Author Bio
SCOTT LERETTE is an ordinary man with an extraordinary son. As a sales executive for GE Capital, he's been a consistent top-five producer for the company as long as he's been there. Prior to working at GE Capital, Scott was a top performer with Allergan, a pharmaceutical company selling surgical and pharmaceutical products. Sitting in a cubicle under fluorescent lights would drive him nuts. He is a people person and loves to share life with anyone and everyone.
Before that, Scott was selected as a member of the United States Navy's Aviation Officer Candidate School (AOCS - think An Officer and a Gentleman) where, upon graduation, he received him commission as an officer. He was selected for advanced just training as a radar intercept officer (RIO); his job was to sit in the backseat and tell the pilot where to go and when and where to target bombs. Scott holds a business degree from the University of Oklahoma and is a rabid Oklahoma Sooner fan, especially when his team is playing any team from Texas. His favorite team of all time is the Boston Red Sox.
Scott and his wife, Teresa, have been married for seventeen years. They live in Red Oak, Iowa, where Scott was born and raised, along with Austin (eighteen), and Logan (sixteen), and a number of pets, including Boomer, Austin's tiger rescue cat, and Stella, the French Bulldog. Scott is an acomplished chess player and plays acoustic guitar in a band. He's an avid gamer and loves shooter and adventure games, as well as electronic board games. He's actively involved with his church where he helps organize youth and high school missions and community service projects.
He wrote The Unbreakable Boy to raise awareness of special needs, but his story goes much deeper than that. Scott sees us all as broken, flawed, and imperfect, and he wants to use his speaking and writing to encourage people that embracing "different" is right and sound and good. He challenges us to shed fear and ignorance and know that even if faced with enormous obstacles, decisions, and setbacks, you can come out stronger.
Scott's wife, Teresa, and his son, Austin, both suffer from a genetic bone disorder called osteogenesis imperfecta, or brittle bone disease. Austin has also been diagnosed with autism and has multiple heart defects. Scott started a blog called Austintistic to share some of his stories of life with Austin. "I love life, even with all the chaos," said Scott. "I didn't choose it, but it's mine. So, like Austin, I embrace it and make it mine."
SUSY FLORY is a New York Times best selling author who grew up on the back of a quarter horse in Northern California. She took degrees from UCLA in English and psychology, and has a background in journalism, education, and communications.
She first started writing at the Newhall Signal with the legendary Scotty Newhall, an ex-editor of the San Francisco Chronicle and a one-legged cigar-smoking curmudgeon who ruled the newsroom from behind a dented metal desk where he pounded out stories on an Underwood Typewriter. She taught high school English and journalism, then quit in 2004 to write full time for publications such as Focus on the Family, Guideposts Books, In Touch, Praise & Coffee, Today's Christian, and Today's Christian Woman.
Susy is the author or co-author of seven books, including So Long Status Quo: What I Learned From the Women Who Changed the World, as well as the much-anticipated 2011 memoir she co-wrote with blind 9-11 survivor Michael Hingson, called Thunder Dog: The True Story of a Blind Man, His Guide Dog, and the Triumph of Trust at Ground Zero. Thunder Dog was a runaway bestseller and spent over a dozen weeks on the New York Times bestseller list.
Susy lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with her husband. She has two grown children, a bratty terrier named Sprinkles, and a crazy ex-racehorse named Stetson.
