Whether the characters are mysterious aliens, troll-like teenagers, or raging toddlers, Susan Harker Bohnet can write a book about them, leaving her readers laughing and crying out loud. Bohnet’s knack for understanding both people and marketing has helped her turn her writing skills into a lifelong career of penning novels and magazine columns.
After getting her associate’s degree in psychology from Ricks College, now BYU–Idaho, in 1986, Bohnet decided to transfer to BYU Marriott to study human resources. “I wanted to work with people, and I knew the human resources program at BYU was good,” says Bohnet. “It seemed like a good fit to work with people and use those people skills in a business environment.”
Bohnet worked in HR for a brief time and enjoyed presenting to HR departments from various companies; however, everything changed when she and her husband, Randy, had their first child in 1988, the same year she graduated. “I had every intention to enter the HR industry, but when that first little baby came along, I decided I wanted to be a stay-at-home mom,” Bohnet says. “And I always enjoyed writing, so I had that in mind.”
Bohnet started her first novel while studying at Ricks College and taking Shakespeare and other writing electives on the side. Unfortunately, she lost her first novel manuscript amid her busy college years. After graduating from BYU Marriott and with a baby at home, Bohnet took advantage of nap time and spent every moment she could writing. Instead of trying to rewrite the novel she’d lost, Bohnet explored a new type of writing that she now related to: family humor.
In 1994, Bohnet approached Gesundheit, a local magazine in her home town of Claresholm, Alberta, and pitched an idea for a column called “Family Frenzi.” The magazine publishers were immediately interested and started publishing the column.
Inspired by her own life, Bohnet wrote about raising kids. Her columns often included a humorous twist on the struggles and joys of being a mother. She also wrote about husbands and trying to understand the world from a family perspective. Bohnet ended up writing for three different local publications and continues to write the weekly column for the Claresholm Local Press.
While keeping up the “Family Frenzi” column and raising her five children, Bohnet never gave up on her dream to write a novel. After going back and forth with different agents and editors, she finally found a publisher for her first book in 2014. The young-adult novel My Life as a Troll follows the journey of a teenage boy as he gets lost in his video games to avoid the pressures of school, bullying, and girls. “My kids were about that same age, and that’s kind of where my heart was at the time,” she says.
In 2016 Bohnet published another young-adult book, Mosaic, which follows a family of Latter-day Saints; she has two more sequels in the works. She branched out by writing a new novel for adults, Lethal Influence, about an alien society secretly living among humans for thousands of years. The research, writing, and publishing process hasn’t been easy, but Bohnet’s skills from her BYU Marriott education helped enable her to achieve her goals.
“I’ve had to work with publishers and editors in different marketing efforts for the books to consider different needs and wants of the readers,” Bohnet says. “Another thing I learned is how to do research and how to organize myself to study and to write. My newest book, The Viking Time Traveler, has some historical aspects to it, so I’ve had to do quite a bit of research on Vikings and their way of life. Finishing my degree at BYU helped me learn how to stick with something until the end—even when you are literally writing the words ‘The End.’”
