can. Things are still a little surreal. And I have no clue where this is headed. Nevertheless, I'm excited.

I hope you were lead here because you read the book. I hope you look forward to more. If you ever want to contact me, don't hesitate. And through whatever you may do or whomever you may be, I wish you the best in all the things you do.

Happy reading everyone :)