Suanne Schafer
author of A Different Kind of Fire and Hunting the Devil
Suanne Schafer was born in West Texas at the height of the Cold War. Her world travels and pioneer ancestors fuel her writing. A genetic distrust of happily-ever-afters gives rise to strong female protagonists who battle tough environments and intersect with men who might—or might not—love them. A DIFFERENT KIND OF FIRE depicts an early 20th century artist in West Texas while HUNTING THE DEVIL explores the plight of an American physician during the Rwandan genocide. BIRDIE looks at women’s rights in the 19th century through the eyes of a teenager committed to an insane asylum.
Me: How does your love of travel factor into your writing?
Suanne: I’ve traveled enough miles to have circled the globe 2-1/2 times. I love new cultures, new languages, and try to incorporate those into my work, even in my books that are set in the US. In A Different Kind of Fire, the American artist protagonist falls in love with an Italian nobleman, and there are bits of Italian sprinkled through the book. In Hunting the Devil, I have five languages (Kinyarwanda, KiSwahili, French, Dutch and English) —and nine locales (Philadelphia, Brussels, Paris, Tanzania and Rwanda).
Me: How did you come to write about the Rwandan genocide?
Suanne: The seeds of Hunting the Devil, were planted during my teens from reading Tarzan books. Later, I adopted a biracial child. When he was sixteen, we went to Tanzania. A safari was on my bucket list, and he had an Alex Haley-ish desire to connect with his African roots. Though no clear-cut incident occurred, he seemed very uncomfortable. Because he was interracial, he was considered a white person and was treated accordingly. He found this reversal disorienting. I took his racial discomfort and amplified it, then gave it to my protagonist. To push her to her physical and psychological limits, I placed her in the Rwanda genocide.
Me: What books are yours similar to?
Suanne:
A Different Kind of Fire is Lonesome Dove meets The Agony and the Ecstasy.
Hunting the Devil is The Kite Runner meets All the Light We Cannot See.
Me: In what ways did your career as a physician prepare you (or not) for your life as an author?
Suanne: I certainly gained a good knowledge of anatomy and a broad experience with people of all races and their lives and traumas. Also, I can depict a fight scene and connect the dots with what a blow to a certain part of the body would damage. I have trouble toning down the medical aspects into plain English, though, and not being overly clinical when writing sex scenes.
Me: What are you working on now?
Suanne: I’m doing on the final edits of my third book, Thunder and Ash, a contemporary romantic suspense set in the Texas Hill Country. Simultaneously, I’m writing book #4 tentatively titled Birdie, set (like A Different Kind of Fire) in the Gilded Age of American history. It’s about a teenage girl who is confined to an insane asylum because she’s an “uncomfortable” child for her father: she is defiant, refuses to marry the older man he’s chosen for her, and has been influenced by suffragettes and the Free Love movement.
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