Lawrence and Suella Walsh are freelance writers, writing instructors, and editors.

 

Lawrence is a former chemist who wrote technical procedures for Bayer Corporation, and Suella is a former elementary school teacher. Both studied writing for five summers, taking part in the Short Courses for Professional Writers, under the tutelage of Jack Bichham and Dwight Swain at the University of Oklahoma. They received an A in the novel class for their mystery novel, The Last O’Neil. They also took writing classes at Avila College and were fortunate to learn children’s writing at the hand of Kansas City’s own children’s author, Wilma Yeo.

 

They taught writing classes at Maple Woods College for four years and at Johnson County College for 15 years. The Mid-Continent Library System hired them to instruct classes for the 30 libraries within their system, which they continued for five years. Their book, Creating Fiction That Sells, A Compilation of Published Magazine Articles, was used as the text for their classes.

 

They have done presentations for 20 writers’ conferences and taught more than 50 writing workshops for elementary schools in Kansas and Missouri.

 

They have sold thirteen books, five to the national children’s publisher, Royal Fireworks Publishing, followed by four adult novels and four nonfiction books, all by various publishers. They are the founding editors of Red Herring Mystery Magazine and Kansas City Voices Magazine and for two years they wrote a column, “Writing Mystery Fiction”, for Mystery Forum Magazine. Additionally, they have sold more than 100 short stories and articles to such magazines as Byline, Writers’ Journal, Buffalo Spree, Missouri Magazine, The Friend, Highlights for Children…. Their personal essays appear in Chocolate For A Teen’s Soul published by Simon and Schuster and Sacred Stones published by Adams Media.

 

In 2007 they were nominated for the “Pinnacle Award for Excellence in the Arts” from the Johnson County Library Foundation and in 2013, they were nominated for the “Thorpe Menn Literary Excellence Award” from the American Association of University Women.

 

In 2011, they were commissioned by Goldminds Publishing to be Managing Editors of the Mystery, Ink. imprint of mystery novels. Currently, the sixth book under that imprint is in production, while Lawrence and Suella are editing the seventh.

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