Johanna is a full-time writer based in Qatar. AllandAbout Qatar were lucky enough to spend some time with her at her home, where she writes with a dog at her feet, three cats on her desk and two birds in her ear. She has also just set up her own literary consultancy, helping writers become authors, and guiding them through the novel-writing process.

Here, she tells us about her journey, how she eventually got published, and her dreams and aspirations as a writer:

“I have always been a writer. I wrote my first ‘book’ when I was 7 years old- it’s a book of poems, and on the very first page there’s a letter that I addressed to my future self. It says; Dear Me, When I grow up I will be a Writer.

I knew back then that I would write a novel one day. I was never anything but utterly convinced that a writing career would be my destiny. I carried on writing as I got older, stories, letters, poems, notes, I was writing, constantly, consistently, all the time.

But then, life happened. After school, I went to university, and at my parent’s insistence, I studied… wait for it… Economics. I can still hear my mother’s voice, in her thick French accent; You can’t study English, Johanna, no one ever makes any money from writing. You will study Economics. You will work in a bank.​

I’m sure Economics is a great degree, but not if you’re a writer. Not if you know writing is your destiny. But I was a good girl and I did what I was told and studied economics. I got a good degree and the only thing I knew with absolute certainty when I left university was that I would never ever work in a bank, or have anything to do with economics, ever again.

But I did forget about writing. After university, I did what all my friends were doing; I moved to London, took the first job I could get, travelled a bit, moved abroad, got married, got pregnant, started a family… I found myself stuck in a 15-year marketing career, where I was still writing, but it was reports, not novels. Boring reports, trying to make boring subjects sound interesting.

One day, my Mother called. My parents had decided to move, and they asked me to come home and “sort out my merde,” and remove all the boxes that I’d left in their garage. I went. I rummaged. And I found something out about myself that I’d forgotten.

All that writing. My letters. My notes. My stories. My poems. My diaries. That book that I wrote when I was seven years old, that dictated to me, in no uncertain terms, that I absolutely would be a Writer when I grew up.

I had one of those moments, you know the ones, those at-a-crossroads kind of moments where it was time to make a decision. The decision was easy. I went home, I quit my job and announced that I was taking a year out to fulfil my dreams and write that novel.

​It took longer than a year. That decision, and subsequent grand announcement was made in 2013. But it happened. My debut novel, The Burning of Juniper Slaide, was published in September 2016 in a three-book deal with Rudling House Publishing. All three novels (The Juniper Trilogy) have been optioned for films, and the film rights sold in the UK. I have an amazing agent who is working on a major publishing deal for my latest novel as I write this. I have published a Children’s book in the Middle East and I have just signed my second children’s book to HBKU Press. I have had book signings in Waterstones, gone on book tours in schools throughout the UK. I write every day, without fail, and I still love it as passionately as I did when I started writing, and when I was growing up.​

But the road to publication wasn’t easy. It was filled with rejection letter after rejection letter, and a lot of banging my head against my desk. I knew I was a writer, but there was so much I didn’t know, so much to learn, so many tricks to writing, so many aspects of it that I’d never even thought of, never even imagined. I had to start my manuscript again so many times. And once I was sure it was perfect, and I sent it out to agents, and I received all those rejection letters, I had to re-write it again. And again, after that. I read every book there was to read on writing, and I did as many writing courses my very limited, dwindling, unemployed budget would allow.

And finally, at last, it happened. My first novel found a home. And that was the best feeling in the world.

I have created a writing course which takes everything I’ve learnt, the best and most insightful nuggets of (golden) information that I wish I’d known when I started, and I desperately want other writers to know before they start, or as they continue their writing. It’s a course for everyone who knows they’re a writer, who knows it’s in their destiny and who loves literature, writing, bleeding words on paper and needs a helping hand. I work with my students every step of the way to ensure they have the foundations (and the first 10,000 words of a novel, and a solid outline of the rest) and together, we get those words ready to submit to agents. You know you’re a writer. I want to make sure the rest of the world knows it too.”

If you’d like to know more about the course, or writing in general, please get in touch at www.struttliteraryconsultants.com. Johanna’s debut novel, The Burning of Juniper Slaide, is available to buy on kindle or paperback www.amazon.co.uk.

AllandAbout have read it and it’s a page-turning, heart-pumping thriller- we highly recommend it!