Carmen Suderman asked Susan Meissner:

Hi Susan I'm a huge fan of yours. I've read A Bridge Across the Ocean, the Sky is Blue, Secrets of a Charmed Life, Fall of Marigolds, Stars Over Sunset Boulevard and absolutely loved As Bright As Heaven! I love your stories & writing style. My question is how do you get your inspiration for next book & typically how much research goes into your books?

Susan Meissner Hi, Carmen! Thanks for the kind words about my books! I am so grateful. I usually come across a book idea when I'm not actually looking for it; I might read an article or see a documentary or will be talking to someone who has insight on something that happened in the past that hasn't had a lot of light shone on it. For As Bright as Heaven though, I was looking for a story idea when I came across it. I figured with its 100th anniversary headed our way, there might be interest in it as a topic. But I didn’t know yet if there was a compelling story there. I didn’t know much about this disease; I knew there had been a pandemic called Spanish Influenza around the same as World War 1, but I had not heard of its impact – at all. I soon learned that it’s arguably the second most deadly pandemic in all recorded history. It left the global population decimated, with a mortality rate often as high as one in five, and an estimated 1/3 of the world’s population afflicted with it. As many as 50 million people are estimated to have died of Spanish Flu. That's more than twice as many deaths worldwide as in World War I. I felt like I hadn’t just stumbled onto one story idea; it was like coming across fifty million stories wanting to be told. I chose to imagine just one of them. Thanks for asking!

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