J. Ivanel Johnson
Just A STALE MATE
DOSSIER: With a background in teaching English and being a drama coach, was it inevitable that you turned out being a writer of books?
JOHNSON: It was t’other way ’round, actually. Because I was born breech, and that’s how I do everything.
I was writing and acting (and directing – everyone in sight!) long before I ever thought I’d be a teacher. My first published work was a spoooky poem about – you guessed it – a dark and stormy night! (actually about a horse in a barn fire on a stormy night). Annick Press of Toronto put that out in an anthology when I was 12. Right after that they ‘discovered’ now world-famous Robert Munsch and forgot all about me.
But I’ve been pounding out poems, short stories, song lyrics, and novel manuscripts for nearly 50 years. As far as getting my novels published only recently, though? Well, it just takes those of us born breech some time to ‘bring things around in the right direction’.
DOSSIER: There seems to be more therapeutic horse riding programs available to people who need it. When did you get into horses and therapeutic riding?
JOHNSON: Just as my latest whodunnit thriller Just A STALE MATE touches briefly on the very beginnings of therapeutic riding (or Riding for the Disabled, as it’s still called in the UK), I got into this part of the equestrian field quite early on. I’ve always ridden, and then became certified as an instructor, also competing in 3-Day Eventing, and ran a riding stable for a decade (while of course still writing!). However, as I’ve had spondylolisthesis, diagnosed in my teens, and several other chronic and crippling conditions, I began volunteering age 15 with a therapeutic riding center – and then went on to become a certified instructor in that area as well. It’s a very fulfilling charity!
There are both mental health issues and physical disabilities featured in Just A STALE MATE, just as most of my writing includes diversity in a variety of forms. It’s all about trying ‘normalize’, wherever possible. Usually the issues or characters are presented in a light-hearted or simplistic way (in my mystery novels, at least), so this can be occasionally controversial. But back to being born breech – when HAVEN’T I been contrary?
DOSSIER: When and where do you write, and what kind of environment do you thrive in? (Music/silence/a quiet mountainside in the Canadian Appalachia?)
JOHNSON: I have to have silence. And that’s hard to find, often – even though we live in a remote, and most beautiful and tranquil part of the continent. Think Northeast Maine. We’re right on the border with them. When the tractors and logging trucks (or my husband) are too noisy, I will listen to some seasonal nature sounds with my headphones on. Burbling brooks, songbirds in the forest, rain on a tin roof, a crackling fire in the fireplace, etc. Even though we HAVE all those things on our property! Ironic that, but to cover up all the man-made machinery sounds – or just my husband washing dishes and singing the same line of ‘I Can’t Get No Satisfaction’ over and over, I have to occasionally put on the headphones to work!
Having said that, though – I’ve been incredibly lucky and also worked very hard, to always have inspirational places and scenery in which to live and write. These include (and don’t drool, authors!):
- a log cabin in Montana in the Rockies, complete with horse paddock and rushing river
- two stone cottages in England and one in the Scottish Highlands (one of these was a mere ten minute walk to the Brontes’ moors and village of Haworth – so inspirational on so many levels!)
- two century-old farmhouses with rolling hills and amazing views in two Canadian provinces
DOSSIER: A summary for your book Just A STILL LIFE refers to 1971 as “simpler times.” What about the early 1970s-era stands out in your book as “simpler” compared to something set in the modern day? Do you highlight the differences in your stories?
JOHNSON: A lot of spy stories and thriller characters are dependent on the latest technology, and even some inventions which are still in the fantasy realm. Once again, breech-born, here – I like to go backwards and be contrary.
I do NOT own a cell phone. And my husband has agreed (if in fact he had much choice – o.k., he didn’t! ) to go along with that. I can’t stand things jingling and ‘bing’ing and buzzing all over, whether I’m actually writing, or just staring out the window exploring my imagination, so he turns off all the alarms and beepy-things on appliances for me. I can’t stand seeing others lost in their little tiny screens instead of looking up and out, being aware of the moment they are IN, the people that surround them…
I also find, since the Golden Age of Mystery authors are all my favorites, that it’s much easier to plot and add clues and red herrings WITHOUT, for instance, the ability to run a DNA test in a fictional ‘overnight’ lab. And while I do occasionally enjoy reading about the tech aspects in a new Linwood Barclay or Harlan Coben, for my own work I’d rather research why my elderly detective’s suspect gramophone arm drones, than how today’s drones can pick up an armed suspect.
MODERN DAY TECH – AT SOME POINT IN THE FUTURE, THIS WILL BE A FINSHED MS: I do have some experience with The Met and its ‘high’ technology. I don’t like it. It’s very messy. And not at all eco-friendly. For a time, in England, I lived with a man who, it turns out, was wanted in four countries for embezzlement and money laundering. I was out of the country on holiday for a few weeks and when I flew back, I was MET by – well, the Met. After questioning me for a couple of hours at the airport, they drove me back to my cottage from which he’d hastily retreated (forever, thank goodness).
So he’d left a mess.
But worse than that, the police had been all over the cottage for days with their fingerprint powder (it’s grease, folks) on all my antiques, their plastics, their laminates, rummaging about in my drawers (both senses) and leaving behind discarded Styrofoam packagings and some kind of creepy, buzzing radar thing they installed for a week. (See how I can’t be bothered to research technology?)
So, no thanks. I’ll just keep writing about the tidier, simpler life when a phone jangled on the wall and you knew where to go to answer it. Just A STILL LIFE has been deemed a cozy mystery, although Just A STALE MATE is a more traditional whodunnit with ‘thriller’ aspects.
But either way, I’ll keep it ‘cozy’.
DOSSIER: What made you decide to choose the Appalachians of Atlantic Canada as a setting for your mysteries?
JOHNSON: Only Just A STILL LIFE is set entirely there and that’s because that’s where I currently reside. Forty minutes from the nearest town, two hours from the nearest bookstore or theatre. Thus, it’s a great place to kidnap and hide someone, in the deep woods. But all the others in the JUST (e)STATE series are prequels to that 1971 Appalachian setting. For instance, 2023’s Just A STALE MATE does briefly begin with Polly Jane (P.J.) there in her mountain village post-office home. In order to help her godson Philip Steele who is a consultant for the Toronto Police Dept., she has to travel to the province of Ontario, though. Where again they solve the murders in a rural setting near Lake Erie’s Port Burwell, on an old-fashioned ‘country estate’. And the third in the series is set in the Yukon where I lived one cold and very dark winter in the early 1980s.
Because Phil is a homicide consultant who is called in to remote places, it gives me the opportunity to share with readers a number of different settings I’ve been lucky enough to experience. As I worked on a Blackfeet rez. in Montana, I’m also working on a creative non-fiction memoir/mystery that is set there, for example.
There has to be a reason I’ve paid so many moving fees and driven so many U-Hauls and horse trailers full of pianos, Victorian sideboards and hump-back trunks most of my adult life. I aim to get pay-back now.
Join myself and 9 other whodunnit authors from around the world on the Facebook group “Cozy Crime Collective”.
Website: J. Ivanel Johnson | Amazon author page
Jeff Circle 