Joanne Renaud, illustrator to the stars (ok, well, illustrator to us), has a question – whatever happened to Sue Wilson.
Have you heard of Sue Wilson, who wrote this great romance novel “Greenwood,” which has an Alan Rickman-esque Sheriff of Nottingham as the hero? Your review for “What a Scoundrel Wants” made me think of it again. The book was originally put up online on the now defunct St. Rose Press (it was an AOL Hometown page, and those were all shut down in October), and was such a hit that NovelBooks Inc decided to publish it in ‘03. But it was available only for a little over a year before NovelBooks died a horrible death in January ‘05, and “Greenwood” vanished into the ether. Luckily I bought an ebook of it before it disappeared, and I’ve been sharing it with friends, who all love it too. I would love to find some way of getting in touch with Sue Wilson, just to say I love her book and to see if she’s still writing, but it seems like she’s dropped off the face of the earth. The old archived St Rose Press page has an email address, and a vaguely written bio, but I’ve emailed her and apparently that email is also defunct.
The story of Robin Hood, only with the Sheriff of Nottingham as the hero? Whoa, dude. Even the Amazon.com page has a review written by the editor from NovelBooks, saying how mesmerizing the story is for the reader. But it seems the book itself is hard to find. Anyone know where Sue Wilson is, and whether she’s writing still?
I don’t have access to the OCLC database at home, but I’d bet money you can get this book through your local library via the Inter-Library Loan service most offer.
To find a library near you plug in your town & zip into the yellow search boxes at:
http://nces.ed.gov/surveys/libraries/librarysearch/
Unfortunately, Kirsten, I did a search in Worldcat for “Greenwood” and it only showed up at one library in the entire United States- in Bellport, NY (and it’s overdue).
Thanks for the amazing work of collecting those links, Laura! I’m glad to see other people are as enthusiastic about this book as I am. I hope Ms. Wilson is all right, and that she reappears one day.
Quivo, I don’t think there are third sections in the book as divided up into booksence and ambur36 urls. Lulabel’s obviously found another source, with whisperslit in the urls. And I’m very glad she did, because the part she linked to seems to be a fairly crucial bit of the story.
I think what the whisperslit site does is divide the chapters into 4 shorter parts instead of 2 longer ones. What I gave as Chapter 24 is, on the whisperslit links Chapter 24 part 1 and part 2, and then my missing Chapter 24 cont would be whisperslit Chapter 24 part 3 and part 4. Lulabel’s identified Chapter 24 part 4 but we’re still missing a bit of Chapter 24, even using her new source of text parts.
I’m glad if anyone’s finding my list helpful, and yes, of course you can do whatever you like with it, Quivo. It’s just a list of links, after all.
I worried about that. What’s the status of the Internet Archive? I suppose it caught all these pages because they were all made freely available by the author, or her publisher, at some time. The archive makes that availability permanent, which presumably isn’t what either the author or her publisher intended, but it’s a well-known fact that once something goes out on the internet, it can difficult to delete all traces of it, precisely because of sites like the Internet Archive. Chapter 24 Part 3 seems to have managed it so far, though!
Okay, standalone page going on my blog here on livejournal, with Laura’s list of links pointing to the story chapters, as well as a quick and dirty instruction set for anyone trying to get hold of the chapters. Anyone having problems finding some of the stories is welcome to comment either here or there—I’m being notified of follow-up comments here in case I can help.
Noemi said on…
12.10.08 at 10:28 PM |
How would I download the whole thing?
Sorry—I lurk here but I just wanted to add in here: the DownThemAll Firefox addon was made for this sort of thing. Just go to quivot’s LJ page and d/l all links with it.
Thanks for all the help finding the rest of chapter thirty! 🙂
This may be a hint off topic, but the BBC has been doing a Robin Hood television series lately. It’s on the whole very underwhelming aside from the Guy of Gisborne character (played by the extremely attractive Richard Armitage) who is the only character with any particular depth or story arc over the two seasons I’ve seen so far, particularly in his pursuit of Marian, and is what makes the show worth watching (and even re-watching, fast forwarding to the good bits). I haven’t read “Greenwood” but I get the feeling the Guy of Gisborne character in the novel may have a lot in common with the BBC version.
Thank you for this conversation, ladies. What a well-deserved accolade for this AMAZING author and lovely, humble individual. As I have said before, Greenwood is one of the finest romances I have ever read. I read it at least three times a year—my copy is creased and worn and comparable to gold.
I was in touch with Sue on and off in the last year via email, and I have forwarded a link to this conversation to her so she can see for herself what the world knows about her talent. I don’t know if she’ll get my email, and I don’t have her permission to forward her address to anyone, but I’m praying she gets the link and will visit this site. As someone who thinks so highly of her, again I thank you for acknowledging her beautiful story.
Best,
Jamie Disterhaupt
Hey Bitchery—I remembered that Jamie knows Sue and passed the link to Jamie. (My memory’s holey, but sometimes it comes through at all the right times, wahoo!)
If Sue’s willing, maybe she could offer Greenwood through SmashWords.com or an equivalent site. After hearing Jamie talk about this book more than a year ago, I know I’d gladly pay for it and support a great author.
spam word: appeared12. Let’s hope Sue appears!
Thank you so much, Katey and Jamie, for letting Sue know about this! I hope too that she gets the link and sees what we’re saying here. I just love her work- her short story, “Twelfthtide,” was wonderful too. Is she still writing? I hope everything is going well for her.
Sara- yes, when I first saw the new BBC Robin Hood, the Guy of Gisborne character reminded me strongly of Sue’s sheriff. Richard Armitage is definitely the best thing about that show.
Chapter 24 continued can, I think, be found at http://web.archive.org/web/20001009041008/members.aol.com/Booksence/Page59.html- Quivo’s livejournal page has the link. It includes the section lulabel ID’d as the last fourth of 24, and has a section before it that makes some degree of sense as the 3rd fourth of the story.