User:Susan Sloate

Susan Sloate (1957- ) is an American novelist, screenwriter and playwright. She is best known as the co-author (with Kevin Finn) of the 2003 alternate-history novel, FORWARD TO CAMELOT, about the JFK assassination, and the 2013 novel STEALING FIRE. She has also written numerous fiction and non-fiction books for young readers and adults (17 at last count) on topics from pre-teen fashion to biography (Abraham Lincoln, Amelia Earhart, Clara Barton, Ray Charles) to the history of baseball and Alcatraz Island to novels for four girls' series.

Early Influences

Sloate was born in New York City in June 1957 and grew up in New Rochelle, New York, in suburban Westchester County. As a four-year-old in nursery school, she was chosen to appear on CANDID CAMERA, at the time a top-rated Sunday-night television show created and hosted by Allen Funt. The precocious four-year-old impressed both viewers and Allen Funt, who had her on the show several times and later featured her for 20 pages in his 1964 book, CANDID KIDS, about the outstanding children he worked with on the show.

Sloate spent her childhood fascinated by the entertainment world and determined to become an actress. But at the same time, she was constantly writing -- short stories and short poems as a child, graduating to full-length novels and musical plays by her teens. Her first full-length play, KALEIDOSCOPE, was begun at the age of 15 and completed at age 19, in the summer of 1976. She also wrote lyrics and librettos for at least two original musicals. Her mother had spent her post-college career in New York City as an aspiring Broadway singer, and consequently Sloate was exposed to the cream of Broadway musical theater from earliest childhood. She would later use this knowledge in crafting her 2013 novel, STEALING FIRE, a Quarter-Finalist in the 2012 Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award contest.

As a high school senior at New Rochelle High School, she won the prestigious National Council of Teachers of English writing award in 1974, only the second student in 15 years to win the NCTE for her school.

'''Early Career '''

Sloate attended the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, earning a Bachelor of Arts degree in Broadcast Journalism. But her focus remained on the entertainment business. Her first job was assistant to the producer of THE MERV GRIFFIN SHOW in Hollywood and later at entertainment companies like Taft Entertainment, Orion Pictures, New World Pictures and others. At the same time, she wrote television scripts and screenplays, including WALTZING ON WALL STREET (story co-authored with Barry Schneider), which was optioned in 1991, but never made.

In 1988, in addition to writing short pieces about baseball for a baseball card collector's newspaper, she began pursuing writer-for-hire book through New York publishers and over the next 3 years secured eight, including a novel for the BLUE RIBBON series, 3 biographies for the GREAT LIVES series, 2 young-adult romances for the SWEET DREAMS series, a book on pre-teen fashion for the LOOKING GOOD series, and a young-adult book on the lives of famous ballplayers when they were young.

After 12 years in Hollywood, she moved back to New York in 1991. There, she took more writer-for-hire assignments, completing three novels in three months for the GIRL TALK series. It was also in New York that she saw Oliver Stone's film JFK, which inspired her to begin the novel which became FORWARD TO CAMELOT.

In 1993 she moved to Chicago and in 1994 married Chris Halm, a purchasing and logistics specialist. The same year, her one-act play, SWEET NOTHINGS, debuted at the Village Players in Oak Park, with Sloate co-directing.

'''Later Work '''

In 2001, Sloate and her family, which now included two sons, moved to Mount Pleasant, South Carolina, where she continued writing FORWARD TO CAMELOT, in collaboration with Kevin Finn, a New Jersey-based screenwriter and novelist. In November 2003, the 40th anniversary of JFK's death, FORWARD TO CAMELOT was originally published through a POD house, to excellent critical reviews. In April 2004, the novel went to #6 on Amazon's sci-fi/fantasy bestseller list. A few months later, it was optioned by Fast Carrier Pictures, a Hollywood production company, for film or television.

In May 2006, she wrote and co-directed HE SAID, SHE SAID, a one-act play.

In 2006, she also wrote five more books as writer for hire assignments, including 2 entries in the BEACON STREET GIRLS series, a Y/A history of Alcatraz, and two biographies of Ray Charles for two different publishers (one of which, FIND ANOTHER WAY!, won a silver medal at the Children's Moonbeam Awards in 2007).

In 2012, Sloate entered the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award contest with STEALING FIRE, a novel she had begun in Los Angeles in 1983. The novel garnered excellent response from readers and was named a Quarter-Finalist (top 5%).

In November 2009, she appeared on MYSTERYQUEST,a documentary-style show for The History Channel, as an expert on Alcatraz history. She also wrote a children's book on the history of Thanksgiving, titled PARDON THAT TURKEY!, which was published in 2010.

Her self-help novel, REALIZING YOU, co-authored with Ronald Doades, was published in 2013 through CreateSpace.

STEALING FIRE and FORWARD TO CAMELOT: 50th ANNIVERSARY EDITION were published by Drake Valley Press within a few months of each other in late 2013, in time for the 50th anniversary of the JFK assassination.

She has spoken at writers' conventions, schools and publishing events around the country and in 2007 founded the East Cooper Authors Festival, which sought to boost students' interest in reading by putting professional writers in 17 schools in the East Cooper area of South Carolina. The program was enormously successful, reaching more than 8,000 students in one day.

She is currently working on a sequel to FORWARD TO CAMELOT and can be contacted through her website, http://susansloate.com.