Author Interview: Shelli Johnson
It’s a an honor to have award winning journalist and fiction writer, Shelli Johnson, take pause from her hectic schedule to speak to me about her career and future projects.
Shelli captured the Hearst National Journalism Award during her time with a major newspaper and with her first novel, took the Grand Prize in the Writer’s Digest International Self Published Book Awards.
With her second novel due out in 2012 and a third two years after, I think it’s safe to say that Shelli’s career as a fiction writer is off to an exemplary start.
First, tell us where we can find you online.
www.shellijohnson.comwww.shellijohnson.com/blogwww.facebook.com/shellijohnsonauthorwww.twitter.com/Shelli_Johnsonwww.goodreads.com/shellijohnsonwww.bookblogs.ning.com/profile/ShelliJohnson
What genres or authors do you enjoy reading?
Genres: I'll read just about anything. Favorite is probably horror. I am a zombie fan (World War Z by Max Brooks = phenomenal zombie novel). But I love literary stuff and fantasy. Anything beautifully written--that would be my favorite, some gorgeous language to go along with a great plot.
Authors: I've been a Stephen King junkie since I was 12. The Book Thief by Markus Zusak is a fantastic book. Any of Michael Crichton's early work, fast but engaging reads. I read Thirteen Reasons Why by Jay Asher not too long ago; that was a stunning book about suicide. That's some guys. So women: I love Geneen Roth, who actually writes non-fiction, but she's fabulous. I'll buy her stuff without even reading what it's about. Anne Lamott's Bird by Bird is probably the best book on writing that I've ever read. Okay, fiction ~ Dorothy Allison's Bastard Out of Carolina, Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird, Alice Walker's The Color Purple.
Tell us a bit about your previous life as a journalist and how you captured the Hearst National Journalism Award.
I worked in the Sports Department of a major metropolitan newspaper for several years. I covered mainly high-school sports but every so often I would help out with some of the majors (golf, baseball). While I like sports ~ I’m a big football fan ~ being a hard-news journalist really wasn’t for me. The award was for a feature story I did for a different section of the newspaper. It was a first-person account about eating disorders ~ since I struggled with that for a long time when I was younger. It ended up being one of the most raw pieces I’ve ever written. It also ended up being the one that received the most reader feedback that section of the paper had ever gotten. Then it won the Hearst Award. The validation was nice as, quite frankly, I’d been terrified to put myself out there like that ~ the paper had a circulation of over a million.
What motivated you to write fiction? Were there any particular authors that influenced you?
I've always loved writing. The earliest memory I have of it is writing a story in the first grade & having it be selected by the teacher to be read to the Kindergarten class. I don't even remember what it was about. But I do remember thinking that writing was all I wanted to do. My favorite part of writing is when I get so caught up in the story that I lose track of time. There's nothing quite like the feeling of that for me; it keeps me coming back. Plus, I love my characters. I actually look forward to sitting down and seeing what they're going to do next.
Stephen King was the biggest influence in pushing me toward being a fiction writer. When I was a kid, my family & I went on vacation up to a cabin in Maine. There was no running water, no electricity ~ “roughing it like the settlers” my dad said. Not great, though, for a 12-year-old girl. Under one of the bunk beds, I found a box full of Stephen King books & I spent those 2 weeks reading his early work, which is absolutely fantastic. I wanted to be able to do what King did ~ make people feel scared, angry, happy, whatever ~ just by telling them a story.
What inspired your first novel, Small as a Mustard Seed (Ten Twenty Seven Books, May 2011)? How did you arrive at the decision to self publish?
I was writing about the main characters ~ sisters ~ for about 4 months, both of them as adult women. The story wasn’t really going anywhere, and then one morning (about 2 a.m.) one of them showed up as a 10-year-old in a barn, scared out of her mind, her father with a gun to his head & threatening to pull the trigger. That scene ended up being the first chapter of the book. Once I got that idea, the rest of the story just came along with it.
I chose to be an independent author early on, mostly because I got a substantial grant to do it. The Weisman Fund (the grant liaison, after reading only the first three chapters, believed in my novel so much that she fought for me to be awarded one of the grants) gave me money to start my own small press. I wanted to learn how to do it, so that’s the choice I made. Afterward, I did the whole query/agent/publisher thing for a while. I got some fantastic feedback ~ "this is a beautiful, beautiful book"; "A real page turner"; I didn't want it to end" ~ and ended up landing a top agent at a BIG New York literary agency. She tried to sell my book, and yet even with all the praise, she couldn’t. The editors ultimately passed. When it didn’t sell, she put it on the shelf & said we’d try again with my next book. Except that my agent didn’t think she could sell the book I was working on ~ the topic about World War II being the problem ~ and so she asked me to write something else. I spent 14 months working on that something else (a novel I wasn’t really passionate about) & about 600 pages of dreck later, I had nothing. The agent & I parted ways. I salvaged about 60 pages, added it to the World War II novel I had wanted to write to begin with, & kept on writing. That finished novel was good enough to get me an artist’s residency at Ragdale. I stayed indie after that because I found that it suited my personality and writing style much better.
Here's a brief description of Small as a Mustard Seed: As a child in 1960′s rural Ohio, Ann Marie Adler finds herself caught between her father, Frank, a veteran who survived the war in Korea but with devastating post-traumatic stress, and her mother, Adele, who is blindsided by the mental illness that accompanied him home. In a series of escalating dangerous episodes, Frank confuses reality with soul-searing memories, believing he’s still a soldier fighting for his life in battle-torn Korea. During the delusions, Ann Marie and her younger sister, Jolene, become the enemy, which leaves them fearing for their lives. Unable to fully protect her daughters, Adele scrambles to keep order while her husband’s threatening and unpredictable outbursts slowly tear the family apart.
And here's an excerpt: http://shellijohnson.com/excerpts/small-as-a-mustard-seed/
What can readers expect from you next?
The book I recently finished will be coming out in 2012. It’s still untitled as of yet. Here’s a brief description: When Rose Harlen struts into PJ’s Tavern in the scorching heat of an Illinois summer looking to cool herself off, she ends up discovering Danny, a charismatic man who alters the trajectory of her life forever. Instead of following her dream of acting on stage, Rose chooses the stability and comfort of marriage. But Danny has a life-changing secret. While Rose’s world careens toward catastrophe, Helena Basinski’s life in Poland radically changes when her husband’s activities in the Resistance trigger their family’s deportation by the Nazis to Buchenwald Concentration Camp. Helena is selected to serve in the camp’s brothel where one of the guards falls obsessively and dangerously in love with her. She survives the war but with memories that are bone deep and forever. Years later, after Rose’s world has been splintered and Helena’s shattered, the two women quietly but forcefully collide.
And you can read an excerpt here: http://shellijohnson.com/excerpts/unpublished-work-in-progress/
Currently, I’m writing my third novel. It’s about World War II from the point of view of a German soldier. I hope to have it out by 2014.
What does Shelli Johnson do when she isn’t writing?
I love reading, which probably goes without saying. I also enjoy cooking in my crock-pot (recipes up on my blog: http://shellijohnson.com/category/crock-pot-recipes/). I’m a runner so I do that three or four times a week. I also have two young boys, and they keep me busy. I'm married, so I hang out with my husband a lot. Plus, I work as a free-lance editor so I’m doing that around everything else.
Shelli captured the Hearst National Journalism Award during her time with a major newspaper and with her first novel, took the Grand Prize in the Writer’s Digest International Self Published Book Awards.
With her second novel due out in 2012 and a third two years after, I think it’s safe to say that Shelli’s career as a fiction writer is off to an exemplary start.
First, tell us where we can find you online.
www.shellijohnson.comwww.shellijohnson.com/blogwww.facebook.com/shellijohnsonauthorwww.twitter.com/Shelli_Johnsonwww.goodreads.com/shellijohnsonwww.bookblogs.ning.com/profile/ShelliJohnson
What genres or authors do you enjoy reading?
Genres: I'll read just about anything. Favorite is probably horror. I am a zombie fan (World War Z by Max Brooks = phenomenal zombie novel). But I love literary stuff and fantasy. Anything beautifully written--that would be my favorite, some gorgeous language to go along with a great plot.
Authors: I've been a Stephen King junkie since I was 12. The Book Thief by Markus Zusak is a fantastic book. Any of Michael Crichton's early work, fast but engaging reads. I read Thirteen Reasons Why by Jay Asher not too long ago; that was a stunning book about suicide. That's some guys. So women: I love Geneen Roth, who actually writes non-fiction, but she's fabulous. I'll buy her stuff without even reading what it's about. Anne Lamott's Bird by Bird is probably the best book on writing that I've ever read. Okay, fiction ~ Dorothy Allison's Bastard Out of Carolina, Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird, Alice Walker's The Color Purple.
Tell us a bit about your previous life as a journalist and how you captured the Hearst National Journalism Award.
I worked in the Sports Department of a major metropolitan newspaper for several years. I covered mainly high-school sports but every so often I would help out with some of the majors (golf, baseball). While I like sports ~ I’m a big football fan ~ being a hard-news journalist really wasn’t for me. The award was for a feature story I did for a different section of the newspaper. It was a first-person account about eating disorders ~ since I struggled with that for a long time when I was younger. It ended up being one of the most raw pieces I’ve ever written. It also ended up being the one that received the most reader feedback that section of the paper had ever gotten. Then it won the Hearst Award. The validation was nice as, quite frankly, I’d been terrified to put myself out there like that ~ the paper had a circulation of over a million.
What motivated you to write fiction? Were there any particular authors that influenced you?
I've always loved writing. The earliest memory I have of it is writing a story in the first grade & having it be selected by the teacher to be read to the Kindergarten class. I don't even remember what it was about. But I do remember thinking that writing was all I wanted to do. My favorite part of writing is when I get so caught up in the story that I lose track of time. There's nothing quite like the feeling of that for me; it keeps me coming back. Plus, I love my characters. I actually look forward to sitting down and seeing what they're going to do next.
Stephen King was the biggest influence in pushing me toward being a fiction writer. When I was a kid, my family & I went on vacation up to a cabin in Maine. There was no running water, no electricity ~ “roughing it like the settlers” my dad said. Not great, though, for a 12-year-old girl. Under one of the bunk beds, I found a box full of Stephen King books & I spent those 2 weeks reading his early work, which is absolutely fantastic. I wanted to be able to do what King did ~ make people feel scared, angry, happy, whatever ~ just by telling them a story.
What inspired your first novel, Small as a Mustard Seed (Ten Twenty Seven Books, May 2011)? How did you arrive at the decision to self publish?
I was writing about the main characters ~ sisters ~ for about 4 months, both of them as adult women. The story wasn’t really going anywhere, and then one morning (about 2 a.m.) one of them showed up as a 10-year-old in a barn, scared out of her mind, her father with a gun to his head & threatening to pull the trigger. That scene ended up being the first chapter of the book. Once I got that idea, the rest of the story just came along with it.
I chose to be an independent author early on, mostly because I got a substantial grant to do it. The Weisman Fund (the grant liaison, after reading only the first three chapters, believed in my novel so much that she fought for me to be awarded one of the grants) gave me money to start my own small press. I wanted to learn how to do it, so that’s the choice I made. Afterward, I did the whole query/agent/publisher thing for a while. I got some fantastic feedback ~ "this is a beautiful, beautiful book"; "A real page turner"; I didn't want it to end" ~ and ended up landing a top agent at a BIG New York literary agency. She tried to sell my book, and yet even with all the praise, she couldn’t. The editors ultimately passed. When it didn’t sell, she put it on the shelf & said we’d try again with my next book. Except that my agent didn’t think she could sell the book I was working on ~ the topic about World War II being the problem ~ and so she asked me to write something else. I spent 14 months working on that something else (a novel I wasn’t really passionate about) & about 600 pages of dreck later, I had nothing. The agent & I parted ways. I salvaged about 60 pages, added it to the World War II novel I had wanted to write to begin with, & kept on writing. That finished novel was good enough to get me an artist’s residency at Ragdale. I stayed indie after that because I found that it suited my personality and writing style much better.
Here's a brief description of Small as a Mustard Seed: As a child in 1960′s rural Ohio, Ann Marie Adler finds herself caught between her father, Frank, a veteran who survived the war in Korea but with devastating post-traumatic stress, and her mother, Adele, who is blindsided by the mental illness that accompanied him home. In a series of escalating dangerous episodes, Frank confuses reality with soul-searing memories, believing he’s still a soldier fighting for his life in battle-torn Korea. During the delusions, Ann Marie and her younger sister, Jolene, become the enemy, which leaves them fearing for their lives. Unable to fully protect her daughters, Adele scrambles to keep order while her husband’s threatening and unpredictable outbursts slowly tear the family apart.
And here's an excerpt: http://shellijohnson.com/excerpts/small-as-a-mustard-seed/
What can readers expect from you next?
The book I recently finished will be coming out in 2012. It’s still untitled as of yet. Here’s a brief description: When Rose Harlen struts into PJ’s Tavern in the scorching heat of an Illinois summer looking to cool herself off, she ends up discovering Danny, a charismatic man who alters the trajectory of her life forever. Instead of following her dream of acting on stage, Rose chooses the stability and comfort of marriage. But Danny has a life-changing secret. While Rose’s world careens toward catastrophe, Helena Basinski’s life in Poland radically changes when her husband’s activities in the Resistance trigger their family’s deportation by the Nazis to Buchenwald Concentration Camp. Helena is selected to serve in the camp’s brothel where one of the guards falls obsessively and dangerously in love with her. She survives the war but with memories that are bone deep and forever. Years later, after Rose’s world has been splintered and Helena’s shattered, the two women quietly but forcefully collide.
And you can read an excerpt here: http://shellijohnson.com/excerpts/unpublished-work-in-progress/
Currently, I’m writing my third novel. It’s about World War II from the point of view of a German soldier. I hope to have it out by 2014.
What does Shelli Johnson do when she isn’t writing?
I love reading, which probably goes without saying. I also enjoy cooking in my crock-pot (recipes up on my blog: http://shellijohnson.com/category/crock-pot-recipes/). I’m a runner so I do that three or four times a week. I also have two young boys, and they keep me busy. I'm married, so I hang out with my husband a lot. Plus, I work as a free-lance editor so I’m doing that around everything else.
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