Suzanne's initial lifetime plan was to marry Tarzan, but moved on to consider becoming an actress, a baseball player, and a Soviet spy. These aspirations came entirely from reading and writing about them rather than from any meaningful training or talent.

In fact, Suzanne was terribly shy as a child and scared to be on stage. When she played baseball, she practiced her ballet positions in the outfield. The whole Soviet spy idea fizzled because, while on the way to job interview with the CIA, she took a detour to browse in a bookstore and completely forgot about the interview. As each of these career plans fell through, it was the love of history, reading, and writing that grew.

Growing up, she wrote letters to Laura Ingalls Wilder, pretending to be her pen pal. She parked herself in front of the television on Saturday mornings to watch "Big Blue Marble." After reading "Dr. Zhivago," she decided to major in Russian History in college. Now she writes historical fiction because it lets her pretend to live in different times and meet everyone she's always wanted to meet. No book about Tarzan has been planned yet though.