Literary Legacies: Susan Gooch on Inspiring Readers and Writers

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome to the Living the Dream Podcast with Curveball. If you believe, you can achieve. Welcome to the Live in the Dream with Curveball Podcast. A show where I in a VF motivated and inspired. Today I am joined by the Longtime Educator and authority. Sylvie. Sylvie Lover. And she was a long time educator and spending her time educating her students about her passion for reading and writing. She is the author of the Carrington series. So we're going to be talking to her about her books and everything that she's up to and gonna be up to. So Susie, thank you for joining me.

SPEAKER_01 0:57

Thank you so much, Curtis, for having me. I I always welcome the opportunity to talk about books and my students and um reading and the world of reading.

SPEAKER_00 1:07

Why don't you start off by telling everybody a little bit about yourself?

SPEAKER_01 1:10

I would love to do that. I am from Cersei, Arkansas. Um I am married to my high school sweetheart. I met on a blind date when I was 16. We've been married almost 40 years. We have three grown children and four granddaughters. And um we are very lucky in that all of our children, my parents, his mother recently passed, but she was here. They all moved to our little town in Arkansas, and they all live right here because we have a wonderful quality of life here in Cersei, Arkansas, and it's such a great place to live and grow up that I actually set both of all three of my books here in Cersei. Um, now I'm not a native Arkansan and I moved here the first time in 1998 from London, England, but I just fell in love with the city and I I love my little community. Um, and I just wanted to be able to set my stories here because I've set my life here. Um I got into teaching in 2002. Um, I did not go to school to become an educator. Uh, my undergraduate degree was in English and um had every intention of going to law school, but that did not work out. Instead, I went to labor delivery and I had a baby. And so I became a full-time mom. And when we moved here in 1998, my son at that point was um seven years old, and it was very clear that he was having severe learning problems. Um, and no one seemed to know how to teach him, and so I didn't want to just homeschool him and without him being taught by a certified teacher. So I certified. So if I ever had to homeschool him, I could. And in doing so, I found my calling in life. I absolutely love to be in the classroom. I love sharing my passion for reading and writing with students and ended up getting master's degrees in reading, administration, and gifted and talented, and um spent about eight years as well as administration and in our district level. Um, but my heart has always been in the classroom. And I just think that um reading and education are such a gift that we give to our students in this country, and it's just we're so blessed. Um, the best thing you can give a student is the opportunity to learn and and the belief that they can learn, and um that's something I'm very passionate about.

SPEAKER_00 3:40

Well, that's amazing how you moved from England and lost the accent and you picked up the uh southern accent.

SPEAKER_01 3:46

Oh no, no. I I have always been a southern girl. I'm originally from Tennessee, but my husband I thought you said something about England. I did. We moved here from London, England because uh for for about 12 years there, we moved every two years to my husband's job. He was building a career, and I was taking care of the children. And um he one of our postings was in Europe and we moved to London and we lived there, and so uh we lived in Dallas, uh, we lived in Memphis, so we we moved quite a bit, but I am a southern girl at heart, and um, I noticed you picked up on my accent. I don't think I have an accent, but um people tell me that I do.

SPEAKER_00 4:25

The reason I picked up from it, I'm originally from Louisiana.

SPEAKER_01 4:28

Oh, okay, awesome. We lived in Louisiana for a while, a little town called Bastra. I don't know if you ever heard of it.

SPEAKER_00 4:34

That's north, northeast. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 4:35

North, up there by Alexandria, yeah. Yeah. Monroe.

SPEAKER_00 4:38

Yeah, I was in uh from the southwest part Dorita, Louisiana, down by Lake Charles.

SPEAKER_01 4:45

Beautiful country, fabulous food.

SPEAKER_00 4:47

Absolutely. So so let's talk about how you got into um being a writer and becoming an author.

SPEAKER_01 4:54

Okay. So I I told you that my undergrad degree was in writing, and um probably should back up even just a little bit in the story. Um, I'm dyslexic, and so I struggled to learn to read. Um, I loved math, I loved history, but but reading was just really hard for me because I was dyslexic. And I was very lucky because my mother is a 40-year educator, she's retired, but she was a reading specialist, and um she was did basically for me what I had planned to do for my child if I needed to. She taught me to read, and she wouldn't let me stop until I was a very good, strong reader. She taught me to make movies in my head, to see, to make connections, to ask questions. All of these things that we've learned through research are reading strategies. She was really on the cutting edge of that in the early 80s and um and in the late 70s and helped me to really learn to be a really um fantastic reader. Um, I I can read about a 350-page book in about two, two and a half hours, um, and really understand it and comprehend it really high. And that was really from practice and learning. So we know the brain can be retrained with dyslexia. We know that those things can happen. And um, but having said all that, I I never saw myself as a teacher. I just didn't. I saw myself being a writer. And um, even from a pretty early age, I just loved books so much. Um, my first few books, I don't think I've ever told anybody this in an interview. My first three books, um, I just wrote for myself. They're still in a box. Um, these were stories that were just in my head and I wrote down for myself. So this is the Carrington Affairs, which was published in March of 24, was the first one to ever get across the line. Um, and to get to a point where like, okay, I'm ready to share with this with the world. Um, because you know, when you when you're a writer or any kind of artisan really, it's like walking naked down Main Street. You're sharing, you're bearing your soul to the world when you share your art with people. And it's a scary thing. It's a very scary thing because you, you know, you you you're no one puts bad art out there on purpose. And if someone finds fault with it, so I was very hesitant to to share it. But I had a friend and um she had read some of my stuff and she said, C'est you've got to do something with this. And I had another so some other friends that just kept saying, Your writing's good, you need to do it. And I think that was that was support really helped me to do that. But writing has always been important to me and teaching kids to write. I mean, I spent 15 years teaching students to write essays and stories, um, because I think that everybody has a story, and when you can put your words out there, it's a way of being seen. And isn't that what we all want in the world to be seen, to be heard?

SPEAKER_00 7:47

Absolutely. Well, uh talk about your love for gravitating towards strong women characters.

SPEAKER_01 7:54

Oh, I do love strong women. Um, you know, I am from a long line of strong southern women, and um one of the things about um a strong woman is a strong woman knows how to bend without breaking. And I think that was something my grandmother taught me, my mother has taught me over the years. Um, and my characters are that way. Um, both of them are very strong. Um, that doesn't mean they're without fault. Uh, but a strong woman can learn from her mistakes and she can do better. And you know, like my Angelou's idea, do the best you can until you know better and they do better. That's a strong woman because a weak woman will never admit she was wrong. And so once we accept we're flawed people, but we can be better. Then the strength really becomes in your characters, and that's what I strive to show in all my characters is that while they're flawed, their desire to be better people is where their strength comes from.

SPEAKER_00 8:58

Team Taylor or Team Poppy.

SPEAKER_01 9:01

Oh, that's a great question. You know, I wanted everybody to um to see that perception is reality and reality, reality is not necessarily your perception. I mean, it's not really always the way you think it is. We think our perception um is reality. But when you read the book the first time, like you first, the first part where you read Taylor's story, you're all on Team Taylor. How awful Poppy was to do this, and how could she have an affair with another with a you know someone's husband and do all these things? Well, then you when you read Poppy's story, you go, wait a minute, maybe I didn't have all the facts there. Wait a minute, maybe I look at this the wrong way. And then, and I hear that so much from my readers to say, I was all on Team Taylor, and now I'm kind of don't know. I'm I'm I think they were both right. And that was the goal of this book was that all around us, people are in major conflicts inside our country, uh, with other countries, um, within families, people are in conflict, but it's not until you slow down, you listen to the other side, you open yourself up to their perspective, and then you can communicate, and then you can build a basis to understand each other and build a relationship, and that is when life can change. That is when the world becomes a better place. And so for me, I want my readers to walk away going, they were both right, they were both wrong, but they both made an effort to to acknowledge and respect the other person. Because I think that's so important. That is a huge part of what's probably missing in society right now is our willingness to accept others and to listen to their side and acknowledge they have some truth.

SPEAKER_00 10:53

What talk to the listeners about the Carrington series? Tell us what we can expect when we read it and why you decided to write it and where we can get it.

SPEAKER_01 11:01

Okay, those are all good things to tell you. I'd love to tell you about that. So the Carrington story, it's just um, they're just people that sort of popped up into my head, and uh sort of they this is how my characters do. They they show up in my head and they start talking to me and they tell me their whole story. And I never write anything until I know the whole story. So the Carrington, uh, it starts out. I I knew Bennett Carrington, and I knew that Bennett Carrington um is being vetted for the vice presidency. He's this junior senator from Arkansas, and that is very true because, like, even right now on my street, you can go four houses over, and I live next door to one of the former governors. Um, so we, our small town, we have a lot of politicians, and we have a really great way of life. My house actually backs to the country club, so a lot of the book happens in the country club because we have a really great way of life here in Cersei. And um, you know, he's he's being vetted for the vice presidency. He's married to the perfect uh society wife who looks the right way and dresses the right way and says all the right things from the right family. Um, but he doesn't really, he loves her, but he's never been in love with her. And then he finds out that the woman he was in love with, really in love with, he has a love child he didn't know anything about. And that sort of blows this whole thing up. Um, and he resigns in disgrace. And then 12 years later, in order to run for governor and have a chance to rebuild his career, he has to get Poppy and Taylor to both tell their stories. And one thing that I include in my book, it's it's a lot of it, we call it the book about dirty little secrets. Because if you live in a small town, one of the currencies in small towns is secrets. And I'll keep your secret if you keep mine. Um, and that is very true, even today, because everybody knows each other and we all know each other's business. And uh, if you're a part of this community and we care about you, we're gonna keep your secrets and you're gonna keep our secrets. And so that's what's happened in this book. They've kept each other's secrets, but they've realized that in order for Bennett to reclaim his career, they've got to tell the secrets. And so they each one tell their story in a way that allows them to um have, and I call it spin it. They spin their story and they share it so that the world will understand and forgive. So that's that's kind of their story, how they each tell their stories. In the second book, The Non-Negotiable, the love child that Ben and Poppy had, his name is Ben, and he is 22, and he falls in love with a genius mensa-level IQ girl that he meets in Napa, California. And they fall in love and he ends up bringing her to Cersei, Arkansas. Now she has this whole goal of being a um uh running a gold star winery and being all about sustainability, and he wants to be in and work in Napa. He wants to live in Cersei, Arkansas, and in Little Rock, Arkansas, and be a politician here. So, how are they gonna work that out? How do you how do you love somebody and love their dream and honor their dream when it's not yours? How do you build a life that way? And it's all about compromise, and and that's uh, and all of these are set here, you know, in Cersei. And uh the reason that was so important for me to write the second book and tell that story was uh when my little 82-year-old mama read the first book, The Carrington Affairs, and it is about people that are getting divorced. I've said I've told you that. My old mama said, Well, could you have not written a book about people that stay married? And I said, I'll work on that, mama. So in the second book, it's like, what does it take to stay married? Where do you learn that even because love is what we need, but but out of love comes compromise. And how do you find that compromise in a marriage or in relationships? So the non-negotiable is about compromise. And then the third book is called The Dirty Birds Book Club, and it's currently um in at the editors, it's finished, and it wraps the story up, and it's it tells the story of the of uh Edna Stone, the matriarch in this in the Saudi, her the story of her secret five husbands, and and she gets to tell her secrets. So it really is about how in small towns secrets um are important, but also community is important and strong, the same idea you mentioned earlier, strong women that maybe you're flawed, but find a way to be better and to help their community and help each other.

SPEAKER_00 15:31

We'll talk about some of your biggest influences when when it comes to uh writers, you know, uh who influences you to do what you do?

SPEAKER_01 15:39

Oh gosh, that's a good question, too. You know, I mentioned that I didn't really learn to read till I was, you know, older because my mom was working with me. And the first book I really remember sticking with me and and and to this day still cuts me to the core is Charles Dickens Tele Two Cities, when the the character is gnawing on his hand because he's so hungry. And from there, you know, I really I I loved the classics John Steinbeck, uh Faulkner, um, Hemingway. Um, I was I was blessed to get to read all those books all the way through high school and college as an English major. And so though I have a really strong background in that. And then as I got older and I just read for pleasure, I have read, you know, everything from Daniel Steele to um John Grisham to Sandra Brown to Jan Green to um oh uh Abby Genomez. Uh I mean you just keep going. Like I read all the time, JJ Miller for for legal thrillers. Um, I love Jewel Ann, Jewel E. Ann, who writes romance. I like to read all of them. And I even like nonfiction. I read I read that as well, especially uh how to become that better person that I want to be and I want my characters to be. And so I think all of those influence me. Even if I'm not, even if it's not a genre that I particularly love, I will enjoy reading it because even if I don't like what they do, then I know what I don't want in my writing. Does that make sense?

SPEAKER_00 17:08

So yeah, that makes perfect sense.

SPEAKER_01 17:10

Pretty much anything I read is in a sense um influencing it. And I didn't tell you earlier, you can find these books either at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, anywhere good books are sold. Um, but definitely on Amazon they have them. And um please, I I, you know, I if you're interested in strong women, these are this is a good place to start um to look at those. I one of my, I'm just now kind of getting into, I don't know if you like murder mysteries. I've never really been a big murder person. Um, and one of my friends locally, I found a he wrote books about murder, and they're fantastic. So it's kind of changed my perspective. So really everything I read influences me.

SPEAKER_00 17:52

All right. Well, tell us about any upcoming projects that you're working on that listeners need to be aware of.

SPEAKER_01 17:58

Okay. Well, I mentioned earlier that I just I have finished the um and sent to the editor the Dirty Birds Book Club. And in that book, they read five novels. Now, obviously, I'm not gonna write a novel for each one of those, but I am working on a series of short stories that go with that, and they're they're based off of the short stories um you would read along with the other book so that you would know what the book club was reading. So the first one is called Tarnished, and they read about they read the novel Tarnished, and then you could read the short story tarnished. The other one, the next one's called The Reckoning. Um, and so you can read those will be going along with it. And um, because I I book clubs are a big part of my life. I'm in five, and um I don't think there's for me, uh I absolutely love, I don't think there's anything I enjoy more than sitting around and discussing with other whip smart young women and men and of all ages, really, about literature. Because liter good writing never has sell by day, it just doesn't. And when you get someone that can be from totally different backgrounds, totally for different beliefs, maybe not even have even like each other, but you read something and you start talking about it and you find a connection through time and space to connect with that human condition, then suddenly you now find someone that you can share a connection with, and it will begin to change your perspective of that person. And and in doing so, because remember I mentioned about earlier about reality and perception, the way we interpret literature is so based on our story, our own stories. And we because we filter it through that. So when we sit and talk about it, we whether we realize it or not, we begin to share our own stories. And really that is when the connection happens. So that's partly why book clubs are so important for me. I see that I see it almost as free therapy for people. And you know, we have a joking thing, but you know, what happens at book club stays at book club. Because sometimes if you're reading something, you may share something you don't want shared outside that room. And so there again, there there's that currency of secrets I think women have a lot of as well.

SPEAKER_00 20:11

Well, so people can keep up with everything that you're up to to throw out your contact info.

SPEAKER_01 20:16

That's true. Okay. Um, I am Susan Gooch, the author on Instagram, and I do at least twice a month, sometimes more, a little spill that's called Y'all Have to Read This. And I throw out really good books that I think are at least four or five-star books that I've been reading. Um, I'm on Facebook. I have Susangooch.com, which you can also order books from me there. Um, and I am um on Goodreads. I I review books there as well. And on Amazon, I reserve have them on there as my reader page and my author page. So um those are all good places to find me. Susie uh Susie, Susangooch.com. I don't know why that's so hard to say.

SPEAKER_00 20:58

We'll close this out with some final thoughts, maybe if that was something I forgot to talk about that you would like to touch on. Any final thoughts you have for the listeners?

SPEAKER_01 21:06

Um, you know, I think what I would say to a listener is um I some people say to me sometimes, you know, I'm just not a reader. I don't like to read, or I don't have time to read. And um, I truly think that everybody in some way or another is a reader. You may be a reader that listens to books, you may be a reader who um only reads workbooks, like work, you know, material for your job, you may only read nonfiction, you may only read religious things, but you're a reader. I I want people to know that reading is not just novels. Yes, I write novels, but I want people to just read because when research tells us when we read, we grow our brains, and we grow our brains, we're we're growing ourselves as people. And you know, if you feel like that you Aren't a good reader, it's probably because you haven't found your book yet, you haven't found your genre yet. And um, but even more important, you know, keep looking for that. But if you have children, please don't ever say, Well, he doesn't like to read, or she doesn't like to read because I don't like to read, because you give them permission to not have to do that, and that'd be like saying, you don't have to eat healthy, you don't have to exercise, you don't have to drink water, um, you don't have to take your medicine. You would never tell your child that. Well, reading to me really grows your brain. And it it gives, it opens the door to education to so many people that wouldn't have gotten it otherwise. And I just think that's so important. And so, as an educator for me, that's that's a big thing is to get parents to understand that um, you know, don't make reading and and I and I always hated it when I would have uh colleagues that would like assign reading homework and then the kids were like, Oh, I've got to read. You know, I don't, I don't, I hate it when reading is seen that way. I would rather reading be something of joy. And so, you know, if I had a student that really, and if you're a listener out there and you're going, yeah, she's talking to me. My kid hates reading, like they hate it, and I hated it and I don't want to do it, and he doesn't want to do it, or she doesn't want to do it, and I don't want to make them, you know, I only get a few hours with them, I don't want to do that. So, one of the best pieces of advice I feel like I could have given to those people, and I still do it today. You need to read something, you need to change the attitude around reading. I don't care if if you buy a joke book for each other and you teach each read each other a joke a day and make each other laugh and enjoy it and build some positive feelings around reading, read one joke a day, because then you read something that you didn't hate reading. Or if they only like um a certain sport, maybe they only like to uh go rollerblading or playing video games or whatever it is they like and they only want to, you know, get something to read about that and just read a little bit. If it's a paragraph, if it's two paragraphs, whatever you can do that's enjoyable, and then talk about it. But if they if they begin to associate reading with pleasure and enjoyment and time-building relationships, it will change the world for them. And I really believe that as a literacy teacher. So that would be a piece of advice to any reader or listeners you have out there that don't communicate the negative feelings, find a way to communicate the positive feelings that reading can bring.com.

SPEAKER_00 24:35

But like she said, get out there and read something, no matter how big or small it is. Just read, you know, pick up her books, follow rate with you, share this episode to as many people as possible. Susan really has a passion when it comes to reading and writing. And you can uh read my newsletter. You know, if you haven't signed up, go to www.curveball337.com. Get that short newsletter that comes out every week, and uh share that with somebody and share the website and the show to everybody you know. Leave us a review or any suggestions that you might have for the show. Thank you for listening and supporting the show. And Susan, thank you for all that you do, and thank you for joining me.

SPEAKER_01 25:22

Thank you for having me. I've enjoyed it, and I'm gonna I'm looking forward to reading your newsletter.

SPEAKER_00 25:27

For more information on the Living the Dream with Curveball Podcast, visit www.curveball337.com. Until next time, keep living the dream.