Susan Barrett

I was born in 1938 in Plymouth, Devon, UK, and grew up in Tavistock. I worked as an advertising copywriter in London where I met and married Peter Barrett. Very soon we went to live in Greece where we began what has been a lifetime career, painting (Peter) and writing (me). Besides our work as individuals, we have produced a number of children's books. Our favourite collaboration was a book on Greece called Travels with a Wildlife Artist.

My first seven novels were published in hardback and paperback in the UK and the USA over two decades. In the 1990s I lost all interest in fiction. I wanted to know what real, live people were like so I trained and then practised as a counsellor and psychotherapist.

My appetite for making things up returned in the early 2000s. I began writing novels again but this time without success. Fed up with not getting anywhere, I produced my 8th novel 'Making a Difference', with Trafford. The difficulty with self-publishing or print on demand is marketing and distribution. Who is going to buy your book? Who is going to know about it? Nobody much outside your immediate circle.

I came to the conclusion that I wasn't the only writer frustrated and depressed by the situation in publishing. I came up with the idea for a website: writersreadersdirect.com. The aim was to create a place where writers discover new readers and readers discover new writers. I enjoyed setting the site up, but not running it. In 2012 WRD became part of Magus Digital, a larger publishing enterprise, and I turned my attention to converting all my previously published fiction to ebooks. (The print editions still exist in the second-hand market).

My two most recent novels I've produced with Createspace and they are available in paperback as well as ebooks. Also, my last work of non-fiction is now in paperback on Amazon and on Kindle - 'Alive in World War Two, The Cousins' Chronicle commentary and memoir'. It's based on extracts from family newsletters exchanged every month throughout the Second World War. It was a time-consuming and fiendishly fiddly thing to write and produce. …

(Adding to this biography in 2019). Peter and I have produced a memoir of the early years we spent in Greece, discovering if we could paint and write for a living and have a family into the bargain. 'The Garden of the Grandfather, Life in Greece in the 1960s' came out in October 2018, It's available by order on my website, susanbarrettwriter.com. In February 2019 I published my latest novel as an ebook and a paperback with Kindle Direct Publishing. "Greek Gold" is a two-part novel about a father and a daughter, a lifetime apart, discovering the reality behind their personal myths. It's set in the Pindos mountains of north-western Greece.

(Now it's July 2020). "Elfrida Next Door" is my latest novel, published in paperback and as an ebook on KDP. It's getting good reviews, which pleases me.