“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
Hill, who was born on this date in
1942, is an English author 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. Named for British writer W.
Somerset Maugham, the award is given annually to the best writer or writers
under age 35 whose book has been published in the previous year. Hill won the award in 1971 when she was 29.
An only child she said she was born
to be a writer. “I was never really good
at anything else,” she explained. “I had
no other option. I could write; I wanted
to write; I wrote. Otherwise, I was
unemployable.”
Hill's novels are written in a
descriptive gothic style,
About 10 years ago she had the wonderful
idea of creating a series of crime novels featuring detective Simon Serrailler,
entitled The Various Haunts of Men.
For terrific crime mysteries with an infused “chill” factor, I highly
recommend them.
Hill has won a number of awards for
her works and was honored on a recent birthday by being named a Commander of
the Order of the British Empire (CBE) for services to literature. When asked for her advice to new writers she
simply advised, “Don’t overwrite. Once
you finish a book, just let it go out into the world to seek its fortune.”
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