Susie Isaacs on Passion and Persistence

Susie Isaacs
Queens Can Beat Kings: Broad-Minded Poker for Winning Women
Publisher: Kensington
Pub date: June 2007
Agent: Jessica Faust




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Susie Isaacs is a world-class poker player and the author of 1000 Best Poker Strategies and Secrets (Sourcebooks), MsPoker: I’m Not Bluffing, Books One and Two (Mimi Mc Corporation), Queens Can Beat Kings, and, coming soon, White Night, Black Nights – Poker is Skill, Life is the Gamble.

Author blog: susieisaacs.blogspot.com/

I have written for as long as I can remember. It began when I was so impressed to understand what my daddy wrote every night after dinner in a little brown notepad. It was a daily short journal that allowed him to tell any of us what we as a family had been doing on any given date in any given year. I thought that was neat. I began journaling at age 16. Some years later I thought I had some terrific short stories, so I began submitting to all sorts of publications, and not long after that I began my collection of rejection slips. I honestly thought about wallpapering a bathroom with them.

When I was 42, my kids were grown and in college. My husband and I retired to Las Vegas, where I began a serious study of the game of poker. It was only after I won my first poker tournament that I wrote a story about the experience, titled “A Lady's Not Supposed to Sweat,” and received my first letter of acceptance. I had been writing and submitting for 25 years, and only after I wrote about something that I was passionate about did I get noticed. Thereafter, I became the only female with a regular column in a poker publication.

After ten years of columns, I thought I had enough to say that I could write a book. I did, and guess what, nobody cared! It was only after what I call the “poker renaissance” in 2002 that my writing talent was noticed. Jessica Faust from BookEnds called me to see if I would be interested in writing a book about women in poker. "Are you kidding!" I wanted to shout, "I would be interested in writing a book about anything poker." Since that fateful call, I now have two contracts with Jessica and BookEnds.

The moral of this story is never give up. You never know what lies ahead. In 1972 I wrote what I thought was a wonderful short story about confusing the sexes. It was rejected all over the place. Guess what? This story will be in my upcoming book Queens Can Beat Kings as a lead-in to a chapter titled “Battle of the Sexes!”


If she's not busy winning the World Series of Poker Main Event, Susie will drop in during the day to answer questions.