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Books by Julie Johnston: Love Ya Like a Sister The Only Outcast |
Julie Johnston [ Interview ] You can't be a writer without being persistent. That's something author Julie Johnston knows very well. She had always told stories to amuse her sisters and her family. When she was older, Julie wrote plays for her high school, and when she created a serial novel that was published weekly in her community newspaper, people would stop her to ask what would happen next (Julie said she could never tell them because she was making it up as she went along!). She even made up stories to help herself get to sleep. But only after her children had grown up did Julie begin to see that many of those "bedtime" stories she created had plots and well-rounded characters. So she began writing and sending out her work. She went back to university to study English, as she always wanted to, and in one year she won a playwriting contest and had two stories published in magazines. It was that early success that led her to try her hand at writing a novel. And, just as she had done when she was younger, Julie included the people and places around her in her stories. For example, The Only Outcast is based on the real diary of teenager Fred Dickinson, who spent the summer of 1904 at a lakeside cottage. Julie grew up holidaying on the same lake, so knew well the places Fred visited that summer. Persistence has paid off for Julie who sees no end to the stories she can tell. |
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Interview What was your favorite book as a child? My favorite book as a preschool child was my older sister's reader because I could read some of it. The Story of Little Black Sambo was also a favorite (in spite of its apparent lack of political correctness), a birthday present from my best childhood friend. The Secret Garden was tops and the Anne books were my favorites from age ten on. What is your favorite book now? My fave now is probably Howard's End (E.M. Forster). Actually, it's a toss-up between that and Far From the Madding Crowd (Hardy). These are followed very closely by Possession (A.S. Byatt). Who reads your new work first? Kathy Lowinger (editor, publisher, friend) reads my new work first. I sometimes read excerpts to my writer-friends in Peterborough. Some of them also read my work in progress. Do you have a favorite place to write? Describe it. My favorite place to write is at the lake where I am surrounded by windows through which I can keep an eye on the trees and birds, the lake and loons, the rocky shore and chipmunks, along with occasional Canada geese in the spring, beaver in the summer, and this past winter, a wolf. [ Top ] What was your first written story (that you can remember)? My first written story was a true story about driving a home-made sea flee (a small racing boat). I suppose I was about eleven or twelve. In it, I described the way I had to flatten myself up over the bow of the boat to make it plane while reaching back to the motor on the back to steer with my toes. I can't remember how fast it went, but it seemed pretty speedy. Where do you get your ideas from? My ideas come from observing people and the ways in which they react to each other and the world. I am a shameless people-watcher and eavesdropper. What do you do when you have writer's block? When I have temporary writer's block I take a shower. It always works; tangles unravel, ideas flow. I've never had a major block that kept me from writing. Standing under Niagara Falls would help, I guess. What is the best thing about being an author? The best thing about being an author is escaping reality and living inside whatever story I happen to be writing. [ Top ] What is the worst thing about being an author? The worst thing about writing is not being able to easily get out of my story and back into the real world to deal with real-life situations. How do you feel about bad reviews? Reviews are entirely one person's opinion. Nevertheless, if they're bad, I growl and if they're good, I'm elated. I believe respected reviewers in a reliable publication influence how a book is accepted, to a large extent. I read reviews of books I've never read to discover what I can about what constitutes contemporary literary strengths and weaknesses. If you could meet any famous person, who has ever lived, who would it be? I think it would be either William Shakespeare or Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford, who may or may not have written the works commonly attributed to Shakespeare. I have a lot of questions. |
