About… the professional

Susan Marg has a B.A. in social psychology from Cornell University and a M.Sc. in market research from Boston University.  She knows how to ask questions, spot trends, and anticipate fads.  She honed her interest in pop culture  during her years spent in advertising when knowing what was hot and who was in came with the territory.  She grew up in Cleveland, Ohio, and she has a Midwesterner’s easy-going, friendly disposition that even fifteen years living on the East Coast and working in the telecommunications industry couldn’t quell.  Susan now lives in San Diego with her husband, James C. Simmons, who is also a writer/historian.

Perennial Currents/HarperCollins published Susan’s first book, Las Vegas Weddings: A Brief History, Celebrity Gossip, Everything Elvis, and the Complete Chapel Guide.  It is filled with Vegas lore and mixed with Hollywood tales of love and marriage and the subsequent fallout.  It received honorable mention for general non-fiction at the 2008 Hollywood Book Festival.

Cowgirl Jane Press (“Cowgirl Jane” being her childhood nickname) has released Susan’s latest title, Hollywood or Bust: Movie Stars Dish on Following their Dreams, Making it Big, and Surviving in Tinseltown.  Everyone’s favorite actors, whether they play action heroes or drama queens trade quips on what it’s really like to be a part of the scene.  As Susan describes the book, “It’s like overhearing a conversation at Starbucks.”

More recently, Cowgirl Jane Press released Ask Me Anything: A Memoir, a book Susan wrote with Marie Rudisill, better known as “The Fruitcake Lady” from her appearances on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno. It’s all there – from Marie leaving her sweet Alabama hometown to taking a bite of the Big Apple and eventually giving the Big Orange a squeeze. She eventually retired to Florida with her husband to be near their son, yet yearned to return to her true Southern roots.

Susan is currently completing a social history on celebrity divorce, an entertaining look at the break ups of the well-known and unforgettable over the last one hundred years.  The stories of marriages gone bad are woven throughout this wide sweeping narrative and placed within a historical context to show how America has changed from an agricultural to urban society, adjusted to prosperity following World War II, adopted an ever more liberal lifestyle, and witnessed an ever-climbing divorce rate.  The delicious, dirty details of movie stars, models, and moguls marrying and then growing apart with disastrous results fill its pages.

Susan also writes privately commissioned life and family histories, incorporating personal experiences and memories of times past into a moving narrative. If you are interested in undertaking such a project, please write Susan at suemarg@san.rr.com.