Interview with Mike Johnson, author of "blond to the bone"

Mike Johnson’s book, “Blonde to the Bone”, was just released this week (02/27/06). We are proud to be able to interview Mike in all the emotion of it. Welcome to Reader Views, Mike.

Irene: “Blonde to the Bone” just dropped this week. This is exciting news. Tell our readers the gist of the story.

Mike: Leo Calvet, a fashion mogul, goes missing. Daniele and Michele, his beautiful feuding twin daughters, embark on a puzzling journey to find him, following surreptitious leads. Things are not as real as they seem when Michele’s fiancé, Rick, disappears before her eyes and the sun stands still. The search leads the sisters, Rick and Daniele’s “date” Jack, on an extraordinary quest from Washington DC to Paris, where they uncover a terrorist plot to tear down the Eiffel Tower. Over the course of the adventure, the sisters discover the truth about their rivalry as each falls in love with the other’s man.

Irene: “Blonde to the Bone” is your second published novel. What inspired you to write it?

Mike: I could tell it was a full moon on a beautiful August night in San Diego. That night in the backyard I had already decided that I was ready to start another project, and as I was looking at the moon Blonde to the Bone just came to me, of course it was a take off on the George Thorogood song Bad to the Bone. . I just liked the title. It sounded fun. So you could say I reverse-engineered a story that I thought would fit the title, but with enough depth to keep it out of the slapstick comedy arena.

Irene: While this book is entertaining, it also provides a unique approach to solving family problems. What was your mission to include this approach in the book?

Mike: There’s no real mission there. My main intention for the book was entertainment. Something to give the reader a mini vacation. Just fun. Beyond that, I guess you could say that I wanted my characters to be “good” and “loving” people. The world will never have too many people who care about each other, and in my novels I champion those virtues. But anyone who reads the book will know that the approach presented is impossible considering the current state of technology. I’d like to think that Leo is acting like any loving father: willing to go to any lengths to ensure the happiness and well-being of his daughter. In fact, I was quite concerned that many readers would have her focus turned against her. Personally, I wouldn’t recommend spying on one’s adult children to learn the truth, but it sure would feel good, right?

Irene: How did you create the characters in your book?

Mike: I create them on demand. A writer has to ask himself, “Who should be in this book?” With Blonde to the Bone as the title, I thought I needed a beautiful young ingénue (isn’t that the one we would normally associate with that phrase?), and I thought the idea of ​​identical twins would be a lot more fun to work with more than one character. . Thus Michele and Daniele came to life. In reality, they are the same person with a juxtaposition of internal decisions about two plausible paths to follow in life for the same individual. Michele chose one path and Daniele the other, basically from the same Pink Table. Naturally, any light and entertaining story needs some romance, so Rick and Jack teamed up. But what was happening? The characters needed problems to be solved.

Although I wanted the book to be fun, life is full of serious problems. I think Daniele’s problem is probably quite widespread on one level or another, and something that many readers would understand with deeper experience than mine. I didn’t mean to downplay what I’m sure are very serious problems for many women, but I do believe that the ability to laugh at life’s problems, even the most serious ones, contributes to a healthier state of mind. And I like to think that most men, as they get older and have children, are loving like Leo and would like to find a means to solve their daughter’s problems. So Leo was the catalyst to resolve the conflict. Other characters come and go as needed, although I think I fell for Valerie! (Don’t tell my wife…)

Irene: How much of “real life” is there in this book? Is there a lot of you in “Blonde to the Bone”?

Mike: How can there not be? Writing, especially novels, comes from one’s own experience. Even if you are writing something completely unknown to you, you have to accept it before you can write convincingly about it. Therefore, it becomes part of your own experience. When you express yourself in writing, your personality will, by definition, come out. On the other hand, it is a novel, and completely fictional. Nothing that happens in the book happened to me or anyone I know, other than the minutiae, those little things that help bring a scene to life, or those personality traits that define a character.

To say what those things specifically are, I would have to go back page by page and see which ones came from my personal experience and which ones I projected onto characters based on observations of real people. One comes to mind: in one scene, one of the main characters says that he thought the CIA was in a different part of the DC area. That was actually me. While on a business trip, I passed Langley a couple of times on the way to the Patuxent River and thought the facility was located there. It wasn’t until I was doing research that I found out, in a global satellite imaging program, that the CIA is in a different Langley.

To answer your question more directly, I suppose I would have to say that I am a combination of Jack and Rick, leaning towards Jack. Maybe one day when he grows up I’ll be a Leo.

Irene: Reading your book, I discovered that you prepare the scenes very well. I felt like I was “right there” with the characters. Would you tell our audience how you set up these scenes so the reader feels like they can take on the character and be a part of the plot?

Mike: I would say it’s a combination of imagination and search. I imagine myself in each scene and I become each character. From there, I just look around and write down what I experience, trying to engage all five senses and look for those details that are common to all. For details that may not be so common to an average American reader, I make a painstaking effort to describe them in a way that the reader understands and therefore shares the experience. For example, in an action scene I try to feel what the character is feeling so that I can put those feelings into the writing. If a car leaves a dock, the driver would have a feeling of weightlessness. The vicarious experience becomes much more real and pleasurable if when the character feels it, the reader feels it too.

Irene: What kind of research did you do before writing the book? Did you actually visit any of the places you mention in your book?

Mike: My wife and I went to Paris on vacation and I went with the intention of researching locations for the mystery. I was pleasantly surprised by a few things I learned, and without giving away too much of the plot, a certain line from a certain monument actually pointed to our hotel room. Most of the Parisian scenes were based on places we visited, including a large number of sidewalk cafes. But Blonde to the Bone was a lot of fun to write because I didn’t need a lot of research. In the internet age, research is at our fingertips, or mostly in the grip of a mouse, in my case.

Most of what you needed to know came from websites, like the CIA example in your previous question. To make the book’s technology plausible, I researched DNA computing, both the current state of the technology and the projection of potential into the future. I have also been to Washington DC many times on business. And the original cover of “Blonde to the Bone” was bought from a Parisian artist halfway across a bridge over the Seine near the Louvre.

On a little side note, I work for a company called Computer Sciences Corporation, which was the sponsor of the Lance Armstrong Tour de France team. Our trip to Paris coincided with the end of the Tour de France, and Lance Armstrong was ready for his record seventh Tour de France victory. Our return flight was on the morning of the last day of the race. At around eight o’clock, we left our hotel (the Hilton Paris) and circled the Arc de Triomphe on the Champs Elysees on our way to the airport. They were already preparing the boulevard for the final race. We were in the middle of the Atlantic when the race ended and the driver announced over the PA system that Armstrong had won. So I can always say that I was on the Champs Elysées the day Armstrong made history in the Tour de France. I just didn’t see him do it.

Irene: Thanks Mike. Is there anything else you would like readers to know about you or your book?

Mike: First of all, thank you so much for giving me the opportunity to be featured on the Reader Views website! I really appreciate it! “Blonde to the Bone” is published by Suncoast Publishing. Readers can visit the Suncoast website to read the first chapter and take a look at the story at [http://www.suncoastbooks.com] “Blonde to the Bone” can be ordered at your local bookstore, but is also available from the following online stores.

I hope you enjoy!