Suzie O'Connell's Blog

I know, I know. It's way too early to be thinking about Christmas. Halloween is still more than a month away and here in Southwest Montana, the peak of the fall colors is just now getting underway. But the craziness of summer is fading away. The kids are back in school and the weather is turning cooler. It's the perfect time to curl up with a book… or two.


I've put together a special edition holiday "box set", which includes two Northstar novels:

MISTLETOE KISSES
Two years ago, Ty Evan...

For the last four years, my husband, daughter, and I have lived in a 34-foot fifth wheel because it is difficult to find places to rent that will allow pets in this beautiful, wonderful town I adore. And we refuse to break the promise we made to our pets when we added them to our family—the promise that they would love them and take care of them and never abandon them or give them away.

Four years.

Looking back, I don't know how I didn't go completely insane. Oh, it wasn't the lack of space tha...

I don't think I ever blogged about the (long-awaited) release of Last Surrender , the tenth Northstar book. Well, it came out in February after three long years of waiting for the story to simmer and take shape in the back of my mind. And I seriously love this book. Love it. I didn't want to be done writing it. Which brings me to an interesting question someone asked me a few weeks after Last Surrender came out…

Do writers experience book hangovers like readers do?

Oh, yeah. Only… they're w...

I'm feeling a bit odd today, like I have two distinct personalities. Also, why do I always feel wittier when I'm exhausted? I'm running on four hours of sleep, for the second day in a row. Why might that be���?

Oh, that's right! Today marks the launch of my "sweet" alter ego, Maren Ferguson, and also the release of The Driftwood Promise , book two of the Sea Glass Cove series! More on the pen name in a minute. First, the most important bit.

At long last, the sequel to The Abalone Shell  is FINALLY h...

I'm feeling a bit odd today, like I have two distinct personalities. Also, why do I always feel wittier when I'm exhausted? I'm running on four hours of sleep, for the second day in a row. Why might that be…?

Oh, that's right! Today marks the launch of my "sweet" alter ego, Maren Ferguson, and also the release of The Driftwood Promise , book two of the Sea Glass Cove series! More on the pen name in a minute. First, the most important bit.

At long last, the sequel to The Abalone Shell  is FIN...

When I run any kind of promo on one of my books, I check its ranking on Amazon fairly frequently (every couple hours) as one metric to determine the viability of the promo. Yesterday was no exception, and everything with the promo running on Mistletoe Kisses seemed to be on par with other promotions of a similar nature…

Until around 9 PM MST last night, when I noticed my review count had nearly doubled, jumping from 26 to 47 within the span of a couple hours. Certain it was a glitch, I checked...

Writers are weird. We all have our quirks—our little preferences that inspire us and help us get into the creative mindset, whether it's a favorite kind of pen or notebook, a "most creative" time of day, a certain kind of music… or no sound at all.

I'm no exception.

I've blogged about my old office before, the one I had in the tiny bedroom in our single-wide mobile home in college. I decorated it like a forest—silk ferns and branches of silk dogwood flowers flanking my desk, and silk garlands e...

To celebrate the release of the second edition of Twice Shy  (admittedly, not as big a revision as I'd originally planned), the second Hammond Brothers book is on sale Oct. 12 - 15. It's already on sale at a few retailers, so…

GET YOUR COPY TODAY
I'm also running a drawing for one (1) signed paperback of Twice Shy. It's easy peasy to enter. Just…
CLICK TO ENTER
…and fill out the form. That simple.
The drawing will close at 11:59 PM MDT on Oct. 15, 2017. Open to residents of the US, Canada...

It has been the summer from hell. No rain to speak of. Horrific wildfires across Montana and the West. So much smoke that I haven't been able to see my beloved mountains in any clarity in almost eight weeks. Most days, I couldn't see them at all���not even faint outlines���and they're less than ten miles away as the hawks and eagles fly. It has been a miserable summer, exacerbating my anxiety, which was already chronic.

It isn't only this summer; life has gotten away from me this last year and a ...

It has been the summer from hell. No rain to speak of. Horrific wildfires across Montana and the West. So much smoke that I haven't been able to see my beloved mountains in any clarity in almost eight weeks. Most days, I couldn't see them at all—not even faint outlines—and they're less than ten miles away as the hawks and eagles fly. It has been a miserable summer, exacerbating my anxiety, which was already chronic.

It isn't only this summer; life has gotten away from me this last year and a h...