Episode 77
Prickly Company is Good Company with Kitty Johnson
On today’s show we get to meet Margaret Johnson, who’s published by Lake Union Publishing under the pen-name Kitty Johnson. Margaret doesn’t mind whether people call her Margaret or Kitty – she answers to both names!
Margaret first started writing in her twenties after finishing a Fine Art degree. Faced with an uncertain future – making money from art is a notoriously precarious prospect – Margaret had the bright idea of writing a best-selling novel to finance her painting career. This first novel was never published – she says she basically swapped one precarious way of living for another - but by the time it was completed, Margaret had firmly caught the writing bug. Since then, her writing career has included romance novels published by small publishing houses, a raft of graded readers for academic publishers which have sold around the world, as well as women's fiction which she self-published before she snagged an agent – the wonderful Carly Watters of PS Literary – via a pitch event organized by the Women’s Fiction Writers Association. That was her gateway to publication by Lake Union Publishing – Five Winters was published on the 1st of January 2023, and Prickly Company is to be published on 28th May 2024. A third novel – Closest Kept – will be published sometime in 2025.
Margaret frequently draws on her life and experience for her writing – with Five Winters, she used her memories of hopeless crushes in her teens and twenties, as well as her strong yearning to have a child. Prickly Company was partly inspired by the small community where she lives, as well as by her experience as a volunteer for the charity Hodmedods Hedgehog Support. She also drew on her observations of students at the beginning of a new course – the way different characters come to the fore, and others stay back, and how some people can dominate proceedings if the teacher isn’t careful.
You can learn more about Margaret on her website at https://www.kittyjohnsonbooks.com and follow her on Instagram @kittyjohnsonbooks-which will be the best place to be kept up to date on her next release!
Support your local bookstore & this podcast by getting your copy of Five Winters or pre-ordering your copy of Prickly Company from Bookshop.org.
A little about today's host-
Author and musical composer Kathleen Basi is mother to three boys and one chromosomally-gifted daughter. Her debut novel, A SONG FOR THE ROAD, follows a musician on an unconventional road trip. Bestselling author Kerry Anne King writes, “In a novel filled with music, heartbreak, and surprising laughter, Basi takes us on a journey that encompasses both unimaginable loss and the powerful resilience of the human heart.”
Meaty, earnest, occasionally humorous, and ultimately uplifting, Kathleen’s fiction highlights the best within ourselves and each other. She writes monthly reflections on life, writing and beauty on her newsletter. Subscribe at https://kathleenbasi.substack.com/.
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Learn more about our hosts, the guests we've had, and their books -
Transcript
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Kathleen Basi [:Welcome to Author Express. Thanks for checking us out. This is the podcast where you give us 15 minutes of your time, and we give you a chance to hear the voice behind the pages and get to know some of your favorite writers in a new light. I'm one of your hosts, Kathleen Bassey. I'm an award winning musical composer, a feature writer, essayist, and, of course, storyteller. Let me tell you a little bit about today's guest. Kitty Johnson is the author of 5 Winters as well as other novels published under the name Margaret k Johnson. She has an MA in creative writing from the University of East Anglia and teaches occasional creative writing classes.
Kathleen Basi [:A nature lover and artist, Kitty enjoys walking in woodlands and on the coast with her dog and makes collages and paintings from the landscape. She loves a challenge and once performed stand up comedy as research for a book, an experience she found very scary but hugely empowering. Kitty lives in Norwich Norfolk in the UK with her partner and has a teenage son at university in Cambridge. Welcome, Margaret. I believe you normally go by in your real life. That's correct. Yeah, Margaret. But your name that you write under is Kitty Johnson.
Kathleen Basi [:So
Kitty Johnson [:Yes. That's right. Kitty Johnson.
Kathleen Basi [:Well, tell me, first of all,
Kitty Johnson [:what's the most interesting thing about where you're from? Well, I live in Norwich. Lots of interesting things about it, but it has a city wall, remnants of a city wall, that was built in medieval times, so 700 years ago. And at one time, the whole city was contained in it until 17/79, and then they started building outside us. But within the city walls, it was said that there was a pub for every day of the year and a church for every week. Nice. Which is pretty interesting. Now there's about a 130 pubs.
Kathleen Basi [:And how many churches?
Kitty Johnson [:Quite a lot. I haven't counted those. That tells us
Kathleen Basi [:a lot about you right there, I'm guessing. Oh, sorry. So let's get to know you a little bit. You're a nature lover. I love that. You like to take walks. I do photography with my walks. I love that you do collages and things with that.
Kathleen Basi [:Watercolor, oil paint, what kind of what kind of
Kitty Johnson [:thing do you do? Well, what I do is I will sketch outside, so get an idea for a picture, then I'll come back. I'm lucky enough to have a studio, just out the back and I create my collage papers. So I use acrylics and a jelly plate and I print various textures and patterns with my mind still thinking about the landscape, so the colors, the patterns that I need. Oh. They'd let those dry and then tear them up. I've always loved cutting up paper. Even as a little child, there were bits of paper all over my bedroom floor, much to my mom's annoyance.
Kathleen Basi [:That's funny. That's funny. I love that you have challenged yourself through this to do to to do, like, the the stand up comedy. I don't think I would be good at that at all. How how were you at it?
Kitty Johnson [:Well, people laughed, which is brilliant. That's good. But I'm actually I decided to do it again, so I'm actually doing an online course at the moment, so I've got another 4 weeks of that, that will build up to a performance. Okay. I know me, the crazy it's just something something that makes if you achieve something like that, it just gives you such a buzz. Yeah. Just to get your confidence a real boost.
Kathleen Basi [:Yeah. Yeah. Good for you. So I'm gonna ask you this. If you could live anywhere in the world, where would you live and why why is that? Am I allowed to stay here? You are. Absolutely. I mean, I live in the Midwest of the United States, so your your place sounds lovely to me and
Kitty Johnson [:very exotic. Yeah. I I love it here because, it's historic, but it's not too big. It's a friendly city, and it's just 20 miles from the coast. And at one time, I lived in Nottingham, which is in the heart of England, and the sea was just too far away. So I love that you can just get to the coast quickly.
Kathleen Basi [:So are you in a place where the coast is friendly for getting
Kitty Johnson [:in the water? It's cold. So no. And some peep some some crazy people swim all year round, but I I love it in the summer. Mhmm. I do love it in summer. It's nothing like swimming in the sea. I just wiggling a little bit. Very But it is cold.
Kathleen Basi [:Yeah. Yes. I I love to walk along a beach more than I love to get in it,
Kitty Johnson [:I will say, most of the time. Yeah. Yeah. I can empathize with that.
Kathleen Basi [:We're talking today about your book, Prickly Company. So can you tell us about it in one sentence?
Kitty Johnson [:Oh, it's about a nature lover who decides to give up her hermit ways to involve her community in making life easier for hedgehogs. And she sets off a whole load of dramas and secrets are revealed.
Kathleen Basi [:Very very cool. I am in the process of reading your book at this very moment, and I'm loving the ensemble nature of it. I can tell the listeners that it's considerably more complex than what she just laid out. You have a lot of characters and each of them has beautiful drama and sometimes really drama behind them. So it's it's it's very good. So because it's an ensemble piece, I would like to know which of your characters you identify with the most closely because there are so many good ones.
Kitty Johnson [:Oh, that's hard. That's very hard. I I imagine, you know, when you write, you put a bit of you in most of your characters, not all of them, but lots of them. I suppose it has to be Jess, because I am a mother and, being a mother is fantastic, but it's not always easy. And there are all sorts of emotional things attached to it. So I suppose even though I haven't adopted a child, it must be Jess, really, and all of the things that she goes through, the struggles to be a good mother. Yeah. I'm in the middle
Kathleen Basi [:of that. I'm in the middle of that part of the book right now, and I will admit, her I I don't know if there's too much of a spoiler if I say that she struggles with, with, bonding, and that is, that that sounded very familiar to me because I have a child with a disability, and that was something that that I had to grapple with as well. Right.
Kitty Johnson [:My I hope it's not
Kathleen Basi [:too heavy for you. No. It's it's beautiful. It's beautiful. Are there characters that you is there a character aside from the I asked who you you identify with. Is there somebody that you root for more than anyone else in your book?
Kitty Johnson [:Oh, Ryan, who's, struggling with the aftermath of an accident. And no longer has the use of his licks. His struggle to make the best of his life and to move on, I guess. And Francis too who's coming out of isolation. Yeah. They're all such great vivid characters. They're it's hard to it's hard to pick a favorite, so well done, you. That's okay.
Kathleen Basi [:So I'm curious, actually. I wanna talk a little bit about the writing process and the writing journey. You some of the novels that I was seeing on your Amazon page and whatever are for English learners. Have I got that correct?
Kitty Johnson [:That's right. Yeah. People learn speak English. So So page turn page turning fiction is the idea. So are they and they're written at different levels? Is it almost like when you're writing for children of different levels? Is is that correct? Yes. That's right. So I wrote all the levels, so it could be starter, which or, level 6. So with a STARTER level I had to look at the words that I was allowed to use and let them give me a story, because otherwise it was difficult.
Kitty Johnson [:Whereas with the level 6, the advanced level, I had to deliberately use long words to test the reader. How do you
Kathleen Basi [:get into writing like that, if you don't mind my asking? It's so interesting.
Kitty Johnson [:It was just a very happy accident. I moved house and met somebody who was doing it, asked him for the contact details of the editor, asked if I could write a sample chapter. They liked it, and I ended up writing about 20 altogether.
Kathleen Basi [:That is so interesting. And and I I didn't even know that that existed, but it makes perfect sense that you would need levels of something to engage with readers as they're learning to speak English. That's just really, really cool.
Kitty Johnson [:It was fun to do. It was almost like a a puzzle because you're constantly thinking, well, I can't use that word, so how else could I say that? What illustration could I use to make that easier for them?
Kathleen Basi [:Yeah. I enjoyed it. I'll bet that that actually was very illuminating and, focusing what's the word I'm looking for? That you were really trained and toned as a as a writer in, by doing that kind of work, I would imagine.
Kitty Johnson [:Yeah. Possibly. Yeah. I've written. I was. Yeah.
Kathleen Basi [:Yeah. So you've published quite a few novels now. You have Five Winters. You have Prickly Company coming out as well as these books for English learners. What's one thing you wish you'd known sooner about the process of publishing a novel or getting a novel published?
Kitty Johnson [:Maybe how long it was going to take to I've loved all the writing I've done, but I dreamed big.
Kathleen Basi [:Mhmm.
Kitty Johnson [:And I suppose and I would've done it anyway, even if I'd known it was going to take a long time to achieve what I'm now achieving. Does it? But maybe if I'd known exactly how long, it might have helped. I don't know. It's hard to say, isn't it?
Kathleen Basi [:It might have helped it might have helped and it might have made you be like, how do I get out of bed in
Kitty Johnson [:the morning? Worry. It's best I didn't
Kathleen Basi [:know. Publishing is a long process. I'm a
Kitty Johnson [:bit of a stubborn person, and I just love writing. So even if you're just doing it for yourself, it's it's worth doing, I think. But I'm very happy that I've now got the success I have.
Kathleen Basi [:How do you measure success?
Kitty Johnson [:I will ask you. Well, sales definitely helps, but the feedback from readers I always set out to make readers laugh and cry because those are the kind of books that I love to read. They do. I want to really grip somebody and put them through the mill and make them want to read on to find out what happened. So when you get feedback that you've achieved that, it's it's like nothing else. It's fantastic.
Kathleen Basi [:Do you find that people reach out to you directly, or do you just see it when do you read
Kitty Johnson [:reviews? Occasionally, they do reach out directly, but, yeah, I'm afraid I'm a sucker for my reviews, and I read every single one. There's all sorts of advice about never read reviews, but I read every single one.
Kathleen Basi [:Well, and as long as there's positivity in
Kitty Johnson [:the reviews, that's a good thing. Yeah. Well, obviously, your book isn't gonna be right for everyone, so there isn't always. But then I just tell myself that, oh, well, the book wasn't it wasn't the right book for them. They weren't my ideal reader. That's right. That's right.
Kathleen Basi [:Well, I'll tell you, as we start to close-up now, if you tell us what's the best place for people
Kitty Johnson [:to find you if they want to find your books or more about you. Well, I'm on Instagram, kittyjohnsonbooks. My website is also kittyjohnsonbooks dotcom. If anyone goes to my website, you can sign up to my, substack. I don't post very often, but when I do, hopefully it's it's entertaining because I like to be quite chatty and share stuff that's going on in my life rather than just about my books. Very good.
Kathleen Basi [:So I think one of the best places. Okay. Very good. So as we close today, tell us what book or story inspires you the most?
Kitty Johnson [:Well, I think, a lot of people are probably the same. If you've read Big Magic, you'll know what a special book that is. It's incredibly inspiring. So whenever my whenever I'm flagging a bit, I dip back into that. It's just the most wonderful book.
Kathleen Basi [:Big magic. I will I will go look that up, but that's not one I'm familiar with. So thank you. Alright. Well, thank you for being with us today. Kitty Johnson and her new book, Prickly Company, is available soon. Thank you so much. Thanks for joining us today.
Kathleen Basi [:We hope you'll take a second to give us some stars or a review on your favorite podcasting platform. We'll be back next Wednesday. And in the meantime, follow us on Instagram at @authorexpresspodcast to see who's coming up next. Don't forget. Keep it express, but keep it interesting.
