This interview was a blast! J. Ivanel Johnson is quite the character! I was taken by her humor and her strength of character. She has a way with words and after the interview, I found myself searching her website for some to read, even though I don’t read cozy mysteries.
J. Ivanel reminded me of Joan Livingston, another strong woman writer, though I doubt the two of them ever met.
J. Ivanel Johnson is a retired English and Drama high school teacher, formerly having taught in Stratford, Ontario, Canada, and in Browning, Montana, and in West Yorkshire and Lancashire, England. She coached the Junior Olympic levels of Eventing, which are three equestrian disciplines in all three of those countries, as well as in Scotland, where she lived for a year. Coping with a progressive (dis)Ability all her life, she has now settled ‘quietly’ in the beautiful Appalachians of New Brunswick, Canada on their small farm to write more seriously. She has been, according to an agent she once had, only ‘playing at it’ since she had her first poem published at the age of 12.
Here is my interview with J. Ivanel Johnson, and I’m sure you will find yourself chuckling and laughing just like I was. Such an interesting person!
What was it that made you decide you had a story to tell and to become an author?
I have always written–short stories, novels, poetry, songs, plays, and musicals. But my first published novel by Black Rose Writing began 75 years ago with an outline from my grandmother, who also wrote many manuscripts but never tried very hard to get published. I always promised her I would push on to that ultimate goal.
As an author or writer, what sets you apart from others?
I have, it seems, become known for writing a lot of diverse characters in all my works. An article by a Co-op magazine in our province https://nbmediacoop.org/2022/08/01/disabled-playwright-pens-historical-n-b-musical/ in mid-2022 has equated to a number of other media articles with the same theme, and several diverse groups of artists contacting me as well. Living with (dis)Ability, having coped with much bullying in school, then teaching in marginalized communities like First Nations and inner-cities has given me unique insights and rare friendships for which I’m very grateful.
How do ideas for your stories present themselves? How do you know what story lines to follow and which to ignore?
I never ignore a story line. Something ALWAYS gets written – sometimes I just never push it forward to the outside world. So, of course, I have trunks full of unpublished, and sometimes unfinished work. And I find I can’t keep up with the ideas for stories – since I was young, they have always flown fast and furious and used to keep me awake all night too. Now I listen to audio books to try to focus on someone ELSE’s ideas when I’m not actually sleeping.
What genre do you write, and why?
I write many things, in many styles and genres. But most recently, I seem to be either scribbling humorous, multi-cultural work for the stage, or publishing cozy mysteries – both novels and short stories. Because I’ve always been involved in theater, I was awarded a $20,000 national grant last year to workshop my musical Rough Notes, and am now looking for a company/artistic director to give it its premiere production. And two novels in my JUST (e)STATE mystery series have been published in quick succession, with a third in the planning stages. Follow me on FB at @J Ivanel Johnson and join ten of us cozy mystery writers at the Facebook group: Cozy Crime Collective if you love this genre, too – and want some great deals, contests and prizes!
Besides writing and telling a good story, do you have any other talents?
Before I got too disabled to do much physically, I enjoyed acting – especially performing in musicals and fast-paced ‘bedroom farces’. I once played a prostitute with flashing red lights on my nipples in No Sex Please, We’re British. My mother was a music teacher, and she made sure we learned piano and at least one string instrument. Naturally, acting led to directing. And of course, my own competitive eventing career, as well as coaching it, has seen me heavily involved in the equestrian world for nearly fifty years.
I like to joke that, given my inherent ability to be loud and bossy, it’s a good thing that hollering at both galloping riders and large casts of noisy people on stage became my two careers. And of course, those are two professions where, through the ages, it’s been deemed acceptable to be seen striding about in high, black leather boots snapping a riding crop. I won’t – um—mention the third one.
If you were to name one or two books that you deem unforgettable and that had a major impact on you, what would they be, and why?
Any and all Agatha Christies have been so important to me for nearly five decades that I study them almost like text books. I lived for a time in Haworth, W. Yorks, because the Brontes’ work has been so inspirational – especially Jane Eyre. And To Kill A Mockingbird is probably an example of the one book in the whole world I’d like to have written myself. There’s a reason it’s a classic, in the truest sense.
What authors do you read regularly? Why?
Again, Christie, and the other Golden Age traditional whodunnit mystery writers – Sayers, Marsh, Tey, etc. When I was younger, I also read more of the gritty detective novels of that age like Stout and Ellery Queen. The latter, as well as modern writers like Evanovich and Grafton, I have used to emulate their humor and eccentric characters. The former – I try to replicate their pacing, red herrings, settings. Literary clues and features are something I’ve developed as my own particular device. My most recent book uses Dickens-related names, slightly changed. And much wordplay. Always lovin’ the wordplay!
If you were to have dinner with 5 individuals living or dead, who would they be and why?
Agatha Christie, of course – we have a lot in common outside of mystery-writing, too. Then I think Charlotte Bronte. What a life of misery, yet she kept up the hope and talent! Jimmy Carter, because I’ve always so admired him even though I’m Canadian. Wangari Maathai, because she did so much for the environment as well as strong women and Blacks. And – just for purely pleasurable reasons: Hugh Grant!
What is your writing routine? When you write, do you plan or outline ahead or are you a “pantser”?
I haven’t got a routine. I used to write late into the wee hours, but I’m getting too old for that anymore. I do better just waiting for that ‘Muse’ and then try to get somewhere quiet when She arrives. For anything non-fiction, such as essays or speeches, or for short stories, which are much harder to ‘do properly’ than novels, I think. I’m very much a planner and have sticky notes and colored recipe cards everywhere. But for fiction, novels or my plays, I very much let my characters drive the plot. So in that way, I guess I’m a seat-of-the-pantser. After all, I was born breech, and I’ve always said I do everything bum-first.
When writing, how much do you read? Do you read in or out of your genre?
When writing, I sadly haven’t much time for reading. But I nearly always read inside my genre when I can, and now that I get so many manuscripts from other authors to read also, I’m going to more or less start requesting that those also be primarily in the mystery or thriller genre.
Is there something you set out to do, but somehow, it didn’t work out for you? (In writing, or something else you felt was important to you at the time?)
I’m pretty stubborn and determined. Living with chronic pain/disability can really teach one how to not give up if it’s something one really wants to do, or feels driven to accomplish. If I knew I was to die tomorrow, I could pretty much go without regrets, at least as far as achieving my aspirations. Of course, it would have been nice to have gone further with some of my projects or competitive equestrian goals. But I’ve tried a lot of things, worn a lot of different hats, and lived in a lot of wild, beautiful places that I’d always wanted to experience from a very young age.
What tips would you give to new or even experienced writers?
Oh, my – crack open another Diet Coke, would ya? I don’t think I’m experienced enough to be giving anyone advice about the writing world, despite having done it all my life and being asked to make speeches about it from time to time.
Essentially: just keep writing, practicing and revising. Have a cry at the rejections but then just remember it’s all very, very subjective and somewhere out there is the right fit for you. And, coming from a ‘breech-born’, sometimes it works to think outside the box. Oh, dear – is that rude? When using those two phrases together, I think that might be naughty! So try something a little unique if the old habits or formats don’t seem to be working.
How did you “teach” yourself to write or did it just come naturally? What lessons would you pass on to others?
Sorry, but the writing part has always come naturally. It’s always been bursting out of me. When I was four, I wrote my first poem. No, you don’t want to hear it. But it had both rhyme and rhythm.
That doesn’t mean that because something comes naturally, it doesn’t also take decades of work and determination, revision and re-invention. Because that’s what it’s always been like. A big ole struggle. And that’s so that when things do finally start to happen, you can just appreciate them all the more.
How do you handle a rejection or a negative critique?
I cry. And stomp my crippled old legs. Why else do you think my knees got so bad? Why? Is there another way?
Is there a type of writing/genre that you find difficult to write? Why?
As I mentioned above, those short stories are so difficult. They are meant to be either full of symbolism like a long free-verse poem or if it’s a mystery, you’re meant to introduce a bunch of characters and red herrings in such a minimum number of words. It’s next to impossible. After being told by one critique group of mine that my latest whodunnit short, Winter’s Warmblood was never going to make it as a ‘short’ and I should work it into a novel premise. It actually got accepted the very next week by a jury of editors for the, A Warm Mug of Cozy first anthology, now out in e-book form. And, if your readers needed it, there’s yet more proof that one should never give up, or even take criticism too much to heart. Subjective, subjective!
Also, like my grandmother before me, I thoroughly despise writing a sex scene. When I read, I skip them. Yawn, yawn. I find them so unnecessary, gratuitous, exploitative and not plot-forwarding, so why would I write them? The reason my grandmother only ever attempted to send her manuscripts out a few times was because she was told by a publisher early on that she ‘needed more boudoir scenes’. She refused. And I’m happy to follow family tradition and thus keep on writing cozy mysteries! I mean, did Poirot ever get hot and heavy with Countess Rosakoff?
How important are the elements of character, setting, and atmosphere to a story, and why?
Every single one of those is so crucial, especially in the mystery genre. In that genre, as in many musicals which I also write, you need plenty of character – so the more eccentric and interesting the author makes them, the more the audience will a) stay interested and b) not get confused about who is who.
Setting and atmosphere, as well as pacing in a mystery, are also imperative to get just right. I, of course, like the traditional rural settings, or locked room type. And atmosphere, come on! Really, even in a contemporary upmarket fiction book, atmosphere should be there, gradually raising the pulse rate, or lending to the imagination of the reader, at least. And you can’t describe atmosphere. It has to trickle out subtly, like seepage down the walls …
Do you see yourself in any of the characters you create? How/Why?
Physically, I’m most like Monty Tiggs, the Yorkshire woman in Just A Stale Mate. She’s a rough-and-tumble antiques dealer and also used to ‘ride to hounds’ back in England, so in her new Canadian home, she still squishes her chubby body into jodhpurs and boots to keep riding out on the trails and inadvertently finding clues after getting dumped into the mud by her horse or stung in the arse by a wasp.
But my series protagonist, P.J. Whistler, is most like my grandmother, who first outlined her as “Aunt Polly” in 1947. P.J. loves watching and reading mysteries and trying to figure out the clues. She loves a fire in the fireplace and her tea and apple crisp beside her. And she loves gracefully dancing in the moonlight overlooking the shadows of the mountains. Of course I like all those things, too. But when I try to do the latter, I invariably fall down thanks to my next-to-useless legs. So that’s why imagination in writing can also be therapeutic!
Is there an unforgettable or memorable character that will not leave your head, either of your own creation or from a book you’ve read?
They are simply too many to name, both from my own and others’ writings. However, in my recent musical Rough Notes, I created a slightly sarcastic female Indigenous elder, a woman of few words. But when she does speak, it is with wry wit. Last October, thanks to the workshopping grant from Canada Council for the Arts, I had the pleasure of seeing her and the rest of my cast of characters in Rough Notes brought to life very much as I’d imagined her, by Mi’kmaq actress Natasha Barlow. Every time, her Gookum Perley Bear got giggles from the audience, I think she and I both wanted to stand and cheer!
Tell us about your most recent book.
Some of this has been mentioned above, and I don’t think either of us should start another Diet Coke, Joe. We both know it’s not exactly healthy herbal tea.
The first book in the series was outlined by my grandmother when she was still alive 75 years ago. I think this most recent one, Just A Stale Mate, was also somehow being written by her, dead these 30 years. I feel like I didn’t have a lot to do with it – it just came a-flowing! And it’s set where she and I both grew up, too, which I didn’t really plan on!
How did you come up with the title?
Most of my titles I have before I start writing, and they are usually double or triple-meaning. They don’t always have the prefixes like “Just A” when I come up with them, of course. I love two-word titles, but most of them have been over-used by others by the time I get to publish or produce. So I fall back on prefixes to make them original.
From your book, who is your favorite character? Who is your least favorite character? Why?
As above, I do love Monty and P.J., but I also love Trevor – he’s struggling with being a gay cop in the 1960s Toronto. He stays very much in the closet and pretends to have a macho exterior, but he isn’t fooling Philip Steele, my primary detective. I can’t tell you my least favorites, because that would be giving away the murderers or, in some cases, the victims, wouldn’t it?
There you have it! As I said, such a colorful character and such an inspirational person. I am happy I got to know J. Ivanel, and I’m proud to count her as a writing and author friend!
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