Home About Suzan St Maur

About Suzan St Maur

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Suze with a retired greyhoundCanadian born Suzan St Maur (a.k.a. “Suze”) was transported to the UK when a child and despite resultant cultural challenges managed to leave British secondary school with a couple of “A” levels and no talent for anything other than writing, so her career options were fairly clear cut.

She attended and graduated from the then-famous Watford Art School advertising writing course and worked in London ad agencies as a copywriter for a few years, before deciding she was far too bolshie to be an employee and so became a freelancer.

While comfortably paying her mortgage and bills her work took off into the areas of business theatre and corporate video, in which disciplines she became the Grandma Moses of corporate script and speechwriting for many years.

Suze also developed useful skills as a conference and video producer, largely in emergencies caused by the actual practitioners’ bunking off through illness, drunkenness, excessive use of recreational substances, etc. It’s amazing how fast you can learn to do a job if the person who should be doing it is in la-la-land and the client expects a top job, right now…

These days Suze concentrates on printed/electronic words. She enjoys consulting, writing, editing for and coaching clients in addition to running her other business interests, writing her own books, blogs and articles, plus giving workshops, radio interviews, etc., on how to make your writing more successful.

It was this work which inspired her to create HowToWriteBetter.net so she could share her experience and skills with an even wider audience.

Suze’s published/contracted books include:

Photos of Suze with pony (“Merrylegs”) and Pony Lover’s Joke Book, by Aaron Wood Photography.

Personal stuff

Suze has lived in the UK since she was a child. Her parents settled near Milton Keynes, Bucks and although Suze lived and worked in London for many years she returned to the Milton Keynes area in the later 1980s. Her dad ran a local newspaper in Milton Keynes and that probably set the wheels turning where her writing is concerned. Her first published effort (in dad’s paper of course!) when she was 15, was the children’s saga of “Whipley and Booley” the hooligan bears.

Suze’s London days were “work hard, play hard” and Fulham, where she lived, will never be quite the same again. While there, for two years she had her own chat and music show on Charing Cross Hospital Radio and enjoyed that thoroughly. She also got involved in politics and helped with communications for one of the major parties at Westminster, as well as standing as a candidate in a London borough council election.

Her son Tom was born in 1992 and after a “gap year” working for a major bank, as of September 2011 attends The Leicester Business School/De Montfort University (UK) reading business management, economics and econometrics. Until recently he was a drummer in various heavy metal rock bands, most of which would rehearse at the family home … noisy but good fun.

Apart from work, Suze is a keen horsewoman and helps at horse shows – specifically, dressage competitions – on weekends. Unable to ride for some years due to health problems (see below) she is now planning a horsey comeback – it’s just a matter of finding a horse that’s quiet enough, strong enough (and possibly foolish enough) to carry her.

In 2003 Suze developed cancer of the bladder which was treated “conservatively” (i.e. with chemotherapy and immunotherapy and only minor surgery) until 2010 when her bladder, along with various other bits and pieces, was removed. She now takes great pride in being able to void her urostomy bag in places far less inconvenient than ladies’ toilets – especially out in the wilds when helping at a horse show…

Not long after nursing her mother, who had terminal cancer, at home for 7 months while still running the business and parenting son Tom on her own, Suze developed a cancer of the breast – unrelated to the bladder cancer. She had a mastectomy in 2005 and underwent chemotherapy which resulted in a number of funny stories about wigs, prostheses and much more which Suze still writes about on her other blog, CancerComicStrip. Currently she is developing a book based on the blog which she hopes to sell and donate some of the proceeds to Macmillan, her favourite UK cancer charity.

These days Suze is Vice Chair of the Milton Keynes Cancer Patient Partnership which consists of volunteers like her, as users of cancer services, working with the healthcare professionals to improve the services delivered locally, regionally and nationally. Suze works on communications as well as peer review, environmental audits, training, and other projects.

Apart from her son and her family in Canada and Belgium (her mother was Belgian, hence Suze speaks French fluently) Suze’s great love is animals – particularly horses (see above), dogs and cats.  She has had various rescued dogs and cats over the years and as many of her friends know, she’s a soft touch for a “hard luck” story! However she did turn down one recent rehoming request – for a rabbit. With two dogs and three hard-hunting cats, its life expectancy would have been less than 10 minutes…