I recently rediscovered an author whose work I read and loved some 25 years or so ago — Susan Isaacs. I’m now on a quest to complete my reading of her fiction oeuvre — three novels to go. Isaacs writes smart, funny novels, often with women protagonists who solve crimes even though it’s not part of their job description.

To make sure I’m on track in reading all her stuff, I’ve visited her Web site a number of times and recently read her bio.

Reading the bio through the eyes of someone who is struggling to craft a better, more storied one for myself, I see Isaacs’s telling of her story as what I aspire to.

And looking at her bio through the lens of the teachings of the recent Get Storied webinars I’ve experienced, I am convinced that Isaacs hits all the notes. She especially tells a story that people can identify as their own. The webinars talked about the two extremes of typical bios — obnoxious self-importance and boring earnestness. Isaacs’s bio projects neither of these traits. It’s humorously self-effacing without being overly modest (like my recent attempt apparently is). For example, she talks about enormous success with her first novel but attributes that success to good luck.

Here’s a snippet of her bio:

I was born in a thatched cottage in the Cotswolds.

Oh, you want the truth. Fine. I was born in Brooklyn and educated at Queens College. After leaving school, I saw one of those ads: BE A COMPUTER PROGRAMMER! Take our aptitude test. Since I had nothing else in mind, I took the test-and flunked. The guy at the employment agency looked at my resume and mumbled, “You wrote for your college paper? Uh, we have an opening at Seventeen magazine.” That’s how I became a writer.

I liked my job, but I found doing advice to the lovelorn and articles like “How to Write a Letter to a Boy” somewhat short of fulfilling. So, first as a volunteer, then for actual money, I wrote political speeches in my spare time. I did less of that when I met a wonderful guy, Elkan Abramowitz, then a federal prosecutor.

We were married and a little more than a year later, we had Andrew (now a corporate lawyer). Three years later, Elizabeth (now a philosopher) was born. I’d left Seventeen to be home with my kids but continued to write speeches and the occasional magazine article. During what free time I had, I read more mysteries than was healthy. Possibly I became demented, but I thought, I can do this.

And that’s how Compromising Positions, a whodunit with a housewife-detectives set on Long Island came about. Talk about good luck: it was chosen the main selection of the Book-of-the-Month Club, auctioned for paperback, sold to the movies, translated into thirty languages, and became a bestseller. I was a little overwhelmed by the success, but since it’s hard to be cool and go to fabulous downtown parties when you’re living in the suburbs with a husband, two kids, two dogs, and a station wagon, I simply wrote another book… and then another and another. About half my works are mysteries, two are in the spy genre, and the rest regular novels. In the horn-tooting department, all my novels have been New York Times bestsellers.

Analyzing the bio based on the five components Michael Margolis taught in the webinars: Isaacs conveys that her natural authority came from writing for her college paper and her early job writing for Seventeen; her expertise came from reading a huge number of mysteries; later in the bio, she talks about other past experience; she mentions her external validators, for example in the last paragraph above, without sounding obnoxiously boastful about them; and she humanizes the heck out of the bio. You really must read the full bio, which Isaacs also writes like a compelling story. She also offers an entertaining FAQ/Q&A.