Simply 'born a writer'

 

“Every reader re-creates a novel - in their own imagination, anyway. It's only entirely the writer's when nobody else has read it.” – Susan Hill

 

Born in Scarborough, England on Feb. 5, 1942 Hill is the award-winning author of dozens of “mostly ghost stories.” Among her works are The Woman in Black, The Mist in the Mirror, and I'm the King of the Castle, for which she received the Somerset Maugham Award – a really cool award that can only be used for foreign travel to do more research for your writing.  She has won numerous prestigious literary awards and in 2020 was named Dame Commander of the (Order of the) British Empire (DBE) in recognition of her services to and impact on English literature.  

 

Hill's novels are written in a descriptive gothic style, relying on suspense and atmosphere to create impact.  In 2005 she had the wonderful idea of creating a series of crime novels featuring detective Simon Serrailler, beginning with The Various Haunts of Men.  Subsequently, she has written 14 of these terrific crime mysteries with an infused “chill” factor, the most recent being A Change of Circumstance.

 

Saying that she thought she must have been born a writer, she has authored 32 novels, 10 nonfiction books, 6 short story collections, 13 children’s books and 5 plays.

 

 “I was never really good at anything else,” she said of her writing skills.  “I had no other option.  I could write; I wanted to write; I wrote.  Otherwise, I was unemployable.”