Small as a Mustard Seed by Shelli Johnson
Today’s interview is with author, freelance editor, and former sports journalist Shelli Johnson. Her novel, Small as a Mustard Seed won two awards: a grant from the Weisman Fund and the Grand Prize in the Writer’s Digest International Self-Published Book Awards. Shelli is a big football fan, went to graduate school in Chicago, and got her Master’s Degree in Fiction Writing. Read on for more about Shelli and her novel!
Have you always been a writer?
I’ve always loved writing. The earliest memory I have of it is writing a story in the first grade & having it be selected by the teacher to be read to the Kindergarten class. I don’t even remember what it was about. But I do remember thinking that writing was all I wanted to do. My favorite part of writing is when I get so caught up in the story that I lose track of time. There’s nothing quite like the feeling of that for me; it keeps me coming back. Plus, I love my characters. I actually look forward to sitting down and seeing what they’re going to do next.
Stephen King was the biggest influence in pushing me toward being a fiction writer. When I was a kid, my family & I went on vacation up to a cabin in Maine. There was no running water, no electricity ~ “roughing it like the settlers” my dad said. Not great, though, for a 12-year-old girl. Under one of the bunk beds, I found a box full of Stephen King books & I spent those 2 weeks reading his early work, which is absolutely fantastic. I wanted to be able to do what King did ~ make people feel scared, angry, happy, whatever ~ just by telling them a story.
Tell me about your book, Small as a Mustard Seed, and what inspired it.
I was writing about the main characters ~ sisters ~ for about four months, both of them as adult women. The story wasn’t really going anywhere, and then one morning one of them showed up as a 10-year-old in a barn, scared out of Continue reading →