In her spare time, Tina loves to read, hike, camp, bike, garden, take photographs, and spend time with her five grandchildren.
She can be found at tinasusedik.com or follow her blog at tinasusedik.wordpress.com.
GUEST BLOG FROM TINA SUSEDIK:
Authors are often asked where we get our ideas, anyway I do.
For me they come from anywhere and everywhere. The idea for my first book,
“Riding for Love,” came to me when I was taking riding lessons. There I was,
sitting on the top of this huge horse, miles and miles from the ground. The
instructor was showing me how to move my hips to the sway of the horse. Bam –
story idea. What if a man who is petrified of horses (as I was that day), wants
to win back his high school sweetheart who owns a horse ranch. He decides the
best way to get closer to her was to take riding lessons. Throw in some
suspense, and, boom, story.
I think authors also throw in personal experiences in their
stories. So far, each of my books has at least one, or maybe two things that have
actually happened to me. In “Riding for Love,” it was the scene mentioned
above. In “Never With a Rich Man,” a romantic mystery, there is a scene that
was taken from something that happened on my first date with my husband. In my
stories written as Anita Kidesu, I added a few things that my husband and I
experienced. In my book, “A Trail to Love,” there is a scene that, when my
sister read it, she said, “Oh, my gosh, that was so funny. Which brother did
that happen to?”
Here is a snippet of a scene from “Never With a Rich Man”
that was taken from real life. In the story, the couple are at an up-scale
restaurant. In real life, my date and I were at a family restaurant. We were in
college, so money was an issue. It was homecoming and I wore a borrowed dress.
To my surprise, and delight, even after this embarrassing episode, Al asked me
out again, and again, and again. We’ve been married forty-four years! I also
have to admit that the scene that follows the restaurant scene did not happen
in real life. After all, it was our first date!
A
comfortable silence settled around them while the waiter took away empty salad
plates and set their main courses before them, along with fresh, hot bread, and
a variety of condiments to accent their meals. Hogan was about to cut into his
steak when he noticed Cassie finger a bottle of steak sauce the waiter had left
on the table.
“Do you put
steak sauce on roast beef?” he asked.
Cassie gave
him a small smile. “No. It’s just . . .”
“What? You
can tell me.”
“When I was
little my parents would make steak on Saturday nights after Bess and I went to
bed. I’d lie under my blankets feeling warm and secure, listening to the hum of
their voices, smelling the cooking meat. When I couldn’t stand it anymore, I’d
sneak down into the kitchen and watch. My father always knew I was there
because suddenly he would grab me and set me on his lap.”
“What then?”
Hogan asked when Cassie paused obviously reliving pleasant memories.
“Dad would
cut small pieces of steak and feed me.” She fiddled with her napkin. “One of
the things he loved on his meat was steak sauce, but he’d never let Bess and I
have any. He said it would grow hair on our chests, and he didn’t want any of
his daughters looking like orangutans. The funny thing is, for as much steak
sauce as that man used, I seem to remember he had the barest chest of any man I’ve
ever seen. Redheads don’t have hairy bodies.”
Hogan
pointed at her chest with his fork. “I, for one, am glad he wouldn’t allow his
daughters to have steak sauce. I can’t imagine hair all over your lovely chest.”
Her chest turn pink, the blush rising to her neck, then her face. The sight
caused his body to perk up and take notice.
He turned
his attention to slathering butter and sour cream on his baked potato, much
like he would like to slather his tongue over her bare breasts. He wondered if
they also blushed when she was embarrassed. He adjusted his napkin on his lap
as he grew hard. Luckily Cassie wouldn’t see his discomfort beneath the
tablecloth. Painfully, he ignored his crotch and went back to her story.
“Anyway,
after he died when I was twelve, we moved in with my mother’s parents for a
short time,” Cassie continued as she sliced her roast. “I don’t know, it must
have been a man thing or something because my grandpa wouldn’t let us girls
have steak sauce, either.”
It shook
Hogan to hear her father had left when she was so young. Girls needed a father
until they were . . . well, until they were old and gray. If he ever had a
daughter, or son for that matter, he planned on sticking around forever. Hogan
gave Cassie an encouraging smile.
“Go ahead,
have some. I don’t think you’ll start growing hair on your chest at this point
in time.”
Cassie
laughed and picked up the bottle. “I can still hear the
smack of the bottle hitting the palm of Dad’s hand when he shook up the steak
sauce.” She picked up the bottle and jerked it upward.
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