About Susan D. Matley

It starts with being a passionate reader. My devotion to fantasy lost me my best friend in seventh grade (I adored Narnia; she was fiercely into The Pink Dress). My sister and I were lucky to have parents and grandparents who read to us when we were little, and when she started kindergarten she taught me everything she learned at school. “Cat” and “dog” were especially useful words, a good base for learning how to spell new words with the simple change of the first letter.

That’s when the writing kicked in, and it’s now my official line of work after being an actress, an accountant, and a touring musician. Throughout, I’ve been an avid reader and there’s always at least a journal-in-progress in my life, my sloppy cursive recording things real and imagined.

Evidence of a writer’s life is scattered around the house- -a copy of the 1968 Port Townsend Police Digest with my article about elementary school fire drills; a file cabinet stuffed with manuscripts; a desk stacked with drafts-in-progress and research books. I have a thick file folder of rejections (you haven’t “arrived” as a writer until you collect enough of these to wallpaper an average-sized bathroom). There’s also a thinner file of acceptances, including a contract with WolfSinger Publications for my first published book, Small-g City (released in 2015). Small-g now has three siblings, Big-G City (2016), Beyond Big-G City (2020) and Crisis in Big-G City (2023). Book five, Justice in Big-G City, is my current work-in-progress.