Once upon a time ...

... on a starry night in Lafayette, Louisiana, USA, a few months before she was born, Susan Woldenberg’s mother, Irene Violet, sat on the front porch craving ice cream and staring at the stars. Hence Susan’s sweet tooth and middle name: Starr.

After spending her later childhood in Southern California and working in television in Hollywood, Susan travelled to India where fate stepped in and introduced her to future husband Colin Butler.

and along the way ...

For the past 16 years, Susan and Colin have lived in Campbell Town, Tasmania. They founded the Benevolent Organisation for Development, Health & Insight (BODHI) in 1989. Its goal is to improve health, education and the environment in developing countries by providing a hook, not a fish. BODHI is the only fully tax-deductible, international development organisation they know of founded in and operating from Tasmania. It is also fully tax-deductible in the United States.

Colin is now an epidemiologist and Visiting Research Fellow at the National Centre for Epidemiology and Population Health at Australian National University in Canberra. He specialises in the effects of global ecosystem change on human well-being.

In the meantime, Susan completed a degree in history and has written short stories (published in Australia, the US and Britain) and local history: Stories of Campbell Town and True Tales of the Roaring 40s.

Keeping her ears open at dinner parties with Colin's colleagues, Susan gathered enough medical tidbits for two volumes of medical stories. She took great liberties with the truth. As Somerset Maugham said, Fact is a poor story-teller. Secrets from the Black Bag was published in December 2005 by Royal College of General Practitioners Publications in the UK. The second volume has nearly reached the first-draft stage.

More Stories of Campbell Town followed. Along the way came Midlands Morsels and Heritage Highway Cookery, honouring the unsung cooks who keep the whole show on the road. The cookbooks feature recipes, photos and anecdotes from the 1800s to the current day.

The present

Susan is looking for a publisher for her detective novel Just Add Nauseam, Death at the Dinner Party, set in present-day Tasmania. If interested, please contact the author or her North American literary agent Pat Poland, Writers' Ink/Media, 514 Northwood Dr, Conroe, TX 77303 USA. Phone +1 936-499-4625, email patpoland@yahoo.com.

In the pipeline: that second volume of medical stories and The AFTBACK Chronicles, wherein three stuffed animals — two bears and a Scottish terrier belonging to a young married couple — embark upon Magoo-ish adventures in their efforts to negotiate a bewildering world, all from the safety of the bedroom, with a little help from the Internet.

Where to find Susan Butler's books

You will find information about stockists on the pages relating to each book, or you may order them by contacting the author.