We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Suzanne Baginskie a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Suzanne, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. We’d love to hear the story of how you went from this being just an idea to making it into something real.

For a total of thirty years, I was employed at a law office as a paralegal/office manager and sat in front of a computer typing legal documents all day. In my spare time, I also volunteered for nine years at the Sheriff Office in town, where I became the Corporate Secretary, and I helped out with several of their six-week Citizen Academies. My whole life has revolved around a fascinating career focused on law, crime and justice. As an avid reader, and a lover of mystery, suspense and romance books, I spent lots of my free time at my local library. My first nudge to write came early on. Around the age of eight, my mother presented me with a five-year diary for my birthday, and it sparked the writer in me. In my teens, I wrote some poetry, then a few short stories which I never shared with anyone. From there I dabbled in writing short fiction and non-fiction stories for market callouts, ones that paid or didn’t. I attended some writing conferences and listened to some famous authors and met other writers who chosen the same path. After several rejections, I made my first sale and received a $25.00 check for a non-fiction story about my father’s Siamese cat that appeared in Cat Magazine. From there I decided to only write for sales, and I chose the field of mystery and romance markets for anthologies and magazines. For a few years, I sold many short fiction and non-fiction stories. With that in my background, I applied for a side job at the local college to teach writing courses to seniors in my community. Along the way, my real goal became to sell a book series with only my name on it. I took a chance and wrote my first novel, Dangerous Charade, submitted it and I received a five-book contract for my FBI Affairs Series. After the third book came out, I realized I needed help to sell the actual novels to increase my sales. So, I started signing up for vendor and craft shows in the community and beyond to help get my name out as an author. Thus, my vendor business was launched.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

As an author, I’m in the industry of entertaining people that really enjoy reading novels. Of course, they have to have a taste for my brand of thrillers with mystery, suspense and a bit of romance titled The FBI Affairs Series. I tend to write strong FBI Special female agents that work alongside their counterpart, usually a macho, FBI Special male agent. They are employed at the FBI Bureau in the Cybercrime, Human Trafficking and Homicide Division. My agents face danger up close and personal when they sign on for a covert mission. Their close undercover contract has them do whatever is necessary to survive along the way. They aren’t allowed to explore a relationship, per their signed FBI contract as it could harm their mission. Tense, fast and addictive, my books can be read as a series or as a standalone. There are no recurring characters to follow. I am traditionally published with D.S. Productions. Four of my books are set in Florida, Dangerous Triangle-Tampa, Dangerous Undercurrents-Miami and goes on a cruise ship, Dangerous Innocence-Daytona Beach, and Dangerous Charade-Crystal Springs/Orlando area. Dangerous Revenge is set in Allentown, Pennsylvania. I use the town settings and tend to research them so I can add in the culture and city highlights to make the area more realistic. Plus, the weather in Florida plays an important role in four of my books.

Is there mission driving your creative journey?

My particular goal will be familiar to all the other authors out there. All of us want to succeed in our creative journey and sell our books and have them reach number 1 on Amazon. But the immense competition makes it really hard. Several new books come out on the market daily. Big named authors who have already made it also battle with strong competition. So, a lowly, new author already starts on the bottom. But I am a positive person, an optimist actually, and naturally driven, I will pursue my goal to make my books stand out among the many others already out there. I started selling at craft and other vendor shows and gave myself a goal to sell 500 books. I recently made that goal, and I’m now on the way to selling 500 more.
Social media is a good way to help advertise my series. I get the word out as to where I will be selling and autographing the series.

Have you ever had to pivot?

After I retired from my long career at the law firm and my husband retired too, we took a few cruises. And I finally wrote my first book. It took a year to complete, and when I felt ready, I sent it out to a couple of publishers. Then Covid-19 happened.!! As we all know, lots of things changed during those Covid years. People were stuck in their homes, and that’s what helped get my author career off the ground. One of the publishers I submitted too contacted me and offered me a five-book contract. I happily accepted it. Something good came out of Covid for me. I was busy writing and establishing my career as the world took a pause. In the end, it all worked out for the start of my new career.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.suzannebaginskie.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/sbaginskie
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/sbaginskie
• Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/sbaginskie

Image Credits

N.A.