Susan didn’t intend to be a writer. She trained to be an actor and, as Gracie Luck and Susan Kramer, Boston-born Susan had a 25-year career in London’s West End, The Fringe in Edinburgh, and the Sydney Theatre Company at the Sydney Opera House.

Her transition from acting to writing came about in the 70’s. She was in rehearsal for a TV show and, with her lunch in a brown paper bag, had to take the train from Waterloo Station in London to a church hall in the countryside. That same week, she was to meet a producer about a screenplay she had just completed. She was picked up at her flat by a chauffeur-driven, white Rolls Royce and taken to lunch. Writing was where it was at, she decided.

Susan Surman

In between acting gigs, Susan wrote screenplays, plays, and revues, some of them optioned, some of them produced. Her first book, Max and Friends, was based on a cartoon about a rabbit that she had written years earlier in Australia.

Her next book was about a dog, Sacha: The Dog Who Made It to the Palace, inspired by her own dog’s visits to Buckingham Palace with a friend who was the royal florist. Susan offered a copy to the Queen Mother, an offer accepted by one of her staff, with specific instructions as to what time she was to arrive at the Palace, which door she was to use. Susan says that when she herself “made it to the Palace,” she went by bus to a side door, but still . . . A few days later, she received a thank-you note: “Her Majesty was interested to learn that the book tells the story of Sacha’s adventures that finally led the little dog to meet Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother.”

Susan’s later novels have people for characters, not animals, and draw upon her extensive travels and her show biz experiences. Acting proved to be great training for her writing – learning to “be” someone else, to imagine that person’s life before she comes on stage, to know what she is thinking, why she moves and talks as she does. Dancing at all the Weddings, her latest book, follows an actress for 28 years from Boston to New York to Hollywood.

Our first meeting was over lunch, and we didn’t stop talking until mid-afternoon. When it became obvious that the restaurant would like to get rid of us, we walked across the street to a park. A cool May day, so we sat down on a bench in the sun. And immediately stood up, both of us laughing uncontrollably. We had never intended to be “old ladies” sitting on a park bench in the sun. We’re thinking now of collaborating on a play in which that stereotype is challenged.

I’m not sure where this new blog is going, but how I want to begin is with stories, the stories of remarkable writers over 50. I’ve always been an observer—watching, listening to people I see in bus stations or on the street, and making up stories about what I see. Then, four years ago, I moved to North Carolina where I found that people were willing to tell me their stories. While we looked over the meat section at Harris Teeter, a woman told me about butchering on the farm where she grew up; waiting at a Kinko’s counter, another woman told me about establishing a foundation after the death of her child from SIDS; I heard two generations of stories from a woman I met at a museum.

My first story is about my friend Shirley Deane. (Shirley is her birth and authorial name, but her friends know her as Dalia, a name she acquired while in India.) In 1956, at the age of 27, she was a young jazz accordionist in New York. She had a recording contract and the offer of her own television show, but then one night, after a nightclub appearance, she decided she would rather tour the world. Shortly after, she packed and set sail. She played her way through Europe and Africa, and then decided she wanted to see India. Why not go by car? Never mind that no one had yet driven from Europe to Asia alone, and that no woman had been included in the two previous groups. She had a Land Rover modified to her specifications, went to mechanic school, and began another of her amazing journeys. She was kidnapped and questioned by the Turkish police; the Shah insisted on arranging an escort for her through a dangerous area of Iran; alone in the desert, her engine became clogged with sand, but she pulled out her notes from her mechanic’s training, and was off again.

While she was living and teaching in South Africa, she saw that the Who’s Who of South Africa had no entries for blacks. She set out to right that wrong. Despite death threats, despite the theft of her recorded interviews and notes, she persevered and published, through Oxford, the first ever Who’s Who of Black South Africans. 

When she attempted to publish her memoir, no agents or editors believed that her story wasn’t fantasy. So when Kevin Watson, of Press 53, contacted her after hearing her interviewed on our local public radio station, the manuscript she sent him was accompanied by scrapbooks, newspaper clippings from around the world, and photos. The result is An Unreasonable Woman. (Go to  www.press53.com/BioShirleyDeane.html).

When I asked Dalia for a quote for this story, she said, “I’ve always believed in living from the inside out.”

What happens when you have found something you enjoy doing, say writing, and you are over fifty. Maybe you’ve been writing for years, but you need new ways to keep going, a different vantage point. Maybe you’re ready to follow a dream to write, but question what it is you want to write and what you will do with it, and you wonder if it’s too late. Maybe you just want to keep a journal. Maybe you want to write down some family stories. Or perhaps you’ve always enjoyed poetry, and you want to try your hand at that. Perhaps you have a novel that sits in your drawer, and you realize it’s time to pull out.

If you’re looking for inspiration, support, camaraderie, community, as well as publishing news and opportunities, then here is that place: Turtle House Ink. 

When Carol and I created and published When Last on the Mountain: The View from Writers over 50, we found writers over 50 on a mission to keep writing and to continue to search for ways to send that writing into the world. The anthology, a collection of essays, poems, and stories, was drawn from an outpouring of submissions that filled our mailboxes when we issued a single call in Poets and Writers. We received over 2,000 submissions and from those we chose the eighty selections that appear in the book.

Over the past year since the anthology was published, we have conducted readings and workshops from North Carolina to California, and we have discovered many more wonderful writers over 50 looking for a place to call home. We want to make this website that place. We are starting with a simple site and simple blogs, and we will grow from here.

The blogs will focus on what we see, hear, and read about and by writers over 50. We will include inspiring stories and invite guest bloggers to share their thoughts. You may find writing tips and ideas, as well as news from our subscribers. We will follow the path up the mountain and report as we go!

We invite you to join us on this journey.  Please join our subscriber list and leave your comments and ideas to help guide us along the way. 

We’ll be adding in some turtle images–as our symbol of endurance and longevity. This lady is ready to go!