About the Author – Susan Lancaster
Susan was born in Yorkshire, England and now lives on Vancouver Island, Canada. She had plenty of opportunity as a management consultant to hone her writing skills, but a disabling accident in 1996 turned her life upside down. She could no longer travel in her work, so she decided to finally turn to writing. Her first effort was a non-fiction book entitled The Frog Snogger’s Guide and this book helped many people in the UK to solve difficulties in their struggles with people they didn’t like!
Susan Lancaster
On New Year’s day 2000, significant not only because it was the beginning of a new century, but also because it was an ideal date for a new venture, Susan had a crazy but very real dream about an ostrich, capable of wonderful powers and supernatural feats. Susan was haunted by this bird Oscar, as she named the ostrich, who became Kate’s guardian angel in Susan’s first young adult book, The Diamond Talisman, a mystery revolving around the fabulous Mirandah Diamond.
Although Susan had an idyllic childhood with two wonderful parents and sisters, she reached the stage, as all children do, when she questioned the story called ‘life’ and the end of life. What was beyond this earthly domain? She suddenly realized her parents would go before her and what an earth would happen to her then? What was going to happen to the larger world around her – the snippets of news she heard and fully understood caused her to worry over the very future of the planet!
For Susan and her own children, this had been a disturbing realization and suddenly Oscar provided the solution for this eternal bothersome question experienced by a new generation of children, so it became critical for her to write about him. Until they reach the age of maturity when they can make an informed choice, it is important for children to realize that there was someone else, not necessarily human, who is watching over them and providing a sense of comfort to them – as well as being a friend they could turn to when needed.
Throughout her life, Susan was always thinking up stories and situations, some of which she impulsively acted out in reality, but she never committed anything to paper. Therefore, her dream was no surprise to her and at last she felt compelled to commit Oscar ‘that bird’ to paper, feeling and watching his personality and the personalities of his friends become The Diamond Talisman.
The characters she had created continued to fascinate Susan and it wasn’t long before the other two books in the Trilogy followed and The Caves & The Skull and Hell’s Gate became a reality, rather than just a figment of her imagination.
When she is not writing or occasionally giving a presentation on writing, Susan likes to putter around her home in Nanaimo, Canada with her husband Denis and dog, Jessie.
As well as the Trilogy, Susan has written two booklets, 80 Practical Ways to Help you Start a Life Beyond Self-Doubt and A Matter for Consideration which deals with the subject of bad manners and how they affect peoples’ attitudes in every day living. These two booklets and another book, The Frog Snogger’s Guide, are the result of her career as a Life Coach.
Susan is currently working on an adult novel, Nightmare and a non-fiction book about dysfunctionality.
