Kitty Johnson's Blog

Last week marked one year since my novel PRICKLY COMPANY was published. The time seems to have flashed past since I wrote this story about a community trying to make life easier for local hedgehogs and dealing with the dramas that take place as a result!

When I set out to write Prickly, I’d just read Celeste Ng’s Little Fires Everywhere. I loved that story for so many reasons, but one thing I found really inspiring was the way that Shaker Heights, the setting for the book, was almost seen from above at times - as if the people and events were like ants, and then we zoomed in closer and they became people. Shaker Heights and all it stood for was like a character in itself.

I decided I wanted to do something similar with PRICKLY COMPANY; that I would show the reader the community in its entirety - people, hedgehogs and all - and then swoop down into - mainly human- viewpoints. As I wrote the novel, the occasional hedgehog perspective crept in too. I wanted these perspectives to be many things - sometimes amusing and entertaining, occasionally sad and moving, but also educational. I had things to say about how hedgehogs live and how human habits affect them, and I wanted to tell the reader about these things in a way that was part of the story.

I had a lot to say about people too, and the way that, all too often, we keep our pain and struggles hidden from each other when, possibly, if we were more open, we might get help and understanding from the most unexpected sources.

It was a lot of fun to write.

So, Happy Birthday, Prickly!

Today’s the day! CLOSEST KEPT is officially released into the world, taking along with it long hours of work and re-crafting, hundreds of lines of dialogue delivered to me from my characters as I walked the dog, and emotions - plenty of emotions! As a writer, I always feel things along with my characters, and there was a lot to feel with Lily, the viewpoint character of CLOSEST KEPT. I like to think that, were she able to read the novel, she’d like the way I told her story, even if she found the words painful to read at times.

CLOSEST KEPT celebrates friendship and the power of taking the risk to face up to what might be holding you back in life. I hope you enjoy it, and if you do, I’d be eternally grateful if you could help to increase visibility by leaving a review!

A while ago now, I fell deeply in love with the Before series of films: Before Sunrise (1995), Before Sunset (2004) and Before Midnight (2013) starring Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy, directed by Richard Linklater.

If you haven’t seen them, the films follow the spark and evolution of a relationship between a couple - Jesse and Celine - who meet on a train (in Sunrise) and decide to spend a night in Vienna walking and talking the night away. They meet again in Paris after 9 years apart (in Sunset), and then, (in Midnight) we pick up with them 9 years later on holiday in Greece after they’ve had two children together. The actors and the characters age in real time, and the films were an amazing collaboration between the actors and the director, with the actors helping to write their own dialogue. And dialogue is what the films are really about - hours of conversations between Jesse and Celine about life and love, time, self-discovery, age, loss, and parenting as the couple gets to know and love each other.

The films largely break the “show don’t tell rule”, and yet remain - to me, and thousands of others - hugely interesting, all those conversations brimming with subtext and crackling with attraction, vulnerability and emotion. Humour too.

So what has the Before trilogy got to do with Closest Kept? Well, when I set out to write a novel about the shifting relationships between two couples, I had the kind of subtext and emotions of those long conversations between Jesse and Celine in my mind. I wanted to try and see if, here and there, I could create something similar - to allow the reader to really get an insight into the dynamic between the friends and lovers as well as to get to know the individual characters. I was unsure, when I started working with a developmental editor, whether these long scenes of dialogue would make it into the finished novel, or whether I’d be asked to cut them down.

So much about the novel deepened and changed during the developmental editing process - it was a painful, but extremely worthwhile experience which I’ve spoken about before. The novel is certainly very much stronger than it was before all the changes. But, hurrah, those two long scenes of conversations between Lily, Inga, Matt and Alex that were so close to my heart survived pretty much intact.

You can read them - and the rest of the novel - from publication day on 6th May.

It occurred to me the other day that all the major world travel I’ve done so far has been as the result of some big life-changing event. I’ve used travel to far flung countries - a bit like challenging myself to perform stand-up comedy - as a way of proving to myself that I’m okay. Or, if I’m not quite okay just then, that I will be soon. How could I not be, when I’m a gutsy, brave woman, travelling somewhere exciting, making my own decisions, and, in some cases, planning how the hell I can make enough money to pay for it all.

The first time I did this, years ago, I went to Belize, on my own, but as part of an organised group. I’d recently been dumped by my commitment phobic boyfriend, Christmas was fast approaching, and I couldn’t face spending the festive season back home with my family, feeling like a failure and engaging in the same old rituals. As far as I was concerned, Christmas was cancelled. I’d send everyone exotic postcards instead of Christmas cards. So I got myself a series of short-term foreign student lodgers and saved up the pennies.

Belize was fabulous. Colourful. Exotic. Butterflies bigger than my hand. Brightly-coloured iguanas everywhere. A vivid green frog living on my shower curtain. Howler monkeys and a procession of leaf-cutter ants in the rain forest on our trip to the jungle on Christmas day. Sadly, there was also Bing Crosby’s White Christmas playing in the shops and decorative Santas ho, ho, hoing everywhere - turns out they celebrate Christmas in a big way in Belize. But I could forgive that, because it was such a paradise. Or it would have been, if it hadn’t been for my annoying room mate Linda, who drove me crazy with her ziplock bags of clothes and her constant commentaries about her activities: “I’m just going to find a clean T-shirt. Zip. Now where did I put it? Zip. Oh, here it is. No, not that one. Zip. I’ll save it until later. Zip. I think I’ll have a shower. Are you okay? Gosh, what a lively crew we are in here…” Etc.

Still, I was even grateful for Linda in the end, because she - together with everything Belize - inspired a novella (for people learning to speak English) - Jungle Love - that was published by Cambridge University Press.

Another break up, another adventure; this time to Cuba, where, happily, my room mate, Sharon, was delightful - we’re still friends twenty years later.

Cuba appears in my self-published novel For Hannah, With Love, but also in a therapy/revenge book called Murder Maker about a woman who becomes a serial killer as a result of being cruelly dumped.

The whole story is related to the viewpoint character’s ex, so he knows his murder is imminent. In real life, my ex saw the book in a book shop window after it was published and was compelled to go in and buy it, so he got to find out exactly what I might like to do to him if I wasn’t bothered about a prison sentence. But the real revenge was that the book sold around the world and is still selling today.

More recently, there was the trip to New Zealand, somewhere I’d always wanted to visit. This time, I went with my then 14-year-old son. No break-up to get over on this occasion - my beloved mother had died and I’d inherited some money. It was a trip to honour her; an attempt to sooth my grief. It was also a celebration of my close relationship with my son who, because of his age, was about to start growing away from me.

Words can’t describe how fabulous it was. We went at the end of 2019 - once again over Christmas, and instead of the usual festivities, we visited a glow worm cave and made use of the hotel launderette on the big day. (Though we did also go to a fabulous eat-all-you-want buffet in the evening). We returned home in January 2020, just before Covid hit. How lucky were we to get our trip in?

My most recent big trip was last year, in 2023, to attend the amazing Women’s Fiction Writers Association conference in Chicago, celebrating 10 years of the organisation. The impetus for travelling all that way this time, apart from wanting to meet lots of like-minded writers and to gain important insight and knowledge? My son was leaving home to start university. An empty nest was rushing towards me, and I needed, once again, to prove to myself that I would okay. I had to be okay, because, look at me, doing something brave. Going all that way by myself. (Especially brave, because I’m not over confident at such events). But it was fantastic. Life-affirming. As all my big travel adventures have been.

But the thing is, what next? I’ve come to terms with my son being gone. I’m in a happy long-term relationship. My books are being published and warmly received. I don’t want my boat to be rocked, thank you very much. So, I suppose I’m just going to have to do some exciting world travel because…well, I want to take a holiday. The way most people do!

(Please consider pre-ordering my next novel, Closest Kept to help fund future world travel).

It has been quite a week. Last Thursday I gave a talk to The Golden Triangle Girls Women’s Institute group - of which I’m a member - on the topic of: My life as a writer, and the role my life has played in my writing. And on Saturday morning, I woke up to discover that, while I was asleep, my novel Five Winters had won a Star Award from the Women’s Fiction Writers Association!

The Women’s Fiction Writers Association is so important to me. I’ve made some amazing friends through being a member, and I wouldn’t have my agent if I’d never joined, because she found me via a pitch event organised by the WFWA.

So I was thrilled to win the Star Award, as I’m sure you can imagine. Emotional too. In fact, I’ll admit to shedding more than a few tears. Winning an award like this is validation, I guess, for all the years of hard work. It’s humbling and extremely gratifying to know that readers have enjoyed your book; that your characters have spoken to them, entertained them. That you’ve kept them up at night reading your words.

As I told the Golden Triangle Girls, Five Winters is packed full of experiences and emotions from my life. The main character, Beth, is not me at all. But, during the course of the novel, she deals with some of the same issues I’ve dealt with myself over the years. Unrequited love (happily a long time ago now)! A strong yearning to have a family. The need to pick yourself up and make a new start when things go wrong.

I’ve heard that, when they’re preparing for a role, actors search their memories for a time when they felt the same emotions as their character - it’s the same with writing, or at least, it is for me.

If you’re a writer, nothing in your life needs to be wasted! I once had a dog who liked to race trains if I walked him near a railway line - in the book. At my mother’s funeral, one of the pall bearers was shorter than the others, which made the coffin feel alarmingly precarious - in the book. I was once a part-time stepmother to two girls who resented me - you’ve guessed it - in the book. Nothing is exactly the same as in real life, but the core of the experience - the sadness, the panic, the laughter - can be used to sweep your reader along with you.

My next novel, Closest Kept, is equally emotional. Like Beth in Five Winters, my main character, Lily, has a strong friendship that plays an important part in her life. But things change, and the future suddenly looks as uncertain for Lily as the past she does her level best to forget. Closest Kept is available to pre-order now! Published on 6th May 2025.

My favourite way to write fiction is to dive in and keep writing (or swimming) until I reach the end of a first draft. I don’t even stop if I come across something that needs some research - I just type research bla, bla, bla here and press on. That continuity, when you’re fully immersed in your story, is golden. The characters begin to speak to you. You can see the stepping stones ahead. You start to make connections and to see ways you can pull threads together.

Of course, the first draft is a total mess - something I didn’t realise that when I first typed the words THE END. A first draft is your raw material, to be shaped into something that looks like something, not to be sent joyously off into the world straight away the way I did back then. You can’t see what needs work at first - you’re too close to it. It’s vital to leave your words to brew, but it’s not easy to do this. I my opinion though, some distance is essential.

In all my years of writing, I’ve only ever submitted completed novels to editors. (Of course they still needed work - the editing process is lengthy, with many layers).

But this time around, with my current work in progress, that valuable period of continuity - of getting immersed in my draft day after day, and week after week, just hasn’t been possible. I’ve submitted a partial - which had to be very polished - and a synopsis, while much of the rest of the story doesn’t yet exist. I’ve also been doing developmental edits on my previous novel - Closest Kept - (out May 2025), and I’m shortly about to start copy edits. I’ve been busy with publicity activities for Prickly Company as well, including taking part in a panel - Behind Closed Doors - at the Primadonna Festival last weekend. This was a great experience - my sincere thanks to Winnie Li for her excellent interviewing skills, and to Bee Rowlatt, author of the excellent One Woman Crimewave, who appeared on the panel with me.

I may also have gone against my usual habit of putting aside research until later by making the most of the opportunity to perform stand-up comedy as part of the Make Primadonna Laugh event. Well, I like a challenge. It says so in my bio, so it must be true.

I’m definitely not complaining about all the different hats I’ve had to wear lately - it’s such a privileged position to be in, and I’m thrilled to be where I am today.

But characters, don’t think that just because I’ve been distracted I’ve forgotten all the trouble I’m going to get you into. The emotional roller coaster I’m going to make you all ride. It’s coming for you, sooner than you think.

Hold on tight!

Hurrah! Yesterday was launch day for PRICKLY COMPANY!

I had a small, fun launch at my local library complete with hedgehog themed cakes. It was great.

Here's a link to my Substack with a video of me chatting about it. And while you're there, why not subscribe to my Substack?

https://kittyjohnson.substack.com/p/h...

I've just emerged from my editing cave to the reality that PRICKLY COMPANY will be out in the world in 12 days! I knew somewhere in the back of my mind that time was ticking down of course, but I've been so immersed in rewrites of my 2025 novel - currently called CLOSEST KEPT, though I doubt the title will stick - that I pushed thoughts of launch day from my mind. Mostly. (I did emerge from time to time for exciting interviews with various publications and to write a hedgehog inspired short story).

But now my edits have been sent off - until they return no doubt for a bit more work - and launch day is catapulting towards me. It's very exciting. Nerve-wracking too!

I've already received 68 early review of PRICKLY COMPANY on Goodreads, and they've mostly been very favourable. Thank you so much to everyone who's taken the time to read and review. It's hugely reassuring to see that the majority of readers 'get' and enjoyed my book.

So much soul-searching, creativity, hopes and dreams go into a novel, and then it's time to pass it over to you, the reader. I can't wait. Not just because I'm eager for you to meet my characters and I hope you'll enjoy the emotional roller coaster of the read, but also because I hope the book helps to raise awareness about hedgehogs and, if you live in a country where they're a native species, the ways we can help them to thrive. Hurrah!

It’s a sunny morning as I emerge, blinking and bewildered, from my editing cave.

Last time I posted, I think I may have told you I didn’t have much to do to my 2025 book. Ha! I lied. If not to you, then certainly to myself. My editor, Tiffany Yates Martin, consistently asked me to dig deeper in her notes on my manuscript, so for the past month that’s what I’ve done, submerging myself in my characters and their worlds, living their lives, seeing through their eyes. I’ve been vague and unfocused in ‘real life,’ forgetting to do things, staring blankly, popping up only now and then like a meerkat checking for trouble.

Now my edits are submitted, and I have a long, nerve-wracking week ahead waiting to see how they’re received. I hope Tiffany, and Alicia, my commissioning editor at Lake Union, like what I’ve done. I’m vulnerable because digging deeper requires you to dig deeper inside yourself. Like an actor, to think, when have I felt this way? To find ways to express those feelings that don’t involve too many dripping tears - show, don’t tell!

Digging deeper means doing your level best not to think about people you know reading your words after they’re published. Although fortunately neither of my two brothers - who have always delighted in making fun of me (in a loving way, you understand…) will ever read one of my novels, so that’s one embarrassment less. But there are the members of my book clubs, my women’s Institute groups, my ex students, the people who live in my street, etc, etc.

Oh well, it’s done now, and this morning all the words I’ve written are still spiraling around in my head and I’m really missing my characters. There’s always a void after I’ve finished working on something; a slight sadness when really I ought to be celebrating meeting a deadline, making something I hope and feel is gripping and moving.

Still, there was an effective distraction at the weekend when I went to a local hedgehog rescue centre with my partner for a photo shoot. A UK magazine is going to be running a feature close to the publication of Prickly Company about my volunteering work as a driver for Hodemedods Hedgehog Support and asked for photos. Jermy the rescue hedgehog - with a little encouragement from Katie, his carer - was happy to oblige. It was a rare sunny day, the blossom was out on the cherry tree and it matched my hair. It wasn’t difficult to smile, even though Jermy was the prickliest hedgehog I’ve ever held, hence the gardening gloves. Ouch!

I’m currently working on edits for my 2025 novel - it’s current title is Closest Kept, but since I very much doubt it will end up with this title, my 2025 novel is what I’ve come to think of it as.

I haven’t been asked to make any major changes - yay!! Okay, the third act needs more work, but mainly I’ve just been asked to dig deeper.

As a creative writing tutor, I often picked my students up on places in their stories where they’d omitted to write a big scene, skimming over it in a few reported sentences. You need to dramatise this, I’d tell them. (Many of my students on my mailing list are probably nodding their heads at this point. Either that, or smiling wryly.)

The places where they’d skipped over a big scene were always so obvious to me - there was their audience, in their seats, waiting to be caught up in their characters’ emotions. To have that prickly feeling on the back of their necks as their hairs stood on end. To grip the book tighter as they experienced empathy, horror, or absolute joy, and the writer hadn’t even opened the curtains on the scene, leaving the reader thinking, Oh, is that it?

Well, it turns out it’s easier to spot these places in someone else’s writing than your own, because last week I read this note from my editor:

So much we miss here - that feels too important to skip over to me.

And of course, she’s right.

That’s the wonderful thing about working with an editor you’re on the same wavelength as. Someone who really ‘gets’ your book and your characters. She can point things out, say a few words, and bing, there’s a chemical reaction inside your head and you know exactly what needs to be done.

I don’t know if other writers find this kind of collaboration daunting; whether it undermines their self-confidence. I suppose it’s possible they feel reluctant to let go of their autonomy. But for me, happily, it’s a very positive experience. I don’t feel as if I’ve been told what to do, just as if I’ve been given a packet of seeds to sew and cultivate exactly as I want.

So, prepare to grip the book tighter, buckle up, and put your scarf on ready for that chill on the back of your neck.

I’m diving in!