Five on a Friday with Kitty Johnson
One perk of being a published author is how many other authors I get to “meet.” We all hear about the big, flashy books by big-name authors, but there are a host of gems that may never cross our paths. I get to see some of those books these days as I help other authors, and I thought I’d use my little platform to feature some stories I’ve really enjoyed.
Today, I’m thrilled to introduce Kitty Johnson, whose book, “Prickly Company,” released just this week.
About the book: Friendships, feuds, romance, and unexpected secrets shake up a small community in this sharply funny and compassionate novel by the author of Five Winters.
Frances Mathews doesn’t get out much since her husband died, but that doesn’t stop her from jump-starting a campaign to create a hedgehog highway in Hilltop Place—feeding stations, holes at the bottoms of gates and fences, and wild garden areas for hibernation. To Frances’s delight, her neighbours are on board. Mostly.
There are Jess and Michael, whose marriage is cracking under the unanticipated strain of a recent adoption. And Ryan, a wounded war reporter struggling to connect with his son after a divorce and forced to return to an exasperating parental fold. Plus, a very forthright single mum new to the neighbourhood and an exceedingly proper couple not about to upend their picture-perfect garden for prickly nuisances.
As relationships—from the romantic to the nerve-racking—form and secrets are unearthed, Hilltop Place is threatened in ways that affect them all…unaware hedgehogs included. What Frances and her charitable neighbours soon discover about themselves and each other is hardly what any of them expected.
Welcome, Kitty! Okay, I just have to ask: Why hedgehogs? I feel like there has to be a story here.
Well, they’re cute! But apart from that, I’ve always been a wildlife enthusiast, and I caught the hedgehog bug from Kirsty and Kate, two hedgehog enthusiasts at my local Women’s Institute (WI) group. They’re always talking about the voluntary work they do to take care of hedgehogs and about the benefits to the creatures of hedgehog highways, where a community works together to make life easier for hedgehogs. I went round to Kirsty’s house to witness what she does first hand and was hooked.
Prickly Company feels so organic to the reader—everything just flows, from one character’s story to the next. Nothing extraneous. It seems effortless, but as a writer, I know better. How much planning and plotting did you have to do? Was it all character work, and then you turned the characters loose on the page?
Well actually, Jess, one of the main characters, was originally intended for another novel, but for whatever reason, that book just didn’t work out and I abandoned it. So Jess existed for a good three years before I had the idea for Prickly Company. Before I start writing, I need to know my characters, though I don’t tend to write pages about them, just think about them in my head. Once I start writing and hear how they sound, they come to life. I also need to know my beginning and ending, and three or four touchstones along the way before I can plunge in. I’m not one of those writers who plans everything to the last detail at all, and, to a certain extent the characters and their circumstances do direct me as I write.
I’m always in awe of characters that seem real. Especially children. Writers so often write kids way too old or way too young, but practically never spot on. (I had young children for over 15 years while I was reading to learn about writing, and it was a constant annoyance.) But each of your characters feels authentic—not one of them misses the mark. How do you accomplish this miracle?
Thank you, that’s kind of you to say! I suppose I’m one of life’s observers – I listen in and store things away. It’s probably also down to life experience – as you get older, you have more of that to draw on!
The initial conflict we meet as readers is that of Jess and her husband, who have secondary infertility and are bringing an adoptive child into their home. You have not been through infertility yourself, so what was it that made you choose this as the primary struggle for one of your central characters?
I’ve always been interested in identity and I devour programmes about adoption or people trying to find out about their natural parents. Growing up I often felt very different to the rest of family – so perhaps it has something to do with that! Because I was older when I wanted to start a family, I used fertility treatment to have my son, and before that I did – for a brief period – try to adopt. But as I say, adoption has always been something that interests me.
It speaks well of you as a human being! And so does the topic of my last question. Some of your earlier fiction is short, graded readers for older English learners. How do you think that experience shaped you moving into mainstream fiction?
All writing is excellent experience, and writing those books also familiarised me with the publishing process – getting and responding to feedback, doing edits, working to deadlines etc. That’s been enormously helpful. Writing using limited vocabulary and grammar was an agreeable challenge that required me to constantly think of different ways to say what I wanted to say, and yes, I suppose that’s a useful tool in my writing armoury!
That’s a wrap for this edition of Five On A Friday. Go grab a copy of Kitty Johnson’s Prickly Company from Amazon or Bookshop.org!
