Suzanne Stauffer, author of Fried Chicken Castañeda, is visiting Ascroft, eh? today to tell us a bit about herself.

Welcome, Suzanne. I’ll turn the floor over to you –

Hi, and thanks for stopping by! I’m Suzanne Stauffer, author of the 2025 New Mexico Book Award for Cozy Mystery winner, Fried Chicken Castañeda, a historical cozy culinary mystery set in 1929 Las Vegas, New Mexico. They tell me that readers like to get to know the author behind the book. Honestly, I’m not that interesting, but here goes in more or less chronological order … I’m the oldest of five siblings, born in Salt Lake City, Utah. My father (born on a diary farm in Utah – there have been Stauffers in northern Utah since the 1850s) was in the military, so I grew up all over the country and in Puerto Rico. We made our first move when I was a year old.  I went to eleven different elementary schools! We’d settled down in Utah by the time I started junior high school. My parents divorced then, and, ironically, my mother, who was from Columbus, Ohio, stayed in Utah while the Army sent my father first to Fort Lewis in Seattle then to South Korea. There he married my stepmother, Song Ae, and returned to Kentucky, then retired to Las Vegas, Nevada.

My first job, at 15, was in the public library and I also worked in the college library as a student. I earned a BS in psychology from Weber State College (now University) and spent the next several years in a series of different jobs, as you do with an undergraduate degree in psychology. I ended up back in a library job at a university with a master’s program in Library Science. So … it seemed the logical thing to do. I earned an MLS and worked in New York City until 1996, when I enrolled in UCLA to earn my PhD in Library & Information Science. My area of research is the history of the American public library, which includes women’s history.

I also discovered online chat rooms and websites and met MikeL, the Australian who would become my husband a decade later, on the “Big Valley” fan site. And I started writing fan fiction – it was a necessary break from all of that intense doctoral study! It was free and I could do it on my own schedule. Ultimately, I graduated and a year later, my mother passed away at 70 years old (one year older than I am now). I’m grateful that she lived to attend my doctoral graduation, at least.

It took a couple of years, but I persisted and eventually was offered a position as a tenure-track faculty member at Louisiana State University in 2006. That would become a momentous year! In March, I was offered the job.  In May, I bought my first house. In June, I went to Australia to finally meet this MikeL and came back a month later an engaged woman. In August, I moved, and in December, Mike and I got married at the Riviera Casino (of blessed memory) wedding chapel in Las Vegas, Nevada (where my father and stepmother lived, remember).  Fast forward to 2020 and lockdown. I was still teaching, but not much research or service. After a few months, I was looking for something to do with that time – and decided to start on that cozy mystery I’d always planned to write when I retired. I got a pretty good start and then put it aside when lockdown ended.

In May of 2021, our house flooded (11 inches) and we lived in a friend’s vacant condo for six months while it was being gutted and repaired. I started working on my novel again, as a distraction from the stress of dealing with contractors, FEMA, and the SBA – and the death of our two beloved cats of 14 years. I had finished the novel before the next February, when Mike had heart surgery – so, yes, another memorable year. In June 2022, we adopted our dog-ter, Treme, to fill the hole in our hearts and lives left by our kitties. We also made the decision to retire sooner rather than later, so in 2024, I retired, we sold the house, and we moved to Albuquerque, New Mexico. I also submitted my manuscript to Artemesia Publishing and it was accepted with a release date of May 2025! We keep doing everything all at once! I guess it’s just more efficient that way – if more exhausting.

Hobbies? I used to have hobbies, before I started writing fiction. Gardening, knitting, crocheting, needlework, baking — all of the appropriate cozy hobbies. And travel. That’s one reason we moved to New Mexico — so many National and State Parks and other historic and scenic areas. We’ve visited Canyon de Chelly, Monument Valley, White Sands, Petrified Forest/Painted Desert … and we’ve only just begun.

So, like me, my protagonist, Prudence Bates, is a librarian (they say to write what you know). Unlike me, she’s an only child with a trust fund. That makes it possible for her to quit her job and travel across the country to New Mexico, enchanted by the promises of its natural wonder and fascinating culture and history. I hope you’ll decide to take the trip with her.

Thank you for sharing this with us, Suzanne, and good luck with Fried Chicken Castañeda. Readers can learn more about Suzanne Stauffer by visiting the author’s blog and her Facebook page. You can also follow her on Substack.

The book is available online at the following retailers:

 Publisher     Amazon     B&N       Bookshop.org

About Suzanne Stauffer: After 20 years as a librarian and 20 as a professor of library science and library historian, Suzanne Stauffer has moved on to a third career as a mystery novelist. She currently lives in Albuquerque with her Australian husband and brown and white spotted rat terrier dogter, Treme. Her debut novel,  Fried Chicken Castañeda (Artemesia Publishing, May 2025), won the CIPA EVVY Bronze Medal in Mystery/Crime/Detection and the New Mexico  Book Award for Cozy Mystery.