“Susan Tiss, Red Oak Wood, North Carolina” © 2021 Stu Jenks, 56 inches tall.
Price: $195, shipping included. Simply contact me via my email address at [email protected] or Facebook message me, if you would like to purchase one of my pieces. Payments can be made with Paypal, Venmo or credit card with Square. All pieces are signed with its title, and can be hung from the wall. Love y'all, Stu.
Susan is a major woman-about-town in Tucson, Arizona, even though she's too humble to admit it. She has been involved with Tucson's All Souls Procession since its humble beginnings, being one of the first photographers to document it. She has been a patron of the arts in many ways, from the giving of her time to buying us creative folks' work. She is smart, kind, funny and sweet. Susan has lived through her own life challenges and has come out the other side, still hopeful yet wiser because of it. When I think of the Tucson Art Scene, the late Crane Day first comes to mind, and the second person is Susan Tiss.
Much love, sweetheart. Kiss the dog for me. And thanks for writing the foreword to Step Zero: The Special Illustrated Edition. I just reread your intro and it made me cry. It's a wonderful thing when a friend gets what I'm trying to do.
(Susan's foreword is at the bottom of this post. And you can buy Step Zero, and my other books, wherever you buy your books and ebooks.)
Foreword for The Special Illustrated Edition of Step Zero
Stu is my friend.
You might be thinking that I bought the original release of Step Zero in 2012 because Stu is my friend. You might be thinking that I’m recommending you read it because Stu is my friend. You are not wrong, but, as with the best of things, that isn’t even close to the whole story.
When a friend tells you that they’ve written a novel, you buy the novel because you want to support them, because you care about them, because they are your friend. Then, perhaps, you put that novel on a shelf and have a long debate with yourself about reading it. What if it isn’t good? What if they ask you how you liked it? Wouldn’t it just be better to tell them you haven’t had a chance to read it yet?
The thing is, I’m a reader and a book can’t sit on one of my shelves for long without being read. So, not too many weeks after buying a copy of Step Zero, on a quiet afternoon at home, I opened it up and started to read. Some hours later, the sun was setting, the dog was staring me down demanding a walk, and I was ready to cancel my plans for the rest of the weekend so that I could try to finish the book.
As a kid, I used to spend hours sitting under a tree, or in a big lawn chair, or sprawled on the grass, reading until it was too dark to see. On family road trips my dad would plead with me to put the books away and look at the scenery flying by the car window, but I wanted nothing more than to get lost in the internal scenery I created around a good story. As an adult, I don’t get the opportunity often to do this, but every once in a while, I find a story that is so good that I just have to stop the clocks for a bit and immerse myself in someone else’s world.
Step Zero is that good a story.
It is good because it is rich with deeply believable characters and relationships.
It is good because there is magic in the way Stu writes these people into life.
You can hear their voices in your head: talking, singing, crying, laughing, and telling their own stories.
You can’t help but care about them.
You can’t help but want them to learn and love and live.
You can’t help but want to know what happens next.
Susan K. Tiss
Program Manager,
Knowledge Management
Intuit. Inc.
Tucson Arizona
April, 2015.
#susantiss, #stujenks, #extendedfamilyseries, #stepzero
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