Monthly Archives: July 2023

An Interview with Author Connie McNeil

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Connie McNeil, PhD, has worked as a clinical psychologist for over 20 years. In 2022, she published Co-Creating, her debut release which she calls a guide to her “years of experience in teaching individuals to take a hold of their lives, with the guidance of their Higher Power.” Visit Connie on her website at ConnieMcNeil.com and look for her book on Amazon.

Why did you write Co-Creating, and who would benefit from reading it?
I wrote Co-Creating for everyone. As a psychologist I have seen scores of clients who live defeated lives, repeating the same old patterns and mistakes. They solve small problems, quit therapy, but return within a few months with another issue. I think most people miss out on fulfilling dreams that would transform their lives from good to off the charts! I believe it is our birthright to live this type of life as a child of the Divine.

Co-Creating is not a book to tell you anything you do not already know. It is a book to help you remember who you are: a Divine child of the Universe. I believe we are born with everything we need to live our best lives. All of us are blessed with unique gifts and talents and can sense whether a decision “feels” right. Co-Creating is about honoring our Divine self. It is not a book about religion, but of radical love for you and others. This book increases awareness that working with the Creator can create a satisfying, productive, and fulfilling life. One filled with love, joy, peace, health, and wealth.

Tell us about your journey to publication.
This book has been a lifetime in the making. I grew up in a restrictive household with a God that I believed was judgmental and waiting to catch me making a mistake. As a young child, I became afraid of displeasing my family and the Almighty so I started making choices that limited my options. My life became smaller and smaller, and I was increasingly miserable. And then one day I had an “aha” moment when I realized I was creating my own misery. I realized that if I could create a life of misery, I could also create a life of joy.

I found books that opened my heart and mind to a loving, gentle, understanding, and supportive Divine Being who was a far cry from the critical God I grew up with. The truth that was driven home to me time and time again was that my thoughts create my reality and that I am a creative being, responsible for making my life what I wanted.

I dreamed of being an author for over a decade. I made some attempts to write but, honestly, what I wrote wasn’t particularly good. One day I asked a friend to critique an article I wrote, and his review was so negative I threw the article away and shelved the idea of writing. My dream stayed on the shelf for a long time.

About two years ago, the Creator sent people, places, and events into my life that were instrumental in my future success. At the outset, I didn’t know any of the people who would be the ones to help make this book a reality. I still had the desire of being an author even though I was not writing.

Then one day, during a session with a new client, George (who has given me permission to use his name), I started talking about “co-creating with the Creator” which is a phrase I had never used before. After several sessions, George told me that the phrase stayed with him and that I should write a book. I hesitated. The fear of failure and another negative critique kept me from taking a risk. But George kept after me to write and later told me that Spirit had guided him to tell me to write about co-creating. He kept asking me, “Have you started writing yet?” Finally, I told him I had. He then told me he used to be in the publishing business, and he guided me through the publishing process. Also, a client introduced me to a friend who led me to my editor. She had a son who just happened to be an Emmy-winning graphic artist. He and his team did my entire book production.

What makes this book standout in the crowded inspirational/motivational market?
A unique feature of Co-Creating discusses the process of change. We are a product of what we were taught and what we heard growing up. Many times, we were told what we wanted was impossible or impractical. Many were left feeling they were not good enough or never got lucky breaks. These negative messages leave a mark on our self-esteem and our ability to succeed. Unless we change, we are destined to miss out on what we can achieve.

I don’t know that every self-help book discusses the shakeup that can happen in our lives when we go through the process of change. Sometimes problems arise out of nowhere that can bring us to our knees. These are called spiritual storms and are necessary for our growth, prosperity, healing, and creating. These storms can support us in getting rid of clutter in our thinking and in our environment, which could block us from receiving our heart’s desires. These storms bring us out of the old and into the new. Enduring a spiritual storm is not a sign that we are being punished. It is the exact opposite. We are being prepared for a tremendous blessing.

Do you have a favorite quote from Co-Creating that you’d like to share?
I have two quotes: “We only travel two paths. One is the path of love and the other is the path of fear.” and  “We are always creating. It is our nature. We either create what we want or what we do not want.”

Any “oh, wow!” moments while doing research for this book? And what was the most rewarding aspect of putting this project together?
The “oh, wow!” moment for me and most rewarding aspect was realizing the Creator wanted me to go beyond just writing Co-Creating. I was Divinely led to write a workbook that walks through areas that may hold us back from being our best selves. The workbook has space to write what we want to create and exercises that challenge thoughts and behaviors that could be holding us back from bringing our desires to us. The workbook includes opportunities to create affirmations that can replace tired, negative thoughts with empowering ones. We cannot bring our desires to us unless we change our thoughts and behaviors. I was also inspired to create a deck of oracle affirmation cards that provide positive statements that can change your life when you keep your mind on uplifting thoughts. I use these cards every morning in my meditation to give me a powerful positive statement to supercharge my day.

KLWagoner150_2KL Wagoner (writing as Cate Macabe) is the author of This New Mountain: a memoir of AJ Jackson, private investigator, repossessor, and grandmother. Kat has a speculative fiction blog at klwagoner.com and writes about memoir at ThisNewMountain.com.



An Interview with Author Alan E. Diehl

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Dr. Alan E. Diehl is the author of nonfiction investigative books and historical fiction that use his real-life experiences as a pilot, psychologist, investigator, and whistleblower. His newest novel is Armageddon’s Angel: Cuban Missile Crisis Thriller (December 2022). You’ll find Alan on his website at AlanEDiehl.com and his SWW author page.

Armageddon’s Angel is the first volume of the Pandora’s Keys Trilogy. At what point did you realize you had a trilogy versus a series?
The manuscript was intended to be a standalone novel in 2012. But John J. Nance, who had written best-selling books and TV screenplays, felt my project might make a great television series, if it were longer. So, I begin thinking about what could have happened after the protagonist-school teacher stole the Russian missile launch keys during the 1962 crises.

Can you give readers a broader perspective of what your story is about? Characters? Setting?
During the Cuban missile crisis Nick, a Russian major, falls for Maria, a beautiful local school teacher. When the major’s colleagues mistakenly think the Americans are attacking, she steals their missile launch keys. The two lovers, with the help of her student, Elian, hijack an aircraft to escape from the island in a protracted chase scene.

You’ve had a distinguished career as a pilot, design engineer, research psychologist, and investigator. When did you realize you wanted to become a writer?
During a multi-decade career, I produced hundreds of technical papers, magazine articles, and a couple of book chapters. Once I retired, my media contacts suggested I write nonfiction tell-all books about what really happens during civil and military crash investigations, etc. So, I decided to write narrative nonfiction books, revealing insider information and how the system really works and why it sometimes fails with deadly consequences.

On your website you state you were a “whistleblower.” Was there ever a time in your career when you felt threatened by your decision to come forward with controversial information?
Yes. Government officials don’t want the public to know how the system works, or fails. When another scientist and I exposed an FAA top official for lying to Congress, he diverted the sky marshals to harass us. I was soon told to leave Washington immediately, or there would be severe consequences. Fortunately, John Nance had just written a book (Blind Trust) about my success in reducing airliner crashes, and the US Air Force hired me. I was immediately sent undercover to investigate a mysterious Soviet jetliner crash that killed President Machel of The People’s Republic of Mozambique. I was recently informed that a KGB major by the name of Vladimir Putin was also there.

While working for the Air Force, I was assigned by President Clinton to investigate the worst fratricide since Vietnam, where 26 US and allied troops died. The incident was caused by a four-star general (who had ignored one of my important recommendations). When I refused to go along with the Pentagon cover-up, I was immediately threatened, demoted, and reassigned. I then warned that other crashes would occur if my recommendations were ignored. Two years later, 35 people were killed when an Air Force 737 crashed in Croatia, killing Clinton’s secretary of commerce, Ron Brown. When I disclosed why the tragedy happened, the Pentagon established a “blue ribbon panel” headed by the former FAA administrator who I blew the whistle on earlier. Our Deep State works to protect their own interests and control whistleblowers. But a few of us are still willing to speak truth to power and try to educate and entertain the public at the same time.

That’s how the system works, but it gets more interesting. A classmate of mine from the USAF Academy, who became a senior Pentagon insider, informed me that the Secretary of Defense was furious at my exposing problems in his department and that they might go to a federal judge, claiming that I was a national security risk, which would allow them to take my clearance, pension, and job. Fortunately, I had friends in the media, so they never carried out the threat. But I was also told that someday my car might explode. Yeah, being a government whistleblower has interesting moments.

Given your extensive background, are there any parallels in your fiction that mimic your own experiences?
Many! For instance, in Armageddon Angel I discuss how a general briefed me on why the Pentagon-planned attack and invasion of Cuba never occurred. What actually happened was the super-secret plans were being transported from Washington’s Andrews Air Force Base to MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa. But the baggage compartment on the Air Force jet came open and the plans were lost. The officers at MacDill informed the Pentagon that because nobody knew where the plans had ended up, there would be a significant delay in the hastily planned attack. This gave Kennedy time to consider other options. He went with the naval blockade instead, literally preventing World War III. In subsequent decades, I interviewed many officials involved with similar situations, but knowing the government would never allow me to reveal the information in nonfiction books, I tell such stories in novels, but interject my actual role in the story. There used to be a commercial that said, “Is it real or is it Memorex?” Readers will have to figure that out in my “inspired by real events” treatises.

In my first novel, Kidnap Marilyn: The Daring Scheme to Save Her, I also wove my real involvement into the fictional story after I interviewed a J. Edgar Hoover senior staffer who gave me details on how the FBI “monitored” the involvement of Marilyn with the two Kennedys. The novel tells what could and should have happened to this iconic actress if a CIA psychologist had been willing to risk his own life to rescue her. Furthermore, a close acquaintance who worked in Hollywood disclosed her own MeToo situations. That helped me describe such rapes in realistic terms. The use of hypnosis in that novel was also based on my own training in those techniques by the FBI and Pentagon. My involvement with interesting situations is included in my novels, but I wouldn’t dare put such information in nonfiction books.

What sets Armageddon’s Angel apart from other thrillers in today’s market?
Perhaps the most significant difference is that this novel deals with the most dangerous situation in human history. The Cuban missile crisis could very easily have resulted in World War III with hundreds of millions of casualties. While many novels are “inspired by real events,” my fictional thriller includes factual information that I witnessed or discovered from credible sources. It reveals what really happened during that seminal 13-day period. Of course, I spent decades researching information about that critical fortnight and thought the public needed to hear these revelations. In fact, the most dangerous element of the Cuban missile crisis was not the strategic rockets aimed at America, which were under the control of Nikita Khrushchev, but the well-hidden smaller battlefield nuclear weapons that were in the hands of junior Russian officers. How that happened is described in the thriller.

When can readers expect book two in the Pandora’s Keys Trilogy?
The second book in the trilogy will come out early next year and the third in late 2024.

You’ve written investigative books and historical fiction novels. Of the type of books you’ve written, is there one you find more enjoyable to write over the other?
Great question! Marilyn Monroe’s untimely death had always interested me. But the events involved in the Cuban missile crisis were world-changing, so I’d have to say Armageddon’s Angel was probably more important, and therefore enjoyable to write. I want readers and influencers to know what really happens behind the scenes, and I was fortunate enough to witness some of these events.

Who were your early influences, both personal and literary?
Safety advocate Ralph Nader, whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg, President John Kennedy, and ABC News’ John Nance (who helped me master both nonfiction and novel writing).

Is there anything else you’d like readers to know?
Yes, to use an aviation cliché: “Fasten your seatbelts. This is gonna be a bumpy ride.”

Also, readers might want to check out the following:

  • A one-minute video that explains my non-fiction book Air Safety Investigators: Using Science to Save Lives—One Crash at a Time
  • My CNN State of the Union interview.
  • The AP interview about the jet that crashed after flying over the capital in June 2023.

Su Lierz writes dark fiction, short story fiction, and personal essays. Her short story “Twelve Days in April,” written under the pen name Laney Payne, appeared in the 2018 SouthWest Writers Sage Anthology. Su was a finalist in the 2017 and 2018 Albuquerque Museum Authors Festival Writing Contest. She lives in Corrales, New Mexico, with her husband Dennis.



Author Updates: E.P. Rose & Patricia Smith Wood

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E.P. Rose and Patricia Smith Wood are examples of the diverse membership of SouthWest Writers (SWW) who write in several genres and consistently produce excellent work for their readers. These award-winning authors each had one new release within the last year and have more than one interview posted on the SWW website.

Author, sculptor, and poet Elizabeth Rose (writing as E.P. Rose) has published three memoirs, a collection of poems and artwork, and a book of children’s verse. Her latest memoir release is When Cows Wore Shoes (2022) which has been called “a sensitive portrait in words and photos of hardship, poverty, loss, and longing of a time and place lost to history.” Visit Liz’s website at GalisteoLiz.com and her Amazon author page. For more about her work, read her 2015 and 2019 SWW interviews.

What would you like readers to know about the story you tell in When Cows Wore Shoes?
Romanticized maybe, harshly honest, the book describes the final years of a rural way of life during Franco’s reign that we can only dream of today. I’d like readers to think back to a time when man had no use for machines or money, a time when cows really did wear shoes, and people threshed grain on a communal village threshing floor with wooden sledges embedded with knife-sharp flint stones; where the only sounds were the calls of villagers and the sigh of the sledges sliding over the golden grain.

What led to your decision to spend eleven summers in rural Spain?
Stuck in London in the late 1960s, I had nightmares that if I were to suddenly die, my two boys would never know there were choices…other ways, other cultures to explore than chasing material success. The British Way was not the only way. London in July and August was no place for my 4- and 6-year-old boys to spend the long British school holidays. I wanted them to roam free, to have the freedom to develop their imaginations as I had as a child.

Sticking the proverbial pin in a map, we found Ruesga, a small mountain village in northern Spain. No electricity, running water, shops, and no shared language, the village boasted two bars, a church, mountains to explore, and a twenty-mile long lake to go swimming. It took time, but once we began working in the fields beside the villagers, and acquired a little Spanish, finally we were accepted. Embedded with Ruesga’s village people, we discovered the real meaning of wealth, success, and civilized. Through them I learned Small truly is Beautiful. Armed with my Kodak Box Brownie camera, though I had no idea at the time, my photographs captured agricultural methods and tools first recorded in the 3rd millennium BC.

Why did you write this memoir?
Mainly I wrote the book for myself, my boys, and for those of us who question aspects of the world’s modernization. Also, I wanted to remind us there are simpler ways to live. And I wrote the book for posterity. How pompous those words sound. But truth to say, by happy accident, When Cows Wore Shoes does indeed record a slice of rural history that ended with Franco’s death. In 1975, civilization happened. Electricity, plumbing, communication, transport, telephones, tractors, machines, bidets and television, and money, money, money catapulted Ruesga into the twentieth century. The Spain we knew was gone. So it may be that during our final summer in Spain—our village friends, my boys and I—may have witnessed the last threshing sled in use, the last field of wheat scythed by hand, and the last cow wearing shoes. Fields died. Lanes grew over impassable. Carts, sledges, yolks lay unused and rotting. Cows forgot how to work.

Do you have a favorite chapter in the book or did a portion of it affect you more than others as you wrote?
Maybe chapter 17, Juanna’s picnic or chapter 16, Juanna’s birthplace. Both illustrate the plus and minus sides of isolation. Then there’s chapter 18, Ignacio’s chapter, of course. His untimely and unnecessary death. And, and… As I recalled each detail, I relived what I have lost.

How did you go about choosing the title?
When I mentioned my time in Spain when cows wore shoes, people assumed I was joking. Then they became intrigued. That was it, I’d found the hook I’d been looking for.

Tell us how When Cows Wore Shoes came together.
Deciding how to marry factual information and the personal without sounding like a manual or travel book took at least two years to evolve. Thanks to Covid’s gift of time, I was able to edit, edit, and re-edit again and again. Fed up with incompetent and expensive editors, I decided I could edit at least as well as they did. It must have worked somewhat. When Cows Wore Shoes won first place in the Self-Editing category of the 2023 New Mexico Press Women Communications Contest.

A writer friend and I have met for two hours a week now for over ten years. Not to make nicey-nice comments, oh no, our critique of each others’ work is too often harshly to the point. A writer’s master class, we laugh. For example, we might ask…Went? Went? BORING. Did the person skip, slouch? And beautiful? What does the word “beautiful” really bring to mind?

Do you have a message or a theme that recurs in your writing?
Seems I’m drawn to nonfiction. I really enjoy creating something readable without information dumping…thank you SouthWest Writers from whom I learned this lesson, and all I know about the craft of writing.

Is there anything else you would like readers to know?
I’ve nearly finished compiling the short stories I’ve written over the past ten-plus years into a book—The Long and the Short and the Tall. Looking for a common thread to connect the stories, I realized the common thread was me. Each story reflects something that happened, an impression, a reaction I had as an immigrant to America. A separate page records a potted autobiography as an introduction. The short story follows.

Once my book of short stories is formatted and published, I’ll get back to writing the prequel to Poet Under a Soldier’s Hat (20,000 words along) titled A Raj Baby Speaks. Set in India, my autobiography chronicles the not-so-perfect life of a child born into the British Raj.

Also, once a month, I read at the Santa Fe poetry group open mic get-together at Theatro Paraguas. Recently I’ve focused on rewriting a prose story as a prose poem.

Patricia Smith Wood is the author of the Harrie McKinsey Mysteries. After publishing the fourth book in the series, she took a break from that genre to write a historical biography of her mother’s life. In 2022, Aakenbaaken & Kent released Raising Ruby: The Amazing True Story of a Twentieth Century Woman. You’ll find Pat on her website at PatriciaSmithWood.com and on Facebook and Twitter. For more about her work, read her 2015, 2017, and 2020 SWW interviews.

What do you hope readers will take away from Raising Ruby?
I have difficulty with the passage of time. It moves so fast, and I can’t keep up. When I realized the dawn of the 21st Century was now 23 years past, I thought about how many new “adults” had been born since then. I have the impression they don’t know much of what people dealt with in the 20th Century. If I could tell my mother’s story and liberally include the history of her time, perhaps these “new” adults would have a better understanding about older generations.

How much pressure did you feel to get your mother’s story just right?
I don’t think I felt pressure, but I did want her story written so the reader could understand the past. Unless people learn how different life was for their ancestors, they can’t comprehend the struggles, the hard work, and a raft of other issues they lived with. I particularly wanted my audience to know how different life was 100 or even 50 years ago. By telling Ruby’s story and intertwining the history she lived, I hope the reader will give the older generation some slack.

How did the book come together?
I first thought about writing her story within a year of her death. It took me another year to get serious about it and start writing. It took me about three years to get it done (what with researching historical events and editing). Aakenbaaken & Kent, the publisher for my mysteries, said they would like to publish Raising Ruby.

Tell us about Ruby, her flaws and strengths, and why readers will connect with her.
When you read her story, I think you’ll be impressed with her ability (at a young age) to stand up for herself. She never minded working hard, and she had definite ideas about how she wanted to live her life. She saw a vision for herself that her siblings and most of her other relatives didn’t understand. She taught herself how to do a lot of things, and she was never afraid of trying something new. Even as a child, Ruby knew what she wanted. That can be good or bad, depending on the situation. She grew up with a step-father who wasn’t kind and seemed to resent her. Her emancipation came early on, and she went out on her own. These were her strengths. Some of her flaws were fairly petty: impatience, trying to take on too many projects, and often being too critical of people who didn’t live up to her standards.

This historical biography is a departure from your Harrie McKinsey Mystery series. When did you know you wanted to write your mother’s story, and what prompted the push to begin the project when you did?
That’s a really good question! After finishing Murder at the Petroglyphs, I couldn’t come up with a story for the next book. That’s when I thought about doing a book about my mom and about the history she lived through. I had lots of stories she told me over the years. I also found a box of spiral notebooks. After she, my dad, and my little brother moved away from Albuquerque, she always kept a notebook on the kitchen counter by the telephone. She made notes to herself and my dad and brother. Soon, my brother and my dad did the same thing. I found a box of notebooks and spent hours reading. I found dates for events throughout the late 1960s and up until the late 1990s. It helped me be accurate about many of the things I wrote about.

Was there anything surprising you discovered while doing research for this book?
I was surprised when I kept discovering more and more things to write about. I really had to pick and choose because we did not want a 300-page book to publish with the cost of printing these days!

What writing projects are you working on now?
I’m sort of torn. I feel a need to get another mystery out there, but I still haven’t found the exact mysterious element. So, I’m thinking of writing a book about my father’s side of the family. It’s still only an idea, and I might decide it’s too much to handle after going down that road with Ruby. We’ll have to wait and see where my muse takes me!

KLWagoner150_2KL Wagoner (writing as Cate Macabe) is the author of This New Mountain: a memoir of AJ Jackson, private investigator, repossessor, and grandmother. Kat has a speculative fiction blog at klwagoner.com and writes about memoir at ThisNewMountain.com.



An Interview with Author Regina Griego

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Regina Griego was born and raised in New Mexico, and her Hispanic roots go back four hundred years. She holds a PhD, MS, and BS in Electrical and Computer Engineering and an MS in Computer Science. After retiring from a distinguished career as an engineer, Regina is now a coach, a speaker, and an author. She is also an active member of organizations that support gun safety and juvenile justice. In 2022, she published the award-winning memoir Sins of the System: Trauma, Guns, Tragedy, and the Betrayal of Our Children. Look for Regina on her website at Transcending-Futures.com, on Facebook, and her Amazon author page. Sins of the System is also available at Barnes & Noble.

Would you please give readers an overview of Sins of the System?
In January 2013, my fifteen-year-old nephew shot and killed his father (my brother), mother, and three siblings. I became my nephew’s guardian and stood by him through seven years of legal drama. In this memoir, I recount my extremely difficult and personal story that affected my large extended family and entire community. My memoir elucidates the generational trauma that led to the tragedy. It is set in the rich cultural background of New Mexico. I and others acted out of courage and conviction as well as love, compassion, and hope. Since I am a Systems Engineer, I discuss the failure of not only the Juvenile Justice System, but many other systems that undergird families and society including gun safety. This memoir is intended to be both a warning and a call to action for families, communities, and our nation.

This is a weighty topic. Did you find writing Sins of the System cathartic in helping you and your family begin the healing process?
Cathartic is one way of looking at it. I had three reasons for writing my memoir. First, it was a descanso for me. A descanso is a traditional way of putting something to rest in the Hispanic culture, usually when a loved one dies. Descansar means to rest. You see descansos on roads throughout New Mexico and other places where there is a cross or other markers with flowers and other decorations. This was my way of pinning the burden of the story to the page. The second reason was to write my truth about what happened. The media distorted and simplified what happened into a good guy/bad guy scenario and it was a hard story for me to explain to people in a brief conversation. Third, I wanted to use it as a case study for how these kinds of tragedies happen. I highlight the generational trauma and all the systems that failed to create a perfect storm. Nobody is shielded from this type of tragedy. My family’s tragedy has made me an activist for gun safety and juvenile justice.

If you ever felt you were revealing too much about you or your family’s circumstances, how did you transcend this?
I did feel like I was being very vulnerable with my sharing. Very few of my colleagues knew of my upbringing and other details I put in the memoir, including my spiritual practices, so to out myself was a big deal. I knew family members might be unhappy about it for various reasons. My goals for writing the memoir outweighed the apprehension. I did a lot of prayer, talked to the angels and ancestors that were with me the whole way. I changed names to mask people’s identities to provide a bit of anonymity. I also circulated the manuscript to those closest to me.

This tragedy provoked a lot of media attention in 2013. Can you tell readers how that impacted your family and what measures you took to move forward?
The media coverage on television was terrible in those months after our family tragedy. The coverage during the legal proceedings drove a wedge in our family that was once united. The Albuquerque Journal did an okay job. It made things extremely difficult for us as we dealt with the aftermath of the tragedy and our own grieving. I discuss it in a chapter in the book. They seemed to be a constant menacing presence that we tried to avoid. In the beginning my brother worked hard to change the narrative they were spreading about my nephew and we were moderately successful. After a while we avoided the media because they seemed to want to tell their own story, the story the District Attorney was pushing, which was a disservice to our family and to justice.

What do you see as the biggest obstacles in initiating and making legislative changes in New Mexico’s gun laws?
We just did a big push for gun-sense laws in the 2023 legislature and we were modestly successful. A child-access law passed, which makes gun owners responsible if a child takes the gun from an unsecured home. I lobbied and testified for this bill along with the New Mexico Chapter of Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense and Everytown for Gun Safety. The straw-purchase law passed that outlaws people buying guns for someone who can’t buy a gun and we supported that law by testifying in favor and writing the legislators. However, two assault weapons bills (banning and raising the age), a large-capacity magazine bill, and two bills associated with waiting periods did not pass. This was a real shame considering the democrats had a large majority in our legislature and a democratic governor that supports gun-sense laws. Our problem is that New Mexico has a large rural constituency and they like their guns. We’ve normalized the use of assault weapons and high-capacity magazines in our state through gun clubs and shooting ranges, which in my opinion they should not be normalized. I’m an engineer and I know gun companies are working harder to develop even more lethal technology for guns. Instead, they should be selling guns with technology that uses biometrics (like fingerprints) to keep guns out of the hands of those who should not have them (e.g., children and criminals that steal guns). Under no circumstances do we need military weapons on the streets, even if the industry wants to sell them. Some gun owners will say they need them in case a tyrannical government takes over. That’s one of the beliefs my brother had before he was shot and killed with his own weapons.

Books on gun violence flood the market. What makes your memoir unique to this market?
It is a first-hand account of dealing with a mass murder and the aftermath within a family and extended community. I am both a victim of this tragedy, dealing with the grief of losing my five family members, especially my brother, and I took guardianship for the young man (my nephew) who killed them. These tragedies are not black and white. They are an illustration of where we are failing as a community and as a nation. I wanted this to be a gut punch to people who have become numb to how we lose our children. Guns are the number one killer of children in the U.S., which should be a call to action for every adult in our country.

What do you consider the most essential elements of a well-written memoir?
I followed The Writer’s Journey: Mythic Structure for Writers by Christopher Vogler. It teaches how to write a literary memoir based on the Hero’s Journey, which was studied and written about by Joseph Campbell. It gave me a great structure for how to put together the narrative. From there I worked on other elements like themes, dialogue, and character and scene development. Having the structure was the most important thing, it gave me the frame for the picture I was painting.

What writing projects are you working on now?
My next memoir will be about my journey growing up poor but good at math; a Hispanic woman from New Mexico navigating in the male-dominated world of engineering. It will illuminate cultural, gender, and other issues as well as successes and achievements. I hope it will be helpful in promoting STEM.

Has it always been your intention to become a memoirist?
It has been my intention for about 25 years. The two memoirs I have in mind to follow the memoir about my career were the first two I thought about writing years ago. They are on different aspects of growing up in New Mexico and the family and cultural dynamics.

What other authors and memoirs inspired you as you wrote Sins of the System?
The biggest influence was Educated by Tara West. She was so brave in telling her story, which was a hard story and revealed a lot of unflattering things about her family. Her father was not far in character from my brother who died in our family tragedy. From there I was inspired by A Mother’s Reckoning: Living in the Aftermath of Tragedy by Sue Klebold and The Pale-Faced Lie: A True Story by David Crow. Both of these books have themes that resonated with my story, and both took courage to write and reveal difficult truths.

Is there anything else you’d like readers to know?
I give 80 percent of all royalties for the paperback, eBook, and audible to two non-profits, shared equally: Everytown for Gun Safety (everytown.org) and Campaign for the Fair Sentence of Youth (cfsy.org). Also, I received 1st place for Memoir/Biography in the New Mexico Press Women’s contest earlier this year, and I attended the National Federation of Press Women’s (NFPW) Conference in Cincinnati in June 2023, where I received the national award.

Su Lierz writes dark fiction, short story fiction, and personal essays. Her short story “Twelve Days in April,” written under the pen name Laney Payne, appeared in the 2018 SouthWest Writers Sage Anthology. Su was a finalist in the 2017 and 2018 Albuquerque Museum Authors Festival Writing Contest. She lives in Corrales, New Mexico, with her husband Dennis.



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