SONG FOR SUSIE EPP Reading Is My Superpower announcement & interview

Author Interview (and a Giveaway!): Elma Schemenauer & Song for Susie Epp

POSTED JULY 18, 2024 BY MEEZCARRIE IN AUTHOR INTERVIEW, CLEAN, ELMA SCHEMENAUER, GIVEAWAY, WOMEN'S FICTION / 4 COMMENTS

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Please join me in welcoming Elma Schemenauer to the blog today to talk about her new novel, Song for Susie Epp!

Elma (Martens) Schemenauer—also known as "Elma Mary from the Prairie—grew up in a Mennonite family halfway between Saskatoon and Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada. After teaching in Saskatchewan, Montana, and Nova Scotia, she moved into a writing and editing career in Toronto.

Elma is the author of 78 books. Their topics include faith, family, Mennonites, community life, history, mystery, and adventure. Her most recent book is the novel Song for Susie Epp. One of the story's settings is a flatland prairie community like the one she grew up in. The other is a mountainous semi-desert community like Kamloops, British Columbia, where she lives now. Song for Susie Epp features some of the same characters as Elma's earlier novel Consider the Sunflowers. You can connect with Elma on her website.

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SONG FOR SUSIE EPP by Elma Schemenauer
GENRE: Women's Fiction (Clean with mild language)
PUBLISHER: Farland Press
RELEASE DATE: June 17, 2024
PAGES: 314

It's 1970. Bashful Susie, a pill addict's daughter, sets out to build a better life for herself. Fellow Mennonite Simon loves Susie's courage—and her. He proposes. But marrying him comes with a pushy, sanctimonious mother-in-law. She manipulates Susie and Simon into leaving their beloved British Columbia grassland and moving to her Saskatchewan farming community. There, a shocking secret plunges Simon into depression and drinking. As Susie struggles to find a way forward, she gains a new resilience, empathy, and understanding of faith and freedom.

 

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Hi Elma! Welcome to the blog!

Elma: Apples raw or in desserts with lots of cinnamon and not much sugar.

Carrie: I love a good, crisp, sweet apple!

Elma: Winter. Walking in the cold and snow invigorates me. I return thankful for my warm home and eager to start writing again.

Carrie: i feel the same way!

Elma: High craggy mountains. I also like lower, earthier mountains like what I see in my semidesert city of Kamloops, British Columbia.

Carrie: the mountains are my happy place – one of my bucket list places to visit is British Columbia!

Elma: Soup, especially Mennonite plum soup like what Susie makes in my novel Song for Susie Epp. I also enjoy cabbage borscht like what Tina makes in my novel Consider the Sunflowers.

Carrie: plum soup sounds interesting!

Q: Around here I like to say that reading is my superpower. If YOU had a superpower, what would it be?

Elma: Revision. I'm seldom happy with the first draft of what I write. I rethink, rejig, and rewrite until it's better, hopefully.

Carrie: that can be a good – and tedious – superpower lol

Q: Tell me some good books you've read recently.

Elma: God's Not Dead by Rice Broocks. In the School of the Holy Spirit by Jacques Philippe. Wife-in-Law by Haywood Smith. The Other Woman by Sandie Jones. Down Clearbrook Road: A Girl in a BC Mennonite Village by Anne Konrad

Carrie: that's a good mix of themes and genres!

Q: Writing spaces are as diverse as authors and books. Where is your favorite space to write?

Elma: A converted laundry room. There's barely enough space for everything I've got crammed in here—desk, bookshelves, computer, printer, armchair, and little bed for naps. But I love this room. It gets lots of sunlight and overlooks my husband's flower and herb garden.

Carrie: that sounds lovely!

Q: Which of your main characters in Song for Susie Epp is most like you?

Elma: Susie. She's a wallflower who peels herself off the wall and faces challenges that encourage her to grow in faith and confidence.

Carrie: i love that!

Q: Did you have the whole plot outlined before you started writing, or did you let the characters dictate what came next?

Elma: I often let the characters dictate. Among characters who did a lot of dictating were Susie's bossy mother-in-law Adeline and larger-than-life music teacher Ross.

Carrie: the bossy mother-in-law sounds like a handful!

Q: What is one of your favorite quotes from Song for Susie Epp & why do you love it?

Elma: The following quote comes after a quarrel with her fiancé's mother causes Susie to arrive late for her wedding.

Pastor Warkentin stood broad-shouldered in a charcoal suit, his black hair silvery above his swarthy face. He smiled, gazed out over the congregation, and admitted he'd been late for his own wedding thirty years earlier. Several people chuckled, probably recalling the event or at least having heard the story.

The pastor continued. "My wife, Tina, was a believer when we got married. But I'm sorry to say I was a doubter. I didn't come to the Lord until years later." The pastor's eyes searched my face and then Simon's. "However, I think you two are both believers." He paused, waiting for a response.

Simon and I glanced at each other and nodded.

The pastor scanned the congregation. "Salvation through faith in Christ is a priceless gift." His voice rumbled through the church. "Simon and Susie's love for each other is also priceless."

I said a silent Amen.

The pastor launched into his sermon. One of his main points was that Simon and I should let our love inspire us to treat other people in a loving way. I prayed it would, especially with regard to my mother-in-law.

I like the above quote because it gives insights into Simon and Susie's relationship and beliefs. It also foreshadows conflict between Susie and her mother-in-law.

Carrie: the pastor sounds like a good man!

Thank you so much for taking time to talk with me!  Before we say goodbye for today, tell us what's coming up next for you.

Elma: I'm working on a novel about a Toronto author and editor whose fiancé fails to show up for their wedding. Why? I'm still figuring that out.

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Elma Schemenauer is offering a digital copy (epub or pdf) of Song for Susie Epp to one of my readers! (Void where prohibited by law or logistics.) This giveaway is subject to Reading Is My SuperPower's giveaway policies which can be found here. Enter via the Rafflecopter form below.

What about you? What makes you want to read Song for Susie Epp by Elma Schemenauer?

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Not your average desert story. INTO THE FOG by Michelle Richer-Godard reviewed by Elma Schemenauer

The beginning of Michelle Godard-Richer's novel Into the Fog quickly and interestingly introduces the main character, Heidi. She lives in the Rocky Mountains of Alberta, and has just signed a contract for the publication of her first novel. If it sells well, she'll be able to quit her job and write full-time.

Personally, I haven't experienced that kind of success as a novel-writer, but I can relate to this character's high hopes. And I wish her well.

But there's a complication. Heidi is pregnant. When she tells her boyfriend, he proposes marriage. They love each other so that's fine.

Except it isn't. The boyfriend, Brent, disappears before the wedding, leaving Heidi to raise their daughter on her own. Fortunately, the money she makes writing detective novels is enough for them to live on if they're careful. So that's fine then.

Except it isn't. On Heidi's way home from taking her daughter to school, she encounters ice fog on a mountain road. After almost colliding with an animal, possibly a moose, she finds herself on a dead-end road. The Rocky Mountains have vanished. She and her Jeep are in a hot brown desert. Unfamiliar brown brick buildings line either side of the road.

I can relate to this setting since I live in the semidesert city of Kamloops, British Columbia. But Kamloops is much better than "Ghost Town," the nickname for the place Heidi has unexpectedly arrived in. Ghost Town has no streets. There's no gas station. For sure there's no Electric Vehicle charging station. Heidi feels as if she's "trapped in a bad Western."

Because of the heat and maybe other factors, Ghost Town's inhabitants aren't very lively or ambitious. An exception is a young man named Dustin. He prepares meals for the other inhabitants. "Most don't pull their weight," he tells Heidi when she helps him in the kitchen. "If you want to fit in, you should slack off more."

But Heidi doesn't want to slack off. She wants to find out where and what this place is, get out, and return to her daughter. Is Ghost Town purgatory, halfway between Heaven and Earth, as one resident says? Is it an alternate world like those in some Navajo stories? Is it a "guinea-pig" community whose residents are being studied by the government or aliens?

About halfway through the novel, Heidi and some other inhabitants discover the answer. So that's fine then. She can leave and return to her daughter.

Actually, Ghost Town isn't that easy to escape from. Dustin says some groups of people have tried. They "headed north, south, east, and west. They all drove in different directions until they ran out of gas and had to hike back." When Heidi asks if these people found anything besides barren desert, he shakes his head.

How Heidi and the other residents deal with this desperate situation makes for an exciting and thought-provoking story. Godard-Richer tells it well. She's particularly good at portraying the characters' motivations and feelings. She's also good at mystery, planting just enough clues about the characters' plight to keep readers curious and engaged. And she often gives information in poetic and pithy ways. Examples:

-When describing the desert environment, the author says, "No insects buzzed in the air, and no leaves rustled on the absent trees."

-She contrasts that desert environment with forest, snow, and the "blessed Rocky Mountains."

The story's main character, Heidi, has good values. She forgives a man who bullied her, observing that forgiving is "a gift for the one doing the forgiving." She cares about all of Ghost Town's inhabitants, not only herself. She works hard toward the seemingly impossible goal of ensuring that all return to where they came from. Do they? You'll need to read the book to find out!

 

 

Travel writing anyone?

Good article on building a career as a travel writer. https://blog.bookbaby.com/how-to-write/writing-inspiration/career-as-a-travel-writer?utm_campaign=BB2428&utm_source=BBeNews&utm_medium=Email#

Canadian Mennonite opportunity for journalists, etc., deadline July 15

"Canadian Mennonite is offering flexible residency opportunities for people passionate about investigative journalism, photo journalism, documentary filmmaking, podcasting, graphic design, editing or some combination thereof.

Residencies will center around an applicant's project idea. They will last from six to 18 months, paid on a full-time or part-time basis, depending on the project or interest." Opportunity limited to Canadian residents. Deadline for applications July 15, 2024. More info at https://canadianmennonite.org/creative .

Article about me & my writing by Shannon Ainslie in iNFOnews, Thompson-Okanagan's News Source, June 30, 2024

How a Kamloops author took a leap of faith to make her dream come true

Shannon Ainslie

Author Elma Schemenauer is pictured at a book sale at St. Ann's Academy in Kamloops in November, 2022.

Image Credit: SUBMITTED/ Elma Schemenauer

June 30, 2024 - 6:00 AM

Elma Schemenauer is a familiar face in Kamloops. She can sometimes be seen chatting with people at local farmers' markets and selling her collection of books.

The author has published 78 books over her lifetime, and while it might come as no surprise she always wanted to be a writer, it took a lot of courage, and a leap of faith to make her dream come true.

Schemenauer is a first-generation child of Mennonite immigrants from Russia and grew up on a farm several miles east of a tiny town in Saskatchewan.

"I really wanted to be a writer but how do you do that when you grow up so rural the only the writers we knew of were the ones who wrote in newspapers and we didn't even have many newspapers? That was the extent of knowing about writing.

"Mennonites are practical people and it wasn't obvious to me how you could make a living as a writer, so I went into teaching. It's a well respected and useful profession, and you can make a living."

She became a teacher and completed a year of teaching in Nova Scotia before she made a bold step to follow her dream and moved to Toronto.

"I thought if I'm ever going to be a writer, this is the time, but I was so rural and so naive. It was scary, I was unemployed in a big city, I didn't know how to run my life."

She rented an apartment with a friend from Saskatchewan, found a low-level job to help pay the rent while she did interviews for writing jobs.

"I went to Maclean's magazine and the guy was nice, he said to go to a small town and work for a newspaper for a few years and come back. I thought, I'm not doing that, I'm here in this exciting city, I can't go back."

Eventually she got hired by an educational publishing company writing books for schools and libraries. "I was just beside myself, I couldn't believe I was getting paid to write," she said. "I was writing stories for kids, hired because of my teaching experience."

A few years later, Schemenauer got married and continued working while her husband was in university. "He wasn't making a lot of money, I was working, and we'd just bought a house and had mortgage payments to make," she said. "Then I said I wanted to go freelance and that really scared him. He didn't want me to do it, but I did it.

"You can make enough money in educational publishing but you have to write what other people want you to write." Schemenauer has earned her income as a freelance writer ever since. 

 

In 2006, she moved with her husband to Kamloops where she fell in love with the community and unique terrain.

In her later years, the author has focused on writing fiction novels publishing Consider the Sunflowers in 2014 and Song for Susie Epp this year, where she weaves elements of her Mennonite cultural roots and memories of her upbringing into her settings and characters.

"I have more memories of my first seven years than any other time," she said. "I remember little details, what the old ladies in the church said, the smell of dill pickles."

A well-developed character present in both novels is called Adeline, and she lives in the same place Schemenauer grew up in. "She's the mother-in-law everybody loves to hate. We had a little Mennonite church and she goes to that church and brow beats her son and daughter-in-law to go. She's a nosy, overbearing neighbour. We have strong women in our family, including my grandmother. When the first novel came out, I said to my sister, do you know who this character is based on? And she knew."

Another character in the books, Adeline's son Simon, is a functioning alcoholic for a while.

"There's a lot about drinking in this book," she said. "Mennonites at that time in the 1970s, the era this book is written in, were not supposed to drink, they were not supposed to dance. There were a lot of things they were not supposed to do, so there's a lot of that in this book."

Schemenauer is part of a local author's group where she and other authors take turns evaluating one another's work. "I tend to get a little farfetched and I have to get people to tell me when I've gone too far," she said. "In Song for Susie Epp, the character of Simon goes on tour to the Maritimes with a parrot who sings opera."

Song for Susie Epp is set partly in Kamloops and partly in Saskatchewan. The cover of the book shows the Kamloops grassland. In the book Kamloops is Sage City and there are elements local readers might recognize.

"There is the sage brush and the mountains," she said. "There is the ease of getting around and the emphasis on the arts. The main character goes to a Mennonite church similar to the one in Valleyview."

The author is currently working on another novel and said she is enjoying working on more personal work that is closer to the heart than having to write for money. 

Go here to order Schemenauer's most recently published book.

 

WordWorks is open for submissions. Deadline July 19.

The following interesting message is from Rachel Muller of the Federation of BC Writers.

FBCW's WordWorks Magazine is looking for article pitches for our fall 2024 issue: Truth Be Told: The Creative Nonfiction Issue. Whether your subject is history, science, nature, travel, or your own life, we would love to hear from you if you work in creative nonfiction. What excites you about this genre? What literary techniques have you used to make a factual story more engaging? How far would you go to research a true story?

Pitches should include a clear connection to the issue's theme and a summary of what a reader will get out of your article.

The deadline for article pitches is July 19 at 11:59 pm. Learn more or submit at https://bcwriters.ca/submit

With thanks,

Rachel

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Rachel Dunstan Muller (she/her)

Managing Editor, FBCW Press

Federation of British Columbia Writers

rachel@bcwriters.ca

www.bcwriters.ca

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The Federation of British Columbia Writers functions on the unceded and ancestral territories of many indigenous peoples and cultures. As champions of language, we cherish the oral and written traditions of the indigenous peoples of this land. We commit to uplift the voices and stories of marginalized peoples and communities wherever we work.

borscht & book

I look forward to eating borscht & speaking about my novel Song for Susie Epp at the Mennonite Heritage Museum in Abbotsford, British Columbia on Thursday July 18, 2024. Big thanks to Jennifer Martens, Lorraine Isaak, & others at the Museum for the opportunity.