Interview Diana Lee Johnson

by

Shirley Wolford

1) What made you start writing and how old were you?

I started writing rhyming poetry in first grade and continue doing so to this day. I always liked to make up stories in my head and started writing them down occasionally when I was about twelve years old, but stuck mostly with poetry until I was almost thirty.

2) Do you start with an incident or with characters?

I have no set plan to start with. Sometimes a character strikes my fancy; sometimes a situation knocks on my brain. A good example of that would be the hero in Unraveled. I have only worked three places in my entire life. My first job less than a year before I got a job closer to home for a small City where I stayed for 17 years until being courted away by another local government where I’ve been for nearly 23 years.

The first few years where I am now, there came several new employees who had recently left the military. A couple of them became good friends, whom I would tease out of their habits to say “yes, ma’am” and “no, ma’am”, and stand like unsmiling statues.

3) Are the females anything like you or what you would like to be?

My female characters always have something of me in their hearts, and their heads, though I have never been as bold--or beautiful. They always have my sense of humor, I think. And my mother would say too many of them have red hair as do I and as did she.

4) Do you start out with a complete synopsis or do you write episodically?

I have never written a synopsis in advance of a story, as a matter of fact, I have trouble synopsizing even after a story is written. I can’t say that I write episodically really either. I write whatever the movie looks like that is playing in my head and I am often as amazed by what the characters say as my readers may be.

5) Are your stories historical or modern? Once again my apologies for not having read your book.

Don’t apologize for not reading the book, Unraveled. No one would have read it before publication with the exception of Wings staff, and my best friend who has been reading my work since we met many years ago at ages seven and eight.

Unraveled is my first mystery, or, as Wings categorizes it, “Romantic Suspense.” I have three historicals, one time-travel, and three contemporary novels published by Wings. I have two prose pieces in an anthology and poems in a number of volumes of modern poetry.

6) If you write in the third person is your view point masculine or feminine?

I’m afraid “view point” is also not a strong suit of mine. I’m more like the person in the audience, regardless of gender, and, though my work may be considered “romantic” it is more in the original sense of the word than in the malignment of the genre pinned on it by those who do not read because they expect “bodice-rippers.” Male friends who have purchased my books, probably with no intention of actually reading them, have amazed themselves by their own interest, particularly my historicals, in which I strive for historical accuracy.

7) When you're writing, do you place yourself in the middle of the action or are you on the outside looking in?

Oops, I guess I already answered that one by saying I’m the one watching the movie unfold in my head.

8) If you could travel back in time, what era would you choose and why?

Antebellum through Civil War America, though I’d want to go many times and for short durations as I fear I would not do well without my modern conveniences and store-bought meat and food-stuffs, not to mention the many layers of constricting clothing they wore. It might be the ideal way to lose weight, though!