Rachael Johns – Entertaining ‘Life Lit’

Rachael Johns began writing as a broken hearted teen and she’s now recognised as one of Australia’s best-selling rural romance and life lit authors.  She’s also highly productive, with two books out this year and another due early in 2021. Hi there, I’m your host Jenny Wheeler and in today’s Binge Reading episode Rachael talks about romance for women with grown up complicated lives, and why she dislikes her work being categorized as “chick lit.” Six things you’ll learn from this Joys of Binge Reading episode: Writing as teenage therapy Youthful ambition to be a ‘famous author’ The importance of ‘keeping on’ with it Inventing a new sub genre – ‘life-lit’ The importance of having a tribe The writers she admires most Where to find Rachael Johns:  Website: https://www.rachaeljohns.com/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/RachaelJohnsRomance  Twitter: https://twitter.com/RachaelJohns Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/rachaeljohnsauthor/ Email: [email protected] What follows is a “near as” transcript of our conversation, not word for word but pretty close to it, with links to important mentions. But now here’s Rachael. Hello there Rachael and welcome to the show. It’s great to have you with us. Introducing author Rachael Johns Jenny Wheeler: But now, here’s Rachael. Hello there, Rachael, and welcome to the show. It’s great to have you with us. Rachael Johns: Thank you, Jenny. It’s fabulous to be here. Jenny Wheeler: You’re talking from Perth, aren’t you? I always like to give people a sense of the geography, because there are very big distances between all of the people I talk to. You are over the other side of Australia, which is way away from us. We think of the East Coast as being almost neighbors, but you’re another, I think five hours by plane across Australia, isn’t it? Rachael Johns – rural romance and ‘life lit’ author Rachael Johns: Yes, it’s five hours by plane and then another couple of hours to you over there, so we find ourselves in time difference at the moment. I love New Zealand. I am in WA, I’ve got family in Queenstown in New Zealand. We were going to go there this year, but unfortunately … Jenny Wheeler: It didn’t work out. Are you in a suburb of Perth or are you out in the country? Rachael Johns: I was in the country until a couple of years ago. We spent the best part of 11 years in two different small rural communities – in Kojonup and Goomalling, for anyone who does know any of those places. One was down south of Perth and the other one was in the Wheat Belt. Now we’re back in Perth, on the outskirts, in the Swan Valley, because after living in small country towns, I don’t think I could go back completely to suburbia or city living, so the best of both worlds, hopefully at the moment. Writing as teenage therapy Jenny Wheeler: That’s interesting because you are known for best-selling rural romance and I did wonder how much rural experience you had, but we’ll get onto that. You started with your writing, you say on your website, at the age of 17 as therapy for a broken heart. That’s amusing. I know I’m a 17-year old’s broken heart can be as painful as at any age, but it’s not exactly the depth of life at that point. How did it all come about? Rachael Johns: I completely agree with you. It felt like the end of the world at 17, when you break up with someone who’s the love of your life, but now, almost 25 years later, I can look back and laugh at the experience. I’m glad it happened because I think I would probably be on quite a different path if it hadn’t. I had always wanted to be a primary school teacher and I think I would have done that, probably would have loved it and enjoyed it. It’s amazing how things turn out. Small town WA – Goomalling Tavern So what happened? I wasn’t a big reader or writer at all in high school. I did reasonably well in high school English, but I didn’t read books because the ones they wanted you to read I felt were boring, sadly. Also, I was much more obsessed with boys or as you put it, one particular boy. I was pretty much a stalker all through high school and everyone in the school knew I was madly in love with this boy. He did as well. He used to run in the opposite direction when he saw me coming and it was quite embarrassing. Accidental break-up Thank God there was no Facebook or social media because I shudder to think what I would have put on there. But a miracle happened at the beginning of Year 12 and he asked me to the school ball. I think he only did that because he knew I would definitely say yes and you know, a 17-year-old boy, it’s a bit daunting putting yourself out there. I knew that nobody else would dare say yes because I would kill them, and I probably would have. So we went to the ball and we started going out from there, and I use the term ‘going out’ quite loosely because, as you said, we were 17, we were at school, Year 12, neither of us could drive, we lived quite far apart, so we didn’t really see each other a lot of time outside school. But I thought he was the love of my life. We were going to get married, have babies, and live happily ever after. I was obsessed with him. Kojonup Spring – the lifeblood of the town. But then one day towards the end of Year 12, he said something I wasn’t too happy about, I can’t remember even what it was, but we had a bit of a disagreement and I said, you know, I don’t think this is working out. I hoped he would say no, Rachael, you’re the love of my life, I’m sorry, don’t leave me. He said, yes, I think you’re right, so I accidentally dumped the love of my life. I’m joking about that now because people say you can accidentally get pregnant, but you can accidentally dump someone as well, and I did it. A setback which changed her life Then for some weird reason, because as I said, I’d never been a huge reader or writer, in the summer holidays between finishing Year 12 and when I was supposed to start primary school teaching, I decided to write this book. I don’t know if I can really call it a book because it was very, very bad. It was the story of me and this boy and it was everything we’d ever said to each other, right until the end. I had a good memory then, I don’t now, but everything was terribly boring because for four years he ran in the other direction. It was a terrible book. I wrote 80,000 words of absolute rubbish, but even then, I knew you can’t end a book by accidentally dumping someone. What I did was I gave him a horrific disease in the book, and I killed him off. And it was such good therapy for me. Since then I have met a number of writers and I find that half of them have always wanted to write. It’s been this thing since they were little, they scribbled stories and wrote picture books and chapter books. They always wanted to do it. The other half of us seem to come to writing because we use it as a sort of therapy at some stage, whether it’s the death of a parent or the break up a marriage, a lot of people come through that. Rachael Johns – Outback Sisters I came through therapy too, but I caught the bug. You have spoken to many writers and I’m sure that many of them would have said it is like a bug. Once you start, whether you’re successful or not, sometimes it’s really hard to stop. And I decided then and there that I love playing God and being able to tell my characters what to do in my own universe and all these things. I’m going to be a famous author… I said to my mum, I think I just turned 18 by then, I’m not going to be a primary school teacher, I’m going to be a famous author. Credit to her, she didn’t say, oh my gosh, you crazy girl. She said, okay, and I changed to a writing degree. That was the worst thing I ever did but it’s a bit of a long story after that. But that is where exactly I started writing. Jenny Wheeler: That’s a fantastic story. I’m amazed you got 80,000 words out of an adolescent romance like that. Rachael Johns: I’m amazed now as well. What’s really funny is a lot of people often ask, do I still know the boy? I only vaguely do, through Facebook, but my next book, which comes out in a couple of weeks, I actually dedicated to him. I didn’t use his name, but I said something like, “This one is for the boy who broke my heart at 17, which led me to start writing. It’s probably time I thanked you.” Jenny Wheeler: That is a gorgeous story. Now you are recognized as a best-selling rural romance and women’s fiction writer. In women’s fiction in Australia, and maybe in other places as well, there is this category now called life-lit. I’d like to talk to you about that. It’s life-lit that some of your books fit into, but it took you a while to break through to that level, didn’t it? After that initial decision to do your degree, how long was it before you got published by a publisher? Rachel Johns – ‘life – lit’ Rachael Johns: I think it was about fifteen years from when I decided I’m going to write a book and be an author to when I got my first contract. There are a number of reasons why it took so long. And then – taking the wrong option One, as you said earlier, when you’re 17, you don’t have a lot of life experience. There are not many interesting things I had to write about. Even being able to come up with different ideas and hear other people’s lived experiences and read, and that was one of the other things. I was not a reader and you need to be a reader to be a writer. I found reading at the same time I found writing. One of my very first books that I really loved to read was Bridget Jones’ Diary. The problem was, at Uni they wanted you to write a Booker Prize winner or some of them might win the Pulitzer or poetry, they were happy with poetry. But it was very much a literary degree I was doing, and that is what they wanted us to write, whereas I wanted to write something like Bridget Jones’ Diary. I wanted to write lighthearted, fun, entertaining fiction that still had depth and meaning, what people call ‘beach read’ or ‘train read’. But I didn’t think that was what I should be writing, and so I think I was trying too hard to write something else. That was one of the reasons. It was my age, the fact that I wasn’t a reader, the fact that I was trying to do what I thought I should be doing rather than what I loved. I did a Uni degree in writing; I did an Honors degree because I’m a slow learner and I didn’t realize how terrible the degree I was doing was and that I wasn’t learning anything. ‘The baby will sleep all day..’ Yep Then I did a DipEd and became a teacher because I needed a job to earn money. I met my husband during this time too. I had a baby because I thought, great, I’ll have a baby and it will sleep all day and that means I’ll be able to write the books I want to, rather than go out to work and teach. Unfortunately, the baby was a terrible sleeper and then I was so deprived from lack of sleep I had two more. Anyway, at that time I was still wanting to write, really trying but looking back, probably not trying, because I wasn’t submitting books. I think I submitted one book that I wrote, and it got a form rejection. That probably scared me off. I used to meet with my friend from Uni every few weeks or months, and we’d say, it is so depressing that we’re not ever going to get published, blah, blah, blah. Rachael Johns – Discovering romance Then one of us remembered an article we’d read at Uni, we weren’t given this article at Uni, but we happened to have seen it while we were at Uni, about Mills & Boon books and how you can make an absolute packet writing for Mills & Boon. There were apparently a number of authors in New Zealand and Australia doing this. We thought, great. Why are we trying to write the Pulitzer Prize winner? I’ll just write a romance novel, how hard can that be? I’m here to tell you it’s not any easier, and there was a big problem. I had never read a Mills & Boon book and I had this idea that a lot of people have, that it’s all heaving bosoms and throbbing manhoods and total trash. My mother-in-law used to read them at Christmas, and I remember thinking, I can’t believe she’s reading that – I’m reading Bridget Jones’ Diary, so much more highbrow. I love books like Cathy Kelly, Monica McInerney, it wasn’t just Bridget Jones, I was reading Marian Keyes, all those books I adored. But I thought, I’m going to write Mills & Boon. Finding her writing tribe One of the other reasons it took me so long is that when I decided to start writing at 17, the internet was very much a baby and you couldn’t Google everything the way we can today. Fast forward 10 years, almost 10 years later when I decided to write a romance novel, the internet was wonderful and you could type ‘how to write a romance novel’ and suddenly I had all this information at my fingertips. One big thing was the Romance Writers of Australia. There are also America, New Zealand versions of these things. I joined and I started learning things I’d never learned at Uni. Things like the books should have conflict, and the character should have goals and there has to be tension in the pages – a whole load of things. I also found my tribe I suppose, other writers who were really serious about what they wanted to do and loved what they do. It took me a couple more years from there doing contests, submitting books, getting rejections. Finally, to cut a long story short, I got a Mills & Boon reject published. It was one of the books I’d submitted to Mills & Boon but it didn’t quite fit their line. Digital publishing was also starting around that time and I submitted it to a digital publisher. One Perfect Night That book was called One Perfect Night. The digital publisher was part of Harlequin Mills & Boon which meant that I could go to a dinner in Australia with other Harlequin Mills & Boon authors. At the time rural romance was also becoming a thing. I should say, after my last rejection from Mills & Boon I was ready to give up. I said to my friends, I’ve got three little kids, I never see my husband, I think I’m just going to give up and take up quilting – something else I wanted to do.  I could spend another 15 years writing and writing and never getting anywhere, so I thought I’m going to give up. One Perfect Night – getting started Then a couple of friends said to me, no, you live in a small rural community – they were writing friends who recently got published with Fiona Palmer, who I think you talked to recently, and then Cathryn Hein – they had got published with rural romance from Penguin. They said, don’t give up, write a rural romance. You live in a small town. I felt a little bit like a fraud that I wasn’t a farmer or a farmer’s wife. We were there because my husband was running the supermarket, but I thought, you know what, I love small town living. I’d fallen in love with the dynamics of rural communities where everyone knows everything about everyone else but also really help each other in emergencies. There was so much going on, so much more of a social life than I ever had in Perth and so I decided I’m going to write about what I love about small towns. One little breakthrough I wrote about the revival of the theatrical society. I was waiting on the submissions from my one that did get published from Carina Press, and I put out this other book as well. It got rejected by almost everyone in Australia, but because I got that published Mills & Boon reject with Carina Press and got to go this dinner, my friend was sitting next to the publisher of Harlequin Australia. They didn’t publish many books back then; they were basically a distribution office. She goes, my friend’s written a rural romance, it’s fabulous. She’d only read a chapter. You should read it and you should publish it. I think the publisher wanted her to shut up and so she gave her the card and said, tell your friend to send it to me. Within months she offered to buy that book and the rest, as they say, is history. So it took me 15 years, but then in a couple of months I had the digital published book and also a contract for a print book. A very long story, I tried to tell it fast. Rural romance as a phenomenon Jenny Wheeler: That’s fabulous. Rural romance is quite a phenomenon. I’m old enough to remember the days when there wasn’t anything like that. I’ve probably been a member of Romance Writers New Zealand for nearly twenty years and I don’t remember any rural romance category when I first joined New Zealand Romance Writers. Rachael Johns: No, there definitely wasn’t. When I first joined Romance Writers Australia, it was 2006 and not only was there not much rural romance, there was not really any local publishing. Cathryn Hein – setting the trend in rural romance Jenny Wheeler: No, that’s right. One of the first things you were told was don’t set books in New Zealand and if you did, don’t expect them to be taken up. Although there were a few romance writers even then who were setting them in New Zealand and getting them published, it was regarded as a big barrier. Rachael Johns: And they weren’t known in Australia. They might be published here on the Mills & Boon shelves, but they weren’t known. I know that over the next few years, other publishers started coming to the conferences and I think publishers in Australia particularly, realized people do want to read about local content and people are interested. Now there has been an explosion in the last five or ten years of locally published people in New Zealand and Australia, and some of them are doing really well, so it’s good that we are seeing support by Australia and New Zealand publishing. Something To Talk About Jenny Wheeler: Yes, I think it’s terrific because the rural romance books do cover topics that aren’t covered in the other areas of romance and they really reflect women’s lives. You are highly productive. You have got two books out this year. One of them fits the rural romance category, Something to Talk About, and you’ve got Flying the Nest, which is due out next month which is more in that life-lit area. Rachael Johns – latest rural romance Let’s talk about the rural romance first. You have published nine of these so far, and Something to Talk About is the second in a series – there was one in this previous town setting before – and focuses on Tabitha, a dairy farmer who lost her arm with an aggressive cancer. Even on the cover of the book, it’s really terrific. The woman sitting in the book cover is half turned away, so you can have the impression that she hasn’t got one arm. When you look at it as a normal reader, you wouldn’t conclude that, but as soon as you start to read the book, you realize that the picture on the cover really does convey a message. You mentioned that that was inspired by a friend you knew who had a health challenge. I’m not quite sure if it was exactly the same sort of health challenge but tell us how that came about. Rachael Johns: It was exactly the same. I pretty much stole her story – the age she lost her arm, how she lost her arm, a locum not seeing that it was cancer and thinking it was just tennis elbow. I stole everything. My friend knows I did. That’s pretty much the only person I’ve almost completely based a character on. Telling true stories in fiction That’s Tabitha from Something to Talk About, who is an amputee. She was inspired by a lady I worked with in the library in Kojonup and she had only one and a half arms so she called it her ‘little arm’ and she was such an inspiring person. She could do everything that you and I could do, probably better. She could cover books in the library without having the bubbles that other people couldn’t manage to do, she rode a motorbike, she was a volunteer ambulance officer, and she is an amazing quilter and knitter. When I was doing the edits for this book, I wanted to portray obviously she’s been affected by this, my character Tabitha, and internally it’s made her doubt a few things about her life, but at the same time, she’s such a competent, independent, friendly, wonderful person and I wanted that to come across in the book. My editor said you’re in danger of slipping into almost the superhero disabled character, making it too unrealistic. I got what she was saying but it’s based on a real person, and my friend can knit, and this is important because I had it in the previous book, she did volunteer in the ambulance service. I took on board what she said, and I said, okay, let’s make her not so fabulous. She tries to make a vegan lasagna and fails at that, it was terrible. I gave her some other things, but I really wanted to keep the things that I knew an amputee could do if they put their mind to it because I wanted to celebrate disability in a way, to show that it doesn’t necessarily have to stop people living the life they want to live. Life’s complicated turns All my rural romances and my other books – I realized this recently – I’ve just had to start again a book I’m writing that’s due at the end of the year. I had 25,000 words and I realized it’s not working, and I need to start again. After thinking a bit about why it wasn’t working, I realized it was because all my rural romance books and my other ones have light and dark. There’s fun and there’s the romance but also each of them has a serious issue at the core, sometimes more than one. I never set out to do that. I didn’t start thinking about the issue necessarily, but there’s Tabitha’s arm, I’ve written about autism, I’ve a little girl with down syndrome, obviously grief, wind farming, some other issues specific to rural. I realized I need that because I need to feel like the book has meaning and depth for me and a connection, that’s something important as well. I didn’t have that in the new book. It’s important for me that there’s some depth as well as the heart. Jenny Wheeler: And Tabitha, we won’t give anything away about the story, but she has emotional hurt and damage and brokenness from what went on around her illness as much as physical, so that helps to drive the story. With Flying the Nest, the next book you’ve got out – I think it’s coming out a couple of weeks after we talk, and this podcast will probably come out pretty much at the time the book comes out – Ash doesn’t realize there’s anything wrong with her marriage until her husband suggests very broadly, almost in the opening sentences of the book, that they try nest parenting. I must admit I’m a bit old and I hadn’t even heard that term myself, so describe to people what nest parenting is for starters and why she would be so shocked by this idea. The ‘Nest parenting’ generation Rachael Johns: I hadn’t heard of it a couple of years ago either, and then I read an article online about a couple that was splitting up and they were working out the best situation for their children. Traditionally when a couple divorces or separates, often they go to live in two different places and the kids end up living some of the time with one parent and some of the time with the other parent. They are back and forth all the time, not really able to settle in either place. The idea with nest parenting is that instead of the kids moving back and forth, the kids stay in the family home and the parents come and go. They might live in another place, sometimes I’ve heard they live in the same unit and then they take turns, so they are never actually living together, but they’re sharing two different places. Other times they go and stay somewhere else. If you’ve got more money, that’s a better solution, I think. I remember thinking, in theory this is great because the children don’t have to pack up their bags and their things every week, they feel settled. It’s not their fault that their parents are splitting up, so instead of uprooting them, the parents do that. I thought, in theory that’s great, but imagine sharing a house with the person you maybe can’t stand to speak to anymore, and you’ve got big issues. I thought little things would start annoying you about whether or not they upheld the rules that you decided together to put into the contract. The spark of inspiration In theory it sounds great, but in practice it might not be so fantastic. What happens when other partners become involved, do they stay over there, and you end up sharing? It all seemed very dramatic to me and conflict ridden. I decided I wanted to write that a few years ago, and there was that and one other little thing that was a spark of inspiration for this book. Jenny Wheeler: That one does fit into the life-lit category I guess, doesn’t it, but tell us how you describe life-lit yourself. Rachael Johns: I think that one does fit into the life-lit category, but it’s probably my most rural life-lit, because there is a small town that the heroine main character spends a lot of time in. She alternates between Perth and a fictional town of Ragged Point which is a rural community, a coastal community. It’s probably my one that has the most got a little bit in each camp. The Patterson Girls – expanding beyond romance The term ‘life-lit’ came out a few years ago. I think I may be attributed with coming up with it, which is wrong because it was my publicist at the time. It was when my first women’s fiction book, The Patterson Girls, came out, and the whole term ‘women’s fiction’ – there are a lot of people who have problems with that. I think there are a few issues with it. Otherwise I think it’s good, because it’s celebrating women and it’s women writers writing for women and talking about women’s issues and we’re bringing it to the forefront. On one hand, that’s great. But there are a few problems with women’s fiction. One is, often people will say, what do you do for a living? I say, I’m an author. The next question is always, what do you write? If I say romance, or even rural romance, immediately they know what I’m talking about. Contemporary life stories If I say women’s fiction, they give me a bit of a blank look because it doesn’t really tell you anything about what you’re reading. Crime tells you what you’re reading, horror does, fantasy does, sci-fi, romance, but women’s fiction – it’s like, what the hell is that? It encapsulates a whole lot of things. Often historical fiction comes in there, family sagas will come in there, women’s fiction with romantic elements, more issue-based book club fiction sometimes comes in, and they are quite different stories. Probably even domestic noir sometimes. I thought, it’s better to have a term that describes what I wrote, which was contemporary life stories, women’s issues but not necessarily women’s – there are men’s issues in my books too – but things that contemporary people are dealing with on an everyday basis. My publicist at the time said, what about life-lit? We have chick-lit, some people hate that term too. There are so many different ‘lits’ we have – what about life-lits? It’s like general life fiction. I’ve heard recently other terms like up-lit, which is slightly different to what I think of as life-lit. Another reason I felt there’s a problem with the term ‘women’s fiction’ is that there is no men’s fiction section. Maybe that’s a good thing. Maybe it’s celebrating women. But in some ways, the flip side of the coin is ‘the little’s women’s’ stuff – it’s just women’s stuff, don’t worry about that. The third reason I don’t love it is because I have plenty of male readers. I know all of my writing friends who write in this genre and even the rural romance genre, the majority of readers are probably women, but there are a number of people who are not. I get emails quite frequently from men saying they have enjoyed my books. Sometimes it’s the rural ones, because I guess they often like the rural aspect of them, but they also like the romance. And I get a number of men reading the other ones. And yes – men read them too.. A few years ago, one of my male readers was attacked on Facebook because he had put up a post about reading this type of fiction and someone said, why are you reading girls’ books? I think it’s horrible that people judge anyone’s reading. That’s how life-lit came about, but it’s still hard to explain what it actually is. Jenny Wheeler: I noticed one of your last year’s life-lit titles, Just One Wish, a reviewer used this phrase, ‘if you like your chick-lit with a dash of intelligent social commentary’. That grated on me. You couldn’t expect ‘chick-lit’ with intelligent social commentary? What a surprise. Also, chick-lit is very much urban, isn’t it? It is the Bridget Jones stuff. Just One Wish – Rachael Johns – one of her life lit series Rachael Johns: Yes. I see chick-lit as younger, more the twenties, early thirties, and not so much dealing with family life and later in life marital issues, but more dating and working out who you are type thing. But I agree with you re that quote. Part of me was, that’s a great quote, it makes me sound good. But another part of me was the same as you, I’m thinking, there’s nothing wrong with chick-lit. This is what really grates me on people’s opinions about romance and chick-lit. We are at the very bottom of the pecking order. Often people haven’t read these books at all or they secretly enjoy them, but they don’t think they should. They think chick-lit and romance is light and fluffy and it’s not about anything important, but as I discussed with you already, my books, all the romance ones, have deeper, important issues behind them. What’s more important than love? Second time round stories But at the same time, there’s not just love that they explore. I have read hardly any chicklit or romance that doesn’t have more going on, so yes, that did grate on me a little bit too. Jenny Wheeler: Pretty well all your romances, or certainly the ones I’ve seen, are looking at women who are adults. They’re grownups. They’re mostly not meeting Mr Right first time round. They might have had an unsuccessful romance, or they’re divorced, or they’re in the middle stage of life, or in the stage past being very young, aren’t they? Rachael Johns: Definitely. I think that it’s more, not more interesting because there’s nothing more exciting than the first flush of love, but we know in real life most of us don’t get it right the first time and it’s nice to show encouragement to other people. My sister is 53 and she’s divorced and dating now and she’s loving it. I know other people who, second time around, are so much happier than they ever were first time around. Once you’ve got baggage there are issues, but it also can be so much more fulfilling. Jenny Wheeler: Moving away from the specific books to your wider career, I think people would guess from what you’ve said already that you probably would put perseverance up there as the key to your success, but what advice would you give to young writers starting out? Is there one thing you would really focus on? Rachael Johns: Yes, definitely. If you really, really want it, don’t give up, because so much in this industry is luck and timing. You have to be ready for the luck and timing. My rural romance sold because that is what people were wanting at the time, but I had it there and I’d written it. I had been working on my craft for years. Being a life-long learner WA author and English author Anna Jacobs often calls it an apprenticeship. Every writer needs an apprenticeship. That apprenticeship might be a year, it might be 15 years like me, who knows, but I don’t regret any of that time spent learning. I’m still learning. So my big thing would be don’t give up if you really, really want it. The other thing is to read lots, so many things I would say. Read lots. You can learn so much from reading. It could be crippling because you think, wow, this person is so much better than me, why am I even trying? But remember when you’re thinking like that, this book you’re reading is fully edited and it’s been through all the stages, so you can’t compare it with your first draft. I have to remind myself that. Jilted by Rachael Johns – classic rural romance The other really big thing I’d say at the moment, this is not so much about craft or actual technique, is don’t be in a rush. I’m so glad that self-publishing wasn’t an option when I was 17. Now there’s nothing wrong with self-publishing. I’ve got great friends who indie publish and they’ve chosen to do it – maybe it’s their first book they have decided to do it with, maybe they’ve already been traditionally published for years and for one reason or another, either their hand’s been forced or they’ve decided to go out on their own. We are so lucky there is that option now, and you can do really well with that. But the flipside of that is some people will write one book, it gets rejected and they think, well, that’s not my book. The publishers know what they’re talking about and it’s so easy now to put your book out there. I’m really glad I didn’t have that opportunity because otherwise at 17 or 18 I would have published that book. It would have been so terrible, not just embarrassing emotionally, but terrible because of how badly it was written. So don’t be in a hurry. Make sure you’re really proud of whatever you put out there. There are so many little bits of advice I could give. Trust the magic of creation Jenny Wheeler: Do you do anything like writing workshops for that kind of advice? Rachael Johns: I do sometimes if I’m asked. I always feel a bit iffy about giving writing workshops because I have no idea really how I write a book. I’m not one of those plotty type people who plan it all out beforehand. Often, when I have too much of a plan or too much of an idea where it’s going, that stops. That is one of the reasons why I ditched this other book I was writing, because I think I knew too much and in theory it should have worked, but it wasn’t. Man Drought – Rachael Johns So it’s very hard sometimes to teach how I write, because I’m not really sure how I do it myself. But I do try, if I’m asked, and I’m very happy to talk on panels, not necessarily to teach, but talk about how different everyone is and how you need to find your own way and trust your process in the end. I’m constantly filled with doubt and think all of this was a fluke and I can’t do this again. It’s horrible. So I’ve got a two little post-it notes on my desk here. One says ‘trust the magic’ because I think there is magic in writing. So many times, I’ve put something in a book and haven’t realized why I’ve put it there. In Man Drought, which is my second rural romance, I had a heroine who is buying a country pub and she has two friends she’s coming to shop. Going with the process One of them is pregnant and the other one is really citified and loves shopping and magazines and all this stuff. I just bedded them to be different. That’s how I did it, no idea why. That baby was born, the heroine delivers the baby in the book and it’s a big part of the whole story. I didn’t plan that at all. The more I write, the more – if I do something like that – I think, why am I making her pregnant? That’s ridiculous. And I’ll try and pull back. I have to remind myself that the first draft is about getting everything down and trusting that maybe there’s some magic working and your subconscious knows why you’re putting things there before you do. That’s why the other little sign I’ve got is ‘go with your gut’ because often I’ve questioned so much. I start trying to think of another way of doing something and I’ve learned to realize my original idea, or my original way is often the way that is most organic, and I should have gone with it. Jenny Wheeler: You were mentioning about reading and how, at the beginning, you weren’t much of a reader. This is The Joys of Binge Reading, so we like to get an idea of what you’re reading now and what you’d like to recommend to others. You had a lot of catching up to do, so how has your reading gone over the last 15 years or so? Rachael Johns: So much catching up to do, and sadly I think I will never catch up. I binge buy books so much, I buy way more books than I’ll ever be able to read and I’m quite a slow reader. I think that’s probably because it took me so long to get there. If I was devouring lots of books in high school, I think that would have increased my pace. What Rachael is reading now There are a lot of classics. I had to read things at Uni so that helped a little bit, but there are certain things I feel I should have read that I haven’t. One of them is The Thorn Birds. (Colleen McCullough classic) I recently read that for my online book club. So long. Now I read pretty widely. I don’t read a lot rural romance anymore, because I find there is so much out there and it’s like romance, there are only so many stories. Not that I’m worried about copying anyone’s voice. I just feel sometimes the rural is too close. I’d rather read contemporary romance set in America or UK. Obviously, I read the life-lit genre, I still love Marian Keyes and Monica McInerney, Liane Moriarty. Also, I do read a bit of crime because I really enjoy that. The one good thing about reading crime is I’m not reading every sentence comparing it to my writing and thinking, oh my God, this is so much better or, why is this being published? I’m not analyzing how it’s all fitting together. It is very hard to switch off now when I read a book. I’m constantly picking it apart even if I don’t want to be. My most favorite book I’ve read lately is Anxious People by Fredrik Backman. He is a Swedish author. He wrote A Man Called Ove. I love his stuff. He’s so clever. He is my favorite author at the moment, I think. Jenny Wheeler: We are starting to run out of time so circling around, what’s next for you as a writer and what projects have you got on over the next 12 months or so? What’s next for Rachael? Rachael Johns: Too many. I have had a couple of years where I only wrote one book, and this year has been two and next year it’s supposed to be two as well. I’m currently writing a rural romance. It is the fifth in my Bunyip Bay series, which was always supposed to be only three books, but people liked it so we’re going back for more. (Bunyip Bay series includes Outback Sisters, Outback Ghost, Outback Blaze, Outback Dreams) It’s a Christmas romance and my issue that I’m exploring is rural men’s mental health and suicide. It is quite dark, but I’m going to throw in a Christmas pantomime and the town doing that, so I’m hoping it works out. Very early days. Next year I’ve got a book coming out in May which I’m super excited about. It’s called How to Mend a Broken Heart and it’s set in New Orleans in America. I am obsessed with that place, I have been there three times now, maybe two. I think I’m dreaming that I’ve been there three, I love it so much and I definitely want to go back again. It’s such an eclectic place with so much different variety of culture and music and art, and history and ghosts. It’s amazing. The Art of Keeping Secrets – Rachael Johns The good thing about that book is that for many years, people have been asking me for a sequel to The Art of Keeping Secrets, which I wrote a few years ago. I didn’t really know how I was going to do that, but I’ve managed to do it set in New Orleans. I’m very, very excited about that book. It is life-lit with a strong romantic element. It’s the story of one of my characters from The Art of Keeping Secrets and her daughter, them both having to move on after disappointments. But it’s set in New Orleans – so much fun. Where to find Rachael online Jenny Wheeler: Is that the first one set outside Australia? Rachael Johns: The first one almost completely set outside Australia in my full-length books. I have written a couple of cowboy novellas and I did write another book set in New Orleans which is a series with three other authors – Megan Crane, Maisey Yates and Jackie Ashenden from New Zealand. That was a one-off and it was a biker book – totally out of my comfort zone. It’s only digital. But this one is my first traditionally mainstream published book that is set completely somewhere else. I did have a bit of pull back from my publishers, I think they’re quite happy for me to just write Australian settings, but I stood my ground. Jenny Wheeler: That’s great. I’m sure you like to hear from your readers, obviously you do hear from your readers. Where can they reach you online? Rachael Johns: Definitely I do. I love it. Often these emails or messages come just at the right moment. I’m on Facebook and Instagram under Rachael Johns Author. I have a website rachaeljohns.com. It is getting a revamp at the moment. It’s my old one if you look at the moment, but by the time this podcast comes out, hopefully it will be my new one. I’m very excited about that. Jenny Wheeler: Rachael, thanks so much for your time, it’s been fantastic. The Christmas book you mentioned, that will be Christmas next year, won’t it? Rachael Johns: Yes, hopefully. Fingers crossed that I can finish this one without having to start again. Jenny Wheeler: All the very best. And thanks for being with us. Rachael Johns: Thank you so much, Jenny. If you enjoyed Rachael you might also enjoy Fiona Palmer – Beloved Storyteller LISTEN TO FIONA HERE Thanks To Our Technical Support: The Joys of Binge Reading podcast is put together with wonderful technical help from Dan Cotton at DC Audio Services. Dan is an experienced sound and video engineer who’s ready and available to help you with your next project… Seek him out at [email protected] or Phone + 64 – 21979539. He’s fast, takes pride in getting it right, and lovely to work with. Our voice overs are done by Abe Raffills, and Abe’s another gem. He got 20 years of experience on both sides of the camera/microphone as a cameraman/director and also voice artist and television presenter. Abe’s vocal delivery is both light hearted and warm and he is super easy to work with no matter the job. You’ll find him at [email protected]