Susan Helene Gottfried - West of Mars
Susan crushed The Mixtape Manifesto—she was awesome. I wish we had found each other years earlier. With more than 25 years of editing experience under her belt, and more importantly an irrational love for rock n’ roll, she was the perfect person to work on this book. Not only was she witty, fun, and I smirked many times at her “red pen in the margin” comments, but she’s good. She found the smallest mistakes that made the biggest difference. Being an author is a lot easier, all smoke and mirrors, when you have someone like her on your side. She makes me a lot better than I really am.
Despite dreams of growing up and being a zoologist and a DEA enforcement agent (hey, she wanted to drive Sonny Crockett’s cars. Can you blame her?), the one thing Susan could never get away from was words. Fictional words, most precisely, and she found herself enrolled in the United States’ oldest creative writing program at the University of Pittsburgh. She’d already been working at a record store for a few years and … her passion for Rock Fiction was born. Her love of editing came soon after, as she took a job at the Pitt News as a copy editor.
In regards to both writing and editing, she hasn’t looked back once, even turning down jobs at record labels (yes, more than one!) in order to pursue her love of the written word.
From Pitt, it was on to the country’s second-highest-ranked graduate school in Bowling Green, Ohio. After that, Susan worked as a non-fiction editor, taking on the occasional fiction project when she missed her red pencil.
Learn more about Susan and her services at her website, West Of Mars.