Cj petterson
is the pen name of Marilyn A. Johnston whose publication credits include two
contemporary romantic suspense novels as well as nonfiction and fiction short
stories that have appeared in several anthologies. She is currently working on
a mystery series. Today cj sits down with us for an interview. Learn more about
her at the Lyrical Pens blog.
When did
you realize you wanted to write novels?
After I retired from Chrysler in 2001. My job
required a lot of travel and long hours, and when I retired, I had the time to
do something else. I took a class at the University of South Alabama in 2003
called “Storming the Walls of the Publishing Industry,” got positive feedback
on the first seven pages I wrote, and was hooked on learning as much as I could
to scale those walls. Those seven pages became the start of my second novel
that was published in 2015.
How long
did it take you to realize your dream of publication?
My first three short-story memoirs were published in
2008: “Don’t Ride the Clutch” in Cup of
Comfort for Divorced Women, “The Blue-Eyed Doll” in Christmas is a Season 2008, and “Dancing with Daddy” in Christmas Through a Child’s Eyes.
Are you
traditionally published, indie published, or a hybrid author?
I am traditionally published so far, but looking into
indie publishing for the novella I’m working on.
Where do
you write?
My Dell computer is in a bedroom I converted to an
office that I share with my photographer son and his Apple computer and a slew
of other equipment and furniture.
Is silence
golden, or do you need music to write by? What kind?
I like to listen to music without lyrics. My son
likes the white noise of a fan so I have both going on when I write.
How much of
your plots and characters are drawn from real life? From your life in
particular?
About fifty-fifty. There is a part of me, real or
wished-for, and/or my personal adventures in all of my female protagonists.
That’s especially true in one of my romantic suspense novels. I once spent five-and-a-half
days whitewater rafting in Colorado and a year later spent two
days driving a doors-off, stick-shift Wrangler on a Jeep Jamboree off-road
adventure in the Sierra Nevada Mountains. The protagonist in my romantic
suspense novel Choosing Carter enjoys
some of these same adventures.
Describe
your process for naming your character?
That’s a challenge always. I read newspapers,
magazine, obits, and do Google searches, but I would never use a complete name
from anything I’ve read. I want character names to reflect their nationality or
where they live. Because I correlate words and names as musical, my character
names have a rhythm. The names are, hopefully, a bit unique even if they do, I
am sure, really belong to somebody somewhere…Mirabel Campbell. Bryn McKay.
Carter Danielson. Anders Olsson.
Real
settings or fictional towns?
I have to say both, but even the fictional ones are
based on real places I’ve been to or lived in. My short story, “Bad Day at
Round Rock,” is a historical fiction piece based on real events that took place
in 1878 in the real cow town of Round Rock, Texas.
What’s the
quirkiest quirk one of your characters has?
I think of quirky old Talley Munroe, the unwashed
prospector in “Bad Day at Round Rock,” who dreams of finding a hidden cache of
stolen gold then loses both his life and the gold when he finds it.
What’s your
quirkiest quirk?
I used to do all my ironing wearing high heels, but I
do very little ironing now and I’m wearing aerobic trainers. However, I still
love to hang my laundry out to dry on the clothes lines outside my laundry
room.
If you
could have written any book (one that someone else has already written,) which
one would it be? Why?
I would love to have written Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre, because I think it’s the
ultimate romance novel.
Everyone at
some point wishes for a do-over. What’s yours?
I wish I had started college in my teens or twenties
instead of waiting until I was thirty-seven and divorced.
What’s your
biggest pet peeve?
People who assume they know what I’m going to say or
do in a given situation…and then I do it!
Ticks me off to be so predictable.
You’re
stranded on a deserted island. What are your three must-haves?
Survival things . . . a way to make potable water, a
way to fish, and my Bible.
What was
the worst job you’ve ever held?
I worked in the labor relations department of a large
corporation early in my career. My boss was almost intolerable. I started every
morning with a prayer that I could get through the day without quitting or
getting fired. As sole provider for my mother and my son, I couldn’t afford to
do either. I felt like I was in jail.
What’s the
best book you’ve ever read?
There are too many to choose from, so I’ll pick the
one that hooked me on action, adventure, and historical stories: Last of the Mohicans by James Fenimore
Cooper. I was about ten years old when I read that one. It took me several
weeks one winter, but once a week, I tramped through snow (seriously) to the
Mark Twain Library in Detroit to read it. Sounds a lot like the old saw of
walking five miles to school, barefoot through the snow, uphill both ways, but
hey, the story absolutely fascinated me.
Ocean or
mountains?
Mountains.
City
girl/guy or country girl/guy?
Slightly citified country girl.
What’s on
the horizon for you?
Gosh, I hope there are more novels, either the second
book in a possible detective series or a stand-alone. But I’m not a fast
writer. I’ve never been able to throw words at a piece of paper and then go back
later for edits. Like computer coding, the next scene doesn’t work for me until
the one before it is as good as I can make it . . . at the time. Of course, it
gets changed later. Writing that “decent first draft” means it takes me a long
time to complete a novel. I know. I
know. Hiring a development editor could speed up the process.
Anything
else you’d like to tell us about yourself and/or your books?
I am especially happy with “Bad Day at Round Rock,”
and was thrilled when the publisher accepted it with a one-word edit.
Everything in the story about Sam Bass is as true as newspaper reports and lore
have made it. The character Lilly Malmstrom is a composite of my imagination
and my black-haired, blue-eyed, maternal grandmother, Selma, who emigrated alone
from Sweden in 1904 at the age of 18 and truly did have to work off a debt
because her money was stolen on the ship.
Seven authors contributed short stories to The Posse. The are Lyn Horner, “The
Schoolmarm's Hero”; Frank Kelso, “One Way or Another” and “Tibby's Hideout”;
Charlene Raddon, “The Reckoning”; Chimp Robertson, “Headed for Texas”; Jim
Stroud, “Savage Posse”; Chuck Tyrell, “Set a Thief”; and of course my own “Bad
Day at Round Rock”.
Check out the trailer here.
The Posse
The Posse is an anthology of Western human interest short
stories that includes cj petterson’s historical fiction “Bad Day at Round
Rock.” The Posse has the action you’d
expect from stories about cowboys in the old Wild West, but it’s not your
average shoot-em-up Western anthology, and “Bad Day” is not your average
Western story:
When the outlaw Sam Bass robbed the Union Pacific
train of $60,000 in uncirculated gold pieces, he set off a chain of events that
culminated in a “Bad Day at Round Rock.” Men lose their lives seeking their
fortunes, outlaws are shot down in the streets, an innocent man is accused of
murder, and a girl becomes a woman in a story of history, mystery, myth, greed and
love torn from the pages of West Texas history.
