Marjorie Suddard
Hi. Welcome to my bio. (Please note that I find the very fact that you're reading this extremely weird, but then I, too, have found myself idle and looking for something, anything, to read. My personal nadir is reading everything on the back of a toothpaste tube. Several times.)
I’m Tim’s wife and partner, which means I’m the one he talked into starting a magazine almost 25 years ago. I still can’t fully explain how he did that, but I’m pretty sure it involved his extraordinary sales talent as well as the fact that we were just out of college, so I figured it would look good on my resumé. I was right—it still does. Of course, now I don’t need a resumé, so I guess it wasn’t such a good idea after all.
I don’t do a lot of the public stuff for the magazines, preferring instead to stay closer to home and handle the details of running a publishing company. I do enjoy talking to our readers and advertisers on the phone, but I sound pretty nondescript, so if I’m the one who answers your call, you probably won’t realize I’m one of the owners or seek out a lengthy chat. Since one of my jobs here is to call people and ask them to pay their bills, most people don't really want to talk to me anyway. It works great for phone solicitors selling long distance and office products, though.
Other things I do include a bunch of things you probably never knew went into making magazines, including rewriting and copy editing. Basically, I put in the semicolons. Or take them out. I also help to make sure the stories are in English, and add introductions and endings where the authors mysteriously choose not to. I write some stories as well, though they tell me I'd get to write more if I were more prompt about deadlines.
I also run the business end of the business, which involves a thing called double-entry accounting. This enables me to produce more things called Financial Statements, which the government uses to extract money from me. If you get a check from Motorsport Marketing, I signed it. If you don’t, you call me. And I use my best nondescript voice.
Personally I’m the proud mom of two teenagers, Tommy and Katie, and the owner of a 1963 Corvair Monza Spyder convertible that I love best because my whole family fits in it for top-down, way-cool cruising.
Facts:
- Birthplace: Ashland, Ky.
- Bats: No, but I'm thinking about putting up a birdhouse
- Throws: Only when provoked
- Favorite Authors: Jane Austen, Bill Bryson, Anne Tyler, Willa Cather, Carl Hiassen, those wacky guys and gals at The New Yorker
- Last Book Read: Anywhere But Here
- Favorite Music: Billie Holliday, Nirvana, J.S. Bach
- Favorite Movies: Trading Places, Dr. Zhivago, The Graduate (which gets even better as I get older)
- Favorite TV Shows: American Idol, House Hunters
- Favorite Web Sites: http://epicurious.com (any recipe in the world) and http://theonion.com (funny stuff)
- Favorite Foods: Fried Chicken, Asian, anything you can eat in bed with a book
- Favorite Non-car Activities: Reading, playing with my kids, cooking, gardening
- First Car Owned: 1981 Alfa Romeo Spider Veloce
- Favorite Car Owned: 1963 Corvair Monza Spyder (or it will be when it's done)
- Daily Driver: 2008 BMW 335i