Hello curious readers. So glad you decided to find out who I might be. Actually, I am a small-town girl who has lived everywhere from a working farm in southern Ohio to three blocks off Via Veneto in Rome. I've raised three boys and they now have children and grandchildren. I'm a marriage and family therapist, a former high school and college teacher, a wanna-be jazz singer, and, I'm not sure why, perhaps because both my dad and my grandma were excellent storytellers, I'm a writer. I LOVE writing fiction. That sense you get when you're really into the story, that feeling that you're just a medium, and it's the characters who are telling you what's going to happen next . . . exhilarating!

My writing began with Heart, published by Bantam in 1982. I was getting divorced and needed to believe in romance and happily ever after. Heart sold over 200,000 copies. Heart 1.5 was written thirty years later when the characters started coming to me in my dreams, telling me what life had been like since Ruth and Tom were reunited at the end of their initial love story.

The next novel, Only Her Naked Courage, contains disturbing images; but, that is part of life as I know it. Life is not sweet and sanitized -- it's real, and sometimes brutally so. And that's what we have to endure, survive, and come back from. That's the journey that Sara lives: she's on her way home from work, and, in a heartbeat, everything she knew and was is changed and challenged. Her new husband surprised even me. Sara disappeared, and I had no idea what he was going to do when left with two little girls. Only Her Naked Courage is a road-map for recovery from trauma.

I write the non-fiction, the Many Faces books, because I want people with PTSD and anxiety to know they are not alone and they are not crazy. Each of these "disorders" is, however, crazy-making, horribly upsetting, debilitating and disruptive. I share the variety of stories in the books in hopes that readers will feel normalized, validated, and less lonely.

Mooring at the Millrace, published earlier this year, is the story of my personal journey through life, dedicated to the ancestors on whose shoulders I stand. I am so clearly aware that we are the recipients of the courage and struggle that preceded us. Then, we become the models, with all our foibles and flaws, for the descendants who follow us. Mooring contains the stories on which I was raised and my own continuing story. I'm passing this legacy on to family, friends, clients and any strangers kind enough to stop and read about the life I have been privileged to live because of the guidance and generosity of others.

The books I've written are available on Amazon, except the original Heart which I usually find at Thrift Books when I need a copy. Hopefully, all the books are waiting for you at your enlightened local library.

I'd be delighted to hear from you! sraustocker@yahoo.com (say "author" in subject line). I also have a blog to share: manyfacesofptsd.wordpress.com Join me there to read the more than #400 posts (a cure for insomnia) or the new one published every Saturday morning.

May peace and kindness flow freely in your life, Susan