Suzanne Woods Fisher & Guide Dog Puppies

Suzanne Woods Fisher with one of her beautiful labs

Today I have a special guest on One Writer's Journal. This is the first time I've had a writer guest, but maybe not the last time if I can make connections with some other writers about what they do besides write.

Suzanne Woods Fisher is a bestselling novelist with a wonderful following of faithful readers who love her books. She hosts a weekly radio program called Amish Wisdom where she interviews writers and other guests about Amish living and the simple life. She has a busy family life and on top of all that, she raises puppies for Guide Dogs for the Blind.  So as one dog loving writer to another, we're talking dogs and writing. And as a bonus, Suzanne has graciously offered to give away a copy of her 2011 Christy Award finalist book, The Waiting to one of you readers. Just leave a comment with a way to contact you. So now let's talk to Suzanne.  

Suzanne, you have a very busy life with your writing, radio show, signing tours and everything that goes along with publishing books. Tell us how you handle it all and still enjoy time with your family.

I am always writing. Nearly always! Promotion is a big side of this book gig—answering e-mails, participating in interviews, public speaking, keeping up with social media. Everything gets done…but it’s a pretty busy life right now. I don’t have much time for just having coffee with friends. As for the puppies…they are a joy! Taking a dog on a daily walk helps me get away from the computer, slow down, enjoy nature, exercise, relax a little. You just can’t take life too seriously with a puppy tearing through your house with someone’s underwear in its mouth.

Your grandfather was raised Plain. Was his background instrumental in you deciding to write about the Amish? Your Amish books come across as very authentic as well as respectful to the Amish way of life. Did your grandfather tell you about Plain living or did you experience that firsthand through visits to the Amish villages?

 I’ve always been intrigued by my Plain relatives, even as a child. They have a very gentle spirit, very warm and welcoming, and I admire their focus on a simple life. My grandfather was one of eleven children, raised Old Order German Baptist Brethren, near Gettysburg, PA. He left the colony as an adult, but kept in close contact with his many siblings (and many, many cousins, second cousins, third cousins, etc.). The German Baptists (also known as Dunkards) share core beliefs with the Amish and Mennonites. All Anabaptists. Same song, different verse.

And I have a similar respect for the Amish families whom I’ve met—they’re such kind, wonderful people. A number of my characters in my novels are inspired by real Amish people. Caleb Zook, for example, (in The Waiting and The Search) is modeled after a bishop I admire. I admit, though, that I took a little license with the character: Caleb is a dashingly handsome Amish farmer. The real bishop is a dead ringer for Benjamin Franklin.

 
I’m a dog lover and I know there are many dog lovers out there in the reading world. You have gone a step farther than simply loving dogs as pets to raising dogs for service. How did you get started raising Guide Dog puppies?

We had lived in Hong Kong for four years with my husband’s work (he’s a corporate guy). We have four kids, and the six of us lived in an 1100 square foot apt. in a 44 story highrise. My youngest son, Tad, wanted a dog and it just wasn’t the time in life for us. When we returned to California, the time seemed right. Another dilemma! My husband doesn’t like dogs. He told Tad that he had to convince him of a function, a solid reason, a noble purpose, to get a dog. That very week, Tad and I went on his 3^rd grade field trip to Guide Dogs for the Blind and learned about the need for puppy raisers. Voila! We found the reason! Nine puppies later…we are still raising them. And my husband has grown to like (not love) our dogs.

Tell us about raising these pups. What is the same as raising any pup and what is different?

Some aspects of raising a Guide Dog puppy would be similar to having a pet: House training (my first objective!) and basic obedience. Puppies are assigned to a puppy raiser's home at eight weeks of age and recalled back to the Guide Dogs for the Blind facility around sixteen to eighteen months for formal training. The job of a puppy raiser is to socialize the puppies by taking the pup on age-appropriate outings—grocery stores, restaurants, church, movies and concerts, doctors and dentists, bus and train rides, on and on. We also attend weekly puppy raising meetings to work on skills. The goal of preparing a puppy to become a working guide is always in front of us.

Pups can be cute little bundles of fun or at times, bundles of trouble. My daughter has a German Shepherd pup right now who sometimes drives her crazy and she’s a dog lover like me. He just chewed up a library book. I guess he wants to read that badly. Can you share some misadventures you’ve had with your pups?

I think my most mortifying puppy-raising moments are when a puppy relieves in public. It doesn’t happen often, and it shouldn’t happen at all…but it does. It is very hard to look cool when you are cleaning up your puppy’s mess. Another mortifying moment was when I was in a Nordstrom ladies room , washing my hands, as my Guide Dog puppy poked her head under the stall and scared a lady.

It has to be rewarding to know the pups you raise are going to be some person’s way to a more independent life.  Do you ever know any details or stories about how your pups make a difference in someone’s life? Heard an inspiring story about your pups after they leave your care?

The worst and best puppy raising moment came in a twenty-four hour period after the graduation ceremony for my first dog. Arbor was partnered with Jon, a college boy with progressive blindness.  When we said goodbye, we knew we wouldn’t see Arbor again (Jon lives in the Midwest). We were thrilled that Arbor became a guide, but it really smarted to say goodbye to that big yellow lab. The next day, Jon’s mom e-mailed me to let me know they made it home and she added this comment: “Last night, Jon and Arbor walked over to a friend’s house. I can’t remember the last time Jon did that.” In just 24 hours, Arbor was changing Jon’s life! For our family, loss turned into gain.

I know there must be things I don’t know to ask about what you do with these dogs. So please share anything that is especially difficult or rewarding for you or that you think we might just like to know if I only knew the right questions to ask.

If you are a dog lover, look into volunteering with service dog organizations like Guide Dogs for the Blind in San Rafael, California. Half the reason I keep raising puppies is because I have met so many wonderful, big-hearted people, too. And there are all kinds of levels of involvement—it doesn’t have to be as big a commitment as puppy raising. Some people in my local puppy club are just puppy sitters—they provide a huge help to raisers.

We’re so happy you shared with us about your dogs. But we are writers, and writers write and then they talk about their books. So tell us a little about your books and which ones are new out there on the market for readers. Also what is on the publishing horizon for you?

I have new releases coming out later this year: Amish Values for Families releases in August—it’s a spin-off from Amish Peace. And then some fiction books follow behind: A Lancaster County Christmas comes out in October…and dog lovers will be happy to know that this is a story that includes a very wonderful Search and Rescue dog!

Starting January 1^st, The Keeper is released—the first in the Stoney Ridge Seasons series. And then another series will follow that—still in the little town of Stoney Ridge, Pennsylvania. Different characters, same town. All good!

Any last words before we say goodbye? And be sure to tell everyone how they can find out more about your books.

Thanks so much for having me, Ann, and sharing your many readers with me. I love to connect! You can find me online at www.suzannewoodsfisher.com and on Facebook, too.

Thank you, Suzanne. Remember, everybody, if you leave a comment you'll have a chance to win Suzanne's book The Waiting. Think how much fun it will be to win a Christy Award nominated book. Also, be sure to tune into "Amish Wisdom," an internet radio program hosted by Suzanne every Thursday. Here's the link. http://toginet.com/shows/amishwisdom. You might even hear me on there sometime in June talking about my new Shaker book.

Let me know what you think. Want me to find more writer friends to tell us what they do along with writing great books?

Clear Creek Writers Workshop

L to R - Virginia Smith, me, Annie Jones, Laura Resnick

The Clear Creek Writers' Workshop was lots of fun last Saturday. The writers' group held it in a historic home in Shelbyville that added to the atmosphere of books and talk. The best part of the day, of course, was meeting new writing friends. Here I am in the line-up with fellow workshop presenters, Ginny Smith and Annie Jones. Laura Resnick was the keynote speaker and joined us for the panel here as we were getting ready to answer questions. Most of the questions seemed to deal with technology and what a writer should do to have a presence on the internet. I stayed mostly quiet and listened to the experts. They had some good ideas about focusing your blogging energy and making sure you had great content.

Great advice. I hear it everywhere I go and writers start handing out advice about how to establish a presence on the net. Well, I'm here. I'm talking, but I don't know about that great content stuff. I always want to ask, "What do you call great content?" Information on how to live to be one hunded and five? Hints about what to cook for supper? Advice on how to get the ten and twelve-year-old siblings to stop fighting?

Or maybe how to write a bestseller? How to meet a deadline? Now we're getting into some good content. Uh, maybe even great content. And the thing is I'm guessing there are already a dozen or a few hundred blogs that address those very things. There are blogs on everything. Raising dogs. Horses. Chickens. I'm guessing there are even blogs about eating chicken or maybe not eating chicken. So I listened to the others and tried to learn.

Here are some of the writers who were ready to ply us with their questions. Earlier I had shared with them my "confessions." That was the title of the workshop. "Confessions of a Working Writer." Confession wasn't hard. I told them about my ups and downs as a writer. Then I told them how the very best thing any writer can do if they really want to write is write. That desire or unstoppable will to put words on paper or computer screen can't be taught. It has to rise from within the writer.

But I did love their workshop title. Then they gave my session the title, "Even a historical fiction writer has to stay current." Maybe that was the reason for all the electronic conversation. They were trying to keep me current. Did I say "keep" me current?  I probably should be saying try to get me to inch at least a little closer to current. Maybe close enough that I can see the distant shoreline even if I do know that I'm never going to get my little electronic boat rowed to shore.

Content, Ann, content! Are you noticing what I'm seeing here with these words? Con'tent and con-tent.' They don't sound alike, but they look exactly the same. So I can be content with my content. And I'll hope some of my readers will be content too.

But since I'm talking about content, you can be looking forward to some great content on Sunday when I'll be posting Suzanne Woods Fisher's interview about raising guide puppies and writing bestselling Amish books. What do you know? There's that great content about how to get on the bestseller lists. Suzanne knows how it's done because she does it all the time. If you leave a comment for her interview on Sunday, she'll also be giving away a copy of one of her books to a lucky winner.

Thanks for reading my contented content. That's where writers get in trouble, isn't it? When they get content with their content and don't keep pushing for better and better content. Hope the sun is shining down on you and if there are storms that the dark clouds are flying so high over you way up in the sky that you barely feel the breeze as they pass over.

 

Hearing Voices

I did a live internet radio show last Thursday night on Amish Wisdom with host Suzanne Woods Fisher. Suzanne is the talented and popular author of Amish fiction and non-fiction including the best selling novel, The Choice. On her show that airs every Thursday at 5 p.m. EST she interviews authors of Amish fiction, Bed & Breakfast owners, and others who have a connection to the Plain life or are striving to live simple. I don't write about the Amish or have a Bed & Breakfast or make quilts, but the Shakers did have a song "Tis a Gift to Be Simple." They aimed for simplicity and plainness in all they did. Their furniture had no decorative swirls and designs. Their clothes were basic attire with no lace or fancy trimmings. Their houses and buildings were sturdy but lacked porches or fancy woodworking. And in their pursuit of the simple, plain designs they found beauty.

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So Suzanne asked me to be a guest on her show to talk about the simple ways of the Shakers. I'd not done a live radio show before and as it turns out, I still haven't - exactly. Oh, we were live (and maybe even lively) talking about the Shakers, but the internet station had server outages and nobody in my part of the country was able to get the show to come up. But you can listen to the archived program now at www.toginet.com/shows/amishwisdom. I even got brave enough to listen myself. I thought I'd better do that before I posted the link out there on Facebook or mentioned it to anybody in case I was glad the server was out and nobody heard me!!

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And while I wondered for a few minutes if that was really me talking, the interview didn't sound too bad. Isn't it odd how our voices never sound the way we think they will when we hear them recorded? I hear one tone of voice in my head and everybody else hears me another way. I remember the first time I heard my voice recorded. I was in high school and I vowed never to speak again. Of course that lasted all of five minutes. A friend sent a link, www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=why-does-my-voice-sound-different, explaining the scientific reason for this for those of you out there with inquiring minds who want to know. You can find an answer to almost anything out on the net somewhere.

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But voices are important. I used to have a part time job where I scheduled substitutes for the school system and I could usually tell on the first call if the person was going to be a good substitute or not. And not always by what they said, but by their voice. That's why they tell you to smile while you're talking on the phone if you want to make a good impression. I smiled some of the time while I was talking to Suzanne last week. I'm sure I did.

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Voices are important in fiction too. Dialogue is such a vital part of fiction these days. People like to listen in on your characters talking. At Bible study tonight, I got a really nice compliment from one of my church friends who's reading my new book, The Seeker. She said she just loved "hearing" Mellie (one of my characters) talk. And that's what I want readers to do. To hear my characters talking in their heads. Just the way I do. Just the way I hope you do if you read one of my stories.

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Hope all the voices you're hearing are saying good things!