Introduction

I’ve been graced with a fascinating life. Born in New Mexico, the Land of Enchantment I’ve had astonishing experiences, mystical encounters, known extraordinary people and traveled to remarkable and mysterious places. All these experiences and encounters are threads woven with imagination into stories and essays.

My writing abilities were first recognized by my fifth-grade teacher who announced to the class in dumbfounded astonishment, “Susan can write!” when I turned a what-I-did-over -the-weekend class assignment into a mystery story involving the family cat trapped in the heating ducts. For the daydreaming child who constantly stared out the window, ran with scissors, never followed directions or paid attention, and refused to use the specified crayon to color in the lines, my story was clearly out of character with her expectations.

In my teen years writing was a way to cope with a rough family life and there are actual lines from my journal in my first “novel,” Heart People. As an adult, my career was focused on writing about science and technology. Now, fiction writing is my passion.

Heart People

A story of brave love and resilience.

Brian and Sara—two sixteen-year-olds with seriously messed-up lives. Brian survived—against all odds—experimental surgeries for a congenital heart defect. But for what? He couldn’t do anything. So, he told grandiose lies about himself and his mythical Porsche. But everybody knew he was a fake, a ridiculed outcast. And then there were the scars. He felt like a grotesque freak so he wore long sleeve turtlenecks all the time—except that one time…He may have survived. But survival wasn’t actually living. Until Sara. Secret problem Sara: abusive father, alcoholic mother, and a blue-collar background she hid to fit in with a catty clique of wealthy socialite girls.

Against the backdrop of the turbulent 1960s, Brian and Sara’s unlikely relationship careens along a rocky emotional path as they negotiate the unknown territory of trust, loyalty, friendship and, eventually, love. A raw, unsentimental coming of age story of brave love that demanded courage and created it. Until. Everything changed.

Animal Chronicles

Essays recalling extraordinary, mystical, heartbreaking and humorous experiences of a woman deeply in touch with the natural world: A snake that seemed to teleport out of the desert into a bedroom; an unlikely bird messenger appearing to comfort a grieving family; a dog who had flat-lined inexplicably reviving for a final goodbye; a cat emulating a beaver with nocturnal stick gathering with evil intent; a goose exploding out of a gunny sack, terrorizing toddlers in a car hurtling down the freeway; and a rabbit’s apparent virgin birth. These are just a few of the remarkable stories celebrating the mystery of animals wild and domestic.

Through the Trans-dimensional Portal

It was the boldest, most revolutionary brain/mind/consciousness research ever performed. Research volunteers were advised: “After the injection, you might feel that we overdosed you and you have died.” This ominous statement was part of the volunteer preparation for Rick Strassman’s University of New Mexico School of Medicine study investigating the effects of N,N-dimethyltriptamine (DMT) on humans. DMT, dubbed the “spirit molecule” by Strassman, is arguably the most powerful psychedelic on the planet. But rather than conventional psychedelic “trips” many of the 60 research volunteers reported their consciousness separated from their bodies in a near death experience, or, that they found themselves in unearthly dimensions populated by intelligent beings in what some described as alien encounters.In his book, DMT the Spirit Molecule: A Doctor’s Revolutionary Research into the Biology of Near-Death and Mystical Experiences, Strassman described his research from a medical perspective, including the bizarre and other-worldly experiences of the volunteers. Now, Susan Blumenthal describes what it was like to actually be a volunteer. Not only does she relate her experiences reconstructed from extensive journal entries and transcripts of tape recordings of the sessions, she describes the ongoing beneficial impact being a study participant has had on her life decades later. Forward comments by Dennis McKenna and Rak Razaam.

Santa Fe Ghosts

Find out what pounded up a flight of stairs in a cloud of stench, freezing house plants along its path, and terrifying the resident caretaker of a landmark house on Grant Avenue. Learn why a lost soul at La Residencia spent years communicating its distress until one man understood what it wanted. Encounter strange events at the The Loretto Chapel and its enigma staircase. Dine at the Pink Adobe with a ghost who occasionally serves lemon wedges and levitates tables. Hear police dogs howling as one specific hearse passes with a body that was removed after the bloody Santa Fe prison riot of 1971. Eyewitness accounts intertwine history, spanning from the earliest settlements through contemporary times, with mystery and ghostly events taking place in one of the oldest and most haunted cities in America.

Writer & Storyteller

Introduction

Heart People

A story of brave love and resilience.

Animal Chronicles

Through the Trans-dimensional Portal

Santa Fe Ghosts