Founder & Executive Director, Garden of Neuro Institute Developmental Editor · Writing Coach · Editor-in-Chief · Mystery Writer · Food Critic
Developmental editor & writing coach specializing in mystery, suspense, and commercial fiction. Send me your first 10 pages — I'll send you an honest editorial read. Send your 10 page document to susan@susan-brearley.com.
Specializing in the architecture of the writer's inner life — where craft meets courage, and stories survive their makers.
The Woman Who Wouldn't Nap
Thirty years ago, a doctor told me I was dying.
I was annoyed. I had things to do.
I'm still here — two cancers, three husbands, and 1,200+ published pieces later — building what I've always called the empire. Not because I'm greedy. Because I believe stories are the most durable currency in existence, and I intend to leave behind a vault full of them.
I grew up in Pennsylvania Dutch country, where the food was serious, the winters were biblical, and no one wasted words. My grandparents — the stable ones, the ones who smelled like bread and certainty — taught me that the way you do anything is the way you do everything. I carried that into IBM, where I spent 27 years as a systems engineer and architect. Then I carried it into fiction, food criticism, developmental editing, nonprofit governance, and eventually into a 501(c)(3) literary organization I run from a my home in Hyde Park, New York, overlooking the Hudson River.
The baby who refused to sleep grew up to refuse to settle.
That tracks.
The Infrastructure of Story
I am, at my core, a systems thinker who fell in love with language.
At Garden of Neuro Institute, I run the publishing imprint, serve as Editor-in-Chief of 12 Medium publications — including MuddyUm (humor), Valley Currents (Hudson Valley food and culture), Garden Lit, and Entropy — and coach writers through intensive craft programs rooted in the serious study of commercial fiction masters: King, Flynn, Child, Coben, Christie, Iles.
My approach is IBM-rigorous and kitchen-table warm. I believe in the architecture of a story the way I believe in the architecture of a building. If the load-bearing walls aren't sound, the beautiful windows don't matter.
As a food critic with a byline for Chronogram Magazine, I bring the same precision to a plate of hand-pulled pasta that I bring to a plot twist: every element earns its place, or it goes.
The Contemplative at the Desk
I am a practicing Buddhist. My editorial framework — the Four Gates of Right Speech — asks four questions before anything goes to print:
Is it true? Is it kind? Is it necessary? Is it the right time?
This also happens to be excellent advice for fiction writers who want to avoid adverbs.
I run The Contemplative Memoirist, a 12-week cohort for writers who have survived something worth saying. I run Write Like Stephen King for writers who want to write prolifically and dangerously and well. I run Mystery Writers Cohort for people building something that will outlast them.
I am a Pushcart-nominated writer. I read 200 books a year. I am working on a mystery series that I intend to sell to Netflix before I turn 80.
I plan to live to 140.
I have the schedule to prove I mean it.
What I Write
My fiction lives in the territory between dark comedy and genuine dread — what I call grandmother noir—morally complex protagonists, humor deployed as tension-release, plots that earn every twist.
My current mystery series opens with The Brass Horse, set in Berks County, PA Dutch country, featuring a protagonist with my grandmother's stubbornness and considerably better instincts.
My essays appear across Medium, where I write about craft, survival, food, Buddhism, and the particular comedy of building an empire at an age when most people are merely consolidating and liquidating.
The Philosophy
I believe in voice, agency and leadership skills, all of which deserve mentorship.
Build With Me
Garden of Neuro Institute publishes literary anthologies and emerging writers. Open submissions run April–August annually via Submittable.
If you are a writer who is serious — not just about finishing, but about building something that lasts —let's talk.
"The adult finally learned what the infant who wouldn't nap was born knowing: it's impossible to sleep through life when you're already pulsing inside of eternity."
Yours in craft and stubbornness, Susan Brearley 🖊️
Quote me— The writer who stops learning has stopped writing. Dark humor is not the opposite of emotional truth — it is emotional truth, wearing sensible shoes. Every story is a survival guide in disguise. Voice doesn't develop in isolation. It develops in conversation. Excellence is not a destination. It's a practice. Like meditation. Like bread.
