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Formerly A Different Kind of Fire.
Ruby Schmidt has the talent, the drive, even the guts to enroll in art school, leaving behind her childhood home and the beau she always expected to marry. Her life at the Academy seems heavenly at first, but she soon learns that societal norms in the East are as restrictive as those back home in West Texas. Rebelling against the insipid imagery woman are expected to produce, Ruby embraces bohemian life. Her burgeoning sexuality drives her into a life-long love affair with another woman and into the arms of an Italian baron. With the Panic of 1893, the nation spirals into a depression, and Ruby's career takes a similar downward trajectory. After thinking she could have it all, Ruby, now pregnant and broke, returns to Texas rather than join the queues at the neighborhood soup kitchen. She discovers her life back home is as challenging as that in Philadelphia.
Passion & Paint depicts one woman's battle to balance husband, family, career, and ambition. Torn between her childhood sweetheart, her forbidden passion for another woman, the nobleman she had to marry, and becoming a renowned painter, Ruby's choices mold her in ways she could never have foreseen.
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The eBook was FREE at all retailers from April 7th - July 15th, 2024 to commemorate the hundred days of the 1994 Rwandan Genocide. #NeverForget
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"There’s plenty of sharp, suspenseful action to savor here in this impressively poignant, hauntingly realistic, and searingly moving tale. Schafer intensively explores themes of racism, violence, war, and human welfare. Vivid, boldly written, life-affirming historical fiction drawn from the horrors of the Rwandan genocide crisis." —Kirkus Reviews
In response to the worldwide epidemic of genocides and to mark the thirtieth anniversary of the Rwandan Genocide, Suanne Schafer has issued a second edition of Hunting the Devil, revised and with a new Author’s Note. The electronic edition will be free from April 7 through July 15, 2024, the hundred days the 1994 genocide lasted.
When biracial physician Jessica Hemings volunteers for a medical mission in Rwanda, she becomes entrapped in the maelstrom of Rwandan politics and the enmity between Hutu and Tutsi. Her US passport doesn’t afford the security she’d hoped for as her Tutsi-like features plunge her into horrors of the Rwandan Genocide. Dr. Cyprien Gatera, Jess's superior and a Hutu militant, commandeers her clinic, forces her to treat his wounded, and then slaughters her patients and her adopted sons. She escapes and finds refuge at Benaco refugee camp in Tanzania.
There, beset by grief, hatred, and PTSD, Jess vows revenge. With the help of Michel Fournier, a French lawyer-turned-war-correspondent, and Dr. Tom Powell, her ex-lover, she searches for Gatera who has fled Rwanda to escape post-genocide reprisals. When an unknown informant passes information to Jess about her nemesis, she returns to Rwanda, despite warnings from the Belgian Secret Service that Gatera plans to assassinate her. In their final showdown, Jess must decide if revenge is best served cold or not at all.
Part medical procedural, part global political thriller, part vigilante novel, and part fractured romance, Hunting the Devil moves from the dusty washboard roads of Rwanda to an inner-city hospital in America to the Natural History Museum of Belgium to the halls of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda in Arusha, Tanzania as it deftly traces one woman’s journey toward justice.
Edited by James Burnham
Genres: Anthology, Literature & Fiction, Short Stories
Release Date: June 6, 2017
Format: eBook & Paperback
Pages: 114
You’ll enjoy other stories by these authors: James Burnham, Diane Byington, Luanne Castle, Victoria Grant, Kristine Mietzner, Linda Moore, Suanne Schafer, Stacey Swann, Robin Taylor, Wendy Nelson Tokunaga, and Kenton Yee.
James Burnham edited this wide variety of well-written short stories from the students and faculty of Stanford University’s on-line creative writing program.
Geminid Press, LLC
Genres: Anthology, Literature & Fiction, Genre Fiction, Short Stories
Release Date: February 15, 2016
Format: eBook & Paperback
Pages: 330
There’s more too, and in each tale, the characters’ struggles will stretch your imagination and sense of reality, while posing profound questions about morality, society and justice, and raising uncertainties of the unknown and unchecked technological evolution.
With 21 original stories from talented, new authors about extraterrestrials, conspiracies, and space exploration, Night Lights is full of moments that will make you gasp, shudder, laugh, and wonder.
A Note from Suanne: This collection contains my short story, “Suite for the Lady in Red,” which is quite a departure from my usual women’s fiction. An aging impotent spy falls in love with the woman he’s assigned to assassinate—with dramatic and unforeseen results…
House of Erotica
Genres: Short Stories, Gay & Lesbian, Literature & Fiction, Erotica
Release Date: December 3, 2015
Format: eBook
Pages: 90
Edited by Jillian Boyd (Spy Games – Flappers, Jazz and Valentino) Licked is a tribute to the act of oral sex – to the intimacy, trust and the taste of your lover, the scent, the feelings the act invokes in both the giver and receiver. With stories from the likes of Rob Rosen, Jessica Taylor and Dale Cameron Lowry, Licked is a sizzling fictional exploration of some of the many ways oral sex can inspire so much more than just a hot flash of arousal.
Come in. Have a taste.
SEZ Publishing
Genres: Anthology, Literature & Fiction, Short Stories
Release Date: August 17, 2016
Format: eBook & Paperback
Pages: 312
Dark Opus Press
Genres: Literature & Fiction, Short Stories & Anthologies
Release Date: August 21, 2013
Format: eBook & Paperback
Pages: 70
Suanne’s short story, “Morrigan,” a retelling of the headless horseman, appeared in this issue, which you can order on Amazon. Also, you can order back issues of this magazine here.
A Stopover in Venice, per its blurb, should have had everything I enjoy in a novel: a woman rediscovering herself as her marriage winds down; a sojourn in Venice, one of my favorite cities; and art and art history. It ended up being a mixed bag. It was a difficult...
The Seed Keeper is a multi-generational saga told from the points of view of four different women. The primary story is that of Rosalie Iron Wing, who is orphaned young and sent to foster care. There, she meets Gaby Makespeace, forming a friendship that lasts decades....
I enjoyed reading the first in Carol Potenza’s mystery series, String of Lies, and found I liked the second, Echo of Lies, just as much. Potenza writes of strong female protagonists who don’t need to be rescued—my kind of women. The newest protagonist, Francie Cortez,...
Minor Black Figures is an interesting blend of politics, art, and LGBTQI issues. Wyeth, a young Black artist, was raised by a distant White mother and absent Black father. He worries constantly about how people perceive him and his art. He’s having trouble painting...
After her husband’s death, the protagonist of Brenda Barker's Next Chapter, Brenda decides to write the book her spouse, Maynard, always disparaged. She married him, a rodeo cowboy turned construction worker, because he offered stability. Now, he’s dead, their only...
I enjoy reading about art and artists (especially women artists and their struggles for recognition in the male-oriented art world), so I was particularly drawn to this book. The Woman Who Painted the Seasons is the fictional biography of Lena Krassner (who renames...
Knowing that Susan Bernhard has a new book (Westerly) coming out on June 1, 2026, I decided to reread her marvelous debut novel, Winter Loon, before reading the new one. In Winter Loon, Wes Ballott watches his mother die in a frozen lake in Minnesota. After that...
As a physician, I enjoy reading books dealing with medical issues and/or medical ethics, especially if the author gets the "medical stuff" right without too many glaring errors. In Midwives, author Bohjalian does just that. He takes an experienced midwife,...
In Illusion of Truth, the third in the Detective Emily Hunter mystery series, author James L'Etoile continues the story of Emily Hunter as she solves a crime spree that affects her—and someone she loves—directly. One of the things I like best about this series...
The Nickel Boys, a multi-award winning novel (Pulitzer Prize, Kirkus Prize, National Book Award Nominee, etc etc etc), deserves every accolade. It is based on events that occurred in a reform school in Tennessee that for 111 years abused and neglected boys sentenced...
Tom Clavin brings to life another episode in the American Wild West during the late nineteenth century, this time focusing on the Daltons. The Last Outlaws deals with the Dalton gang (later becoming the Doolin-Dalton gang) that cut a reign of terror from Kansas and...
I had so much fun doing a big, beautiful, artsy bookish giveaway haul last month, I've decided to do it again! This time, I'm upping the ante by including a $10 Amazon gift card in one of the prize combos. It's only on for eight days, so enter while you can... Good...
A Stopover in Venice, per its blurb, should have had everything I enjoy in a novel: a woman rediscovering herself as her marriage winds down; a sojourn in Venice, one of my favorite cities; and art and art history. It ended up being a mixed bag. It was a difficult...
The Seed Keeper is a multi-generational saga told from the points of view of four different women. The primary story is that of Rosalie Iron Wing, who is orphaned young and sent to foster care. There, she meets Gaby Makespeace, forming a friendship that lasts decades....
I enjoyed reading the first in Carol Potenza’s mystery series, String of Lies, and found I liked the second, Echo of Lies, just as much. Potenza writes of strong female protagonists who don’t need to be rescued—my kind of women. The newest protagonist, Francie Cortez,...
Minor Black Figures is an interesting blend of politics, art, and LGBTQI issues. Wyeth, a young Black artist, was raised by a distant White mother and absent Black father. He worries constantly about how people perceive him and his art. He’s having trouble painting...
After her husband’s death, the protagonist of Brenda Barker's Next Chapter, Brenda decides to write the book her spouse, Maynard, always disparaged. She married him, a rodeo cowboy turned construction worker, because he offered stability. Now, he’s dead, their only...
I enjoy reading about art and artists (especially women artists and their struggles for recognition in the male-oriented art world), so I was particularly drawn to this book. The Woman Who Painted the Seasons is the fictional biography of Lena Krassner (who renames...
If you love literature, art, photography, exclusive sneek peaks, author giveaways, and things that light up the soul, you will want to sign up for Suanne's low-volume newsletter...
