Hello there - I'm Milly Johnson is a 5ft born and bred half-Glaswegian Barnsley bird who has been a professional in the world of greetings cards for quite a few years now. When not writing, I lead a glamorous lifestyle ironing school clothes, emptying cat litter trays and cooking crispy pancakes. I live with my two sons, Terence and George and various other animals near my mam and dad bang in the centre of Barnsley, South Yorkshire.
Right from being knee-high to an gnat, I loved to write, but never thought it would any more than a hobby until discovering the enjoyment of comedy script-writing whilst studying drama and education at Exeter University.
In between working in various jobs – ie: teaching, trainee accountancy, barmaid, receptionist, sales, working for various psychopaths in offices, I spent my spare time writing poems and jokes for pin-money and working on a large, glossy novel about places I had never been to and things I had never done. It was doomed to failure.
Nevertheless the rejection letters (although not all!) were full of too much encouragement to totally abandon the idea that the published novel was never going to happen for me. I remember thinking maybe if they had just told me to stop chasing rainbows and get a proper job, life would have been so much more defined. I continued to write, send work off, get it rejected, put it away in a cupboard, get on with life, get the work out of the cupboard, send it off... and so on went the cycle.
When I was pregnant with my first child in 1997, I lost my job and the only way forward seemed to be to rev up my old hobby of earning pin money by becoming a full-time writer of greetings card copy working from home under the company name of ‘Black Sheep’.
Then in 2004, when I was 30...er…40, the career clock began to nag that I had never managed to get that published book under my belt. I put the children to bed one night and began to write a very different story to the unsuccessful blockbuster. I sent it off to the ever-encouraging Darley Anderson agency and Lucie Whitehouse wonder-agent, rang me the next day and asked for some more chapters. I ploughed away at the book night after night, sending in lumps of chapters and praying that I'd get over that hurdle - all too aware that every stage I was getting closer to my dream, but climbing so far up the ladder of hope that if I was pushed off, I'd probably break my back.
When I sent in the final chapters - I also enclosed the first 3 chapters of the book I'd been working on when I was pregnant - one that had been inspired by my own experiences joining the 'pudding club' at the same time as my friends in our mid-thirties. It was gathering dust in the back of the cupboard because I was convinced I'd never get it right. Securing an agent didn't necessarily mean that I'd get a book deal - and Lucie had warned me that had happened before to would-be authors. So my 'contingency plan' went in the envelope with those final chapters and whilst I waited to find out what she thought of them, I carried on with book 2 - and for some reason, this time I felt like I knew what I was doing with it. I'm a great believer in some things just 'have a time to be'.
The agency liked book 1, but they liked book 2 more and so I went through the horrible and exciting process again of sending blocks of chapters in. Getting the call that Lucie had finished reading it and liked it and was going to take it on (after a major edit) was news that had me skipping about the room like a teenager.
When we had edited the book to a presentable state, Lucie sent it out to publishers. You have to have nerves of steel when this happens because every time the phone rings, your heart stops (and it was usually my mother asking me if I was going to Morrisons). It was garnering excitement, publishers were asking for it to be biked over, it was mad, exciting, awful, horrible, wonderful... but I was a first time author and, as such, we're a big gamble. Still, even the rejections were warm and encouraging - (do you laugh or do you cry then?)
Then came THAT call - at 5 o'clock on a Friday night. Simon and Schuster had bought me on a two book deal agreement.
Would-be writers take note - when you get that call, it's a bit like having a baby... all the pain and tiredness and emotional upheaval is forgotten and you just rejoice in a sublime state that no drug could ever give you (not that I've tried - not unless you count a very heavy session on Harvey's Bristol Cream one night)
The manuscript was submitted to overseas publishers to coincide with the 2006 London Book Fair. Dutch rights were purchased and German and Italian rights were subsequently snapped up in heated auctions.
‘The Yorkshire Pudding Club’ is currently on sale in bookshops, on-line and can be borrowed from libraries.
My 2nd book – ‘The Bees of Bonniebride’ - which celebrates both my Yorkshire and my wonderful Scottish roots - is due to be released in March 2008. Can I wait?
Agnes Road School Portrait 1969 (A.D.)
Hall Balk School for Girls Austrian ski-ing trip 1978
Teenagers these days do 'Glam' so much better. From back right to front left - Kay, Gillian, Me and Rachel- who now has a huge career and looks younger than we did then!
