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Author Suanne Schafer: The Art of Words.

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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 #1 Amazon Bestseller

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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.

SHORT STORIES & ANTHOLOGIES

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-June 2017 RELEASE-

166 Palms: A Literary Anthology 2017

Edited by James Burnham
Genres: Anthology, Literature & Fiction, Short Stories
Release Date: June 6, 2017
Format: eBook & Paperback
Pages: 114

My short story, “Suite for the Lady in Red,” has been reprinted 166 Palms: A Literary Anthology 2017. 

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.

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-February 2016 RELEASE-

Night Lights: An Anthology of Short Fiction: First Contact, Conspiracy, and Space Opera

Geminid Press, LLC
Genres: Anthology, Literature & Fiction, Genre Fiction, Short Stories
Release Date: February 15, 2016
Format: eBook & Paperback
Pages: 330

The short stories in Night Lights are populated with aliens, high and low technology, spaceships—including one with divine aspirations and one helmed by an otter—humans and not-so-human artificial intelligences, Earth locales, and far-off new worlds.

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…

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-December 2015 RELEASE-

Licked

House of Erotica
Genres: Short Stories, Gay & Lesbian, Literature & Fiction, Erotica
Release Date: December 3, 2015
Format: eBook
Pages: 90

Sit back and enjoy seven lip-smackingly sensual stories of all kinds of oral pleasure. Stories of nostalgia for the taste of a lover, long distance relationships, and revenge. Stories taking in both the distant future and pleasures in the past. Oracles, ranchers and café cooks, all united by their love of using their mouth. And tongue. And fingers, for assistance.

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.

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-August 2016 RELEASE-

Graveyard: A Collective Work

SEZ Publishing
Genres: Anthology, Literature & Fiction, Short Stories
Release Date: August 17, 2016
Format: eBook & Paperback
Pages: 312

My short story, “Morrigan,” the first short story I ever wrote and the first I ever sold, is reprinted in this anthology compiled by SEZ Publishing. It includes “Morrigan” along with short stories and poems about graveyards written by over twenty creative writers.

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-August 2013 RELEASE-

Bette Noir Issue #12

Dark Opus Press
Genres: Literature & Fiction, Short Stories & Anthologies
Release Date: August 21, 2013
Format: eBook & Paperback
Pages: 70

Bête Noire brings you the best in dark fiction, poetry and art. In this issue we bring you Rhonda Parrish, Florence Grey, Enna Limb, R. J. Smuin, Marge Simon, Rish Outfield, J. S. Watts, Suanne Schafer, Bruce Boston, Michael Lizarraga, Elanore Lennor Bennett, John Grey, Robert Laughlin, Amberle L. Husbands and Daniel C. Smith.

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.

-AUTHOR UPDATES & PROJECTS-

The process, the pen, the prose, the publications...
BOOK REVIEW: Blood Hollow by William Kent Krueger

BOOK REVIEW: Blood Hollow by William Kent Krueger

Blood Hollow is the fourth in the now twenty-two volume set of Cork O’Connor private eye mystery series. Here, Krueger handles multiple intersecting plot lines and potential villains with aplomb.  The beautiful, but drunk, daughter of a wealthy townsperson drives away...

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BOOK REVIEW: Black Butterfly by Claudia Jones

BOOK REVIEW: Black Butterfly by Claudia Jones

Black Butterfly is a psychological thriller with paranormal overtones. In it, a young artist, Emily, is avoiding dealing with psychological issues in her past, not even fully opening up to her therapist. She has to prepare for an upcoming exhibition, so when her art...

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BOOK REVIEW: Always and Forever by Lorraine Zago Rosenthal

BOOK REVIEW: Always and Forever by Lorraine Zago Rosenthal

  In Always and Forever, the female protagonist, Suzanne, is a woman pushing thirty who has always loved Jay, but due to pressure from her mother, has never been able to express those feelings and has contented herself with being best buds with him. They both...

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BOOK REVIEW: The Last Road Trip by Jennifer Klepper

BOOK REVIEW: The Last Road Trip by Jennifer Klepper

In The Last Road Trip, Mary Blake Bulloch convinces four of her sorority sisters to redo their college trip which was cut short by a disaster twenty years earlier. Each woman is dealing with her own crisis of some sort—divorce, terminal illness, death of a beloved...

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BOOK REVIEW: In the Great Quiet by Laura Vogt

BOOK REVIEW: In the Great Quiet by Laura Vogt

In the Great Quiet opens with the Oklahoma land rush of 1893. An independent young woman, Minnie Hoopes, plans to stake a claim, hoping for land to call her own. When her claim is challenged by two outlaws, Minnie soon has their blood on her hands. She choses to...

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BOOK REVIEW: Purgatory Ridge by William Kent Krueger

BOOK REVIEW: Purgatory Ridge by William Kent Krueger

When the local lumber company wants to harvest trees from the protected two-hundred-acre expanse of ancient great white pines near the town of Aurora, Minnesota, an environmental extremist, the Eco-Warrior, responds by setting explosives to bring down the mill and...

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BOOK REVIEW: Boundary Waters by William Kent Krueger

BOOK REVIEW: Boundary Waters by William Kent Krueger

In the second novel in the Cork O'Connor series, Boundary Waters, Shiloh, a young woman, retreats to the wilds for a period of self-discovery. Her father, Willie Raye, arrives in Aurora looking for her concerned about her safety with the approaching winter. Ex-sheriff...

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BOOK REVIEW: Iron Lake by William Kent Krueger

I really enjoyed reading William Kent Krueger's stand-alone novel Ordinary Grace and have always intended to read his Cork O’Connor books and have been collecting them to read in order. Some time ago, I started with #18 in the series as it serves as the prequel for...

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BOOK REVIEW: The Portrait by  Emilia Kelly

BOOK REVIEW: The Portrait by Emilia Kelly

Not being overly fond of gothic novels, I rarely read them. Somehow, though, I ended up reading two in close proximity. The first, The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield, is a gem studded with literary references and chock-full of twists and turns and a strong...

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BOOK REVIEW: The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield

BOOK REVIEW: The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield

The Thirteenth Tale is a gothic mystery packed with family secrets and twists that keep the reader guessing. The elderly Vida Winter, the world’s most famous living author, asks an unknown young author, Margaret Lea, to write her biography. Notorious for feeding the...

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New Artsy Bookish Giveaway – With $10 Amazon Gift Card

New Artsy Bookish Giveaway – With $10 Amazon Gift Card

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...

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BOOK REVIEW: Blood Hollow by William Kent Krueger

BOOK REVIEW: Blood Hollow by William Kent Krueger

Blood Hollow is the fourth in the now twenty-two volume set of Cork O’Connor private eye mystery series. Here, Krueger handles multiple intersecting plot lines and potential villains with aplomb.  The beautiful, but drunk, daughter of a wealthy townsperson drives away...

read more
BOOK REVIEW: Black Butterfly by Claudia Jones

BOOK REVIEW: Black Butterfly by Claudia Jones

Black Butterfly is a psychological thriller with paranormal overtones. In it, a young artist, Emily, is avoiding dealing with psychological issues in her past, not even fully opening up to her therapist. She has to prepare for an upcoming exhibition, so when her art...

read more
BOOK REVIEW: Always and Forever by Lorraine Zago Rosenthal

BOOK REVIEW: Always and Forever by Lorraine Zago Rosenthal

  In Always and Forever, the female protagonist, Suzanne, is a woman pushing thirty who has always loved Jay, but due to pressure from her mother, has never been able to express those feelings and has contented herself with being best buds with him. They both...

read more
BOOK REVIEW: The Last Road Trip by Jennifer Klepper

BOOK REVIEW: The Last Road Trip by Jennifer Klepper

In The Last Road Trip, Mary Blake Bulloch convinces four of her sorority sisters to redo their college trip which was cut short by a disaster twenty years earlier. Each woman is dealing with her own crisis of some sort—divorce, terminal illness, death of a beloved...

read more
BOOK REVIEW: In the Great Quiet by Laura Vogt

BOOK REVIEW: In the Great Quiet by Laura Vogt

In the Great Quiet opens with the Oklahoma land rush of 1893. An independent young woman, Minnie Hoopes, plans to stake a claim, hoping for land to call her own. When her claim is challenged by two outlaws, Minnie soon has their blood on her hands. She choses to...

read more
Author Suanne Schafer: The Art of Words.

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