Susan Holmes penned her first story at the age of four.  Despite the brevity (three pages of crayoned text) and the title (“Three Bears Visit New York City”) her father gave it the same careful consideration he gave to C. F. Forester’s Horatio Hornblower series. When he finished the story he announced, “You are going to be a writer.”

To be a writer, of course, one must also be a reader. In the pre-digital world that meant a trip to the local library (a very long walk across town, requiring an escort/bodyguard in the form of her older brother) where a new world awaited.  By the fifth grade she’d progressed to Shakespeare, an experience that came in handy when she was stationed in England at the start of her military career.

For the next twenty years, she wrote stories about the lands and the people she met around the world. She spent many of those years writing and editing all sorts of materials, tailoring the voice and content to the target audience. She produced the books Quality Approach and the Process Improvement Guide  as part of the Air Force’s Total Quality initiatives.

Susan’s academic credentials include three undergraduate degrees, a master’s degree, and a doctorate. During her career in higher education, she held varied faculty, staff, and administrative roles, developed undergraduate courses in both traditional and online environments, and participated in academic collaborations on an international scale. Her varied research interests include interpersonal, organizational, and cross-cultural communication, as well as folklore and  issues of cultural identity dissonance among military veterans. Most recently, she’s expanded her research to explore how the use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) affects individuals involved in the writing and publishing industry.

Now retired after a lengthy career in higher education, Susan lives in the hills of the Ozarks where she celebrates the good life among family, friends, and her beloved animals.