I had the pleasure of speaking to Susan Johnson about a week ago. You will get the chance to hear more about it and we will be chatting again soon.
I have decided to post a few tidbits fromt he interview and we will have the full length up soon. Hopefully, she will stop by the blog at some point. We will be giving away signed copies of her upcoming contemporary, Hot Property, in August.
Two interesting tidbits I will leave you with for now and would love your take on:
I couldn’t help but ask about her next historical. I don’t have all the info yet but she told me to follow up with her editor. Not all that shocking…. nor was the news that her upcoming historical will be published by Berkley.
She didn’t have much to say on the change of publishers (most recently she was publishing her historical novels with Kensington). I did ask her about two things: if the move would mean the return of the footnotes and if her historical novels would return to a higher level of ‘spice’ we once expected from a Susan Johnson novel.
The footnote question was a vague… could be… maybe… but not right away or maybe ever. Like I said vague.
The second question was met with a, ‘Really? How so?’ She asked which books I had in mind and how they were different. Susan had recently reread one of her old titles and had found it to be tame. It is one of the first points I see mentioned when people talk about Susan Johnson’s writing. For a women first published with Playboy Press and who seems to have no fear of the erotic (and for ‘she who asked’… no… I wouldn’t expect any buttsecks scenes in her future books) she sounded honestly shocked that people feel that way.
So tell me…. is it just her historical novels you feel have lost that loving feeling? What about the contemporaries? Is it because kink is so familiar that readers expect too much? Have we changed? Or is it the writing?
And give me titles people… I think I need to do some research here.
[Ed.: Gwen added the following – not Sybs.]
It’s kind of like television. I’m dating myself, but I remember when it was scandalous that Linda whatshername used the word “bitch” for the first time on Dynasty. Now look at it. I think fiction has gone much the same way. Takes a lot more to titillate and entertain us.
By the way – don’t watch those two singers snapping their fingers in the vid. Some serious cases of the actions not matching the words. It’s humorous.
I’m still surprised swearing is ok on tv. I feel like that happened some time last year (where every word is now fair game).