Latest / The Elsa Kurt Show / When Kindness Becomes an Obsession with Cindy L. Johnson

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When Kindness Becomes an Obsession with Cindy L. Johnson · The Elsa Kurt Show

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: Most of us go to the beach hoping for a little peace and quiet, but our guest sees the potential for a psychological thriller.
• 0:07
  SPEAKER_00: Cindy L.
• 0:07
  SPEAKER_00: Johnson is a former travel nurse whose experiences caring for people helped inspire her move into storytelling.
• 0:14
  SPEAKER_00: Her debut novel, Stalking the Storm, follows a nurse whose act of kindness leads to a terrifying ordeal as a hurricane closes in.
• 0:22
  SPEAKER_00: Her follow-up, The Storm Within, continues that character's journey.
• 0:27
  SPEAKER_00: Let's welcome Cindy to the show.
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_03: Well, hello, Cindy.
• 0:31
  SPEAKER_03: Welcome to the show.
• 0:32
  SPEAKER_03: It's so nice to meet you.
• 0:33
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you for having me.
• 0:34
  SPEAKER_01: Also, I appreciate your time this morning.
• 0:36
  SPEAKER_03: My pleasure.
• 0:37
  SPEAKER_03: My pleasure.
• 0:38
  SPEAKER_03: Okay, so you spent years working as a travel nurse, including traveling around the country, which is pretty, pretty cool to me at least.
• 0:45
  SPEAKER_03: That's not something that I at my age, even I have not done.
• 0:48
  SPEAKER_03: I've only visited a handful of places.
• 0:50
  SPEAKER_03: So I'm always envious of people who have who have kind of been all over the place.
• 0:53
  SPEAKER_03: Um was writing always something you wanted to do, or did this idea kind of sneak up on you?
• 1:00
  SPEAKER_01: Um a little of both.
• 1:01
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, as a nurse, we uh of course have to put notes in and you know, we try to be as clear as possible and you know, not elaborate, and it's always truthful.
• 1:11
  SPEAKER_01: But as a storyteller, you you're the other way.
• 1:15
  SPEAKER_01: So to be honest, I never really had the desire to be a writer.
• 1:19
  SPEAKER_01: Really?
• 1:20
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, interesting.
• 1:21
  SPEAKER_03: So I So tell me, wait, so you got to tell me about that.
• 1:24
  SPEAKER_03: Like, was there a specific moment?
• 1:26
  SPEAKER_03: Like, did you like have this story?
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_03: Like something had to have triggered it.
• 1:29
  SPEAKER_03: What triggered it?
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_01: It did actually.
• 1:32
  SPEAKER_01: I worked um in Florida, you know, as a charger nurse, and I went through probably what, three, three hurricanes, maybe.
• 1:41
  SPEAKER_01: And so as nurses, you are on team A or you're on team B.
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_01: So team A responds before the hurricane hits, team B comes in and relieves team A after the hurricane is cleared.
• 1:51
  SPEAKER_01: And conversations with other nurses about, you know, what you know, what we're gonna do, how we protect our family.
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_01: They're either at the facility with you or they're home holding down the fort, so to speak.
• 2:03
  SPEAKER_01: So we always giggled, and you know, even on the news, it says, you know, during a hurricane, you need to be where you're gonna be because we can't come and help you.
• 2:13
  SPEAKER_01: We can't rescue you.
• 2:15
  SPEAKER_01: And so a nurse on the floor that particular day and I were joking and said, Oh, what a great time to commit a crime.
• 2:22
  SPEAKER_01: Because there's nobody there to catch you, so to speak.
• 2:26
  SPEAKER_01: They're gonna do that afterwards, but sure.
• 2:28
  SPEAKER_01: So I retired in October of that year, so 24.
• 2:32
  SPEAKER_01: And so one morning, I want to say early-ish April, I woke up with this dream.
• 2:39
  SPEAKER_01: It was so vivid and so clear, and it really literally would not leave me alone.
• 2:45
  SPEAKER_01: It just kept pounding at the inside of my brain saying, Hey, listen to me.
• 2:49
  SPEAKER_01: So I finally just grabbed my laptop and a word processor or my, you know, uh, Microsoft, and I just started writing down the dream to try to thinking it would just leave me alone then.
• 3:00
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so like five hours later, uh, eight chapters, um, I kind of looked up and went, Oh, I missed breakfast and a personal training session.
• 3:10
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but I was eight chapters in.
• 3:13
  SPEAKER_01: So I'm like, why not carry it through and see what happens?
• 3:18
  SPEAKER_01: And so that's where stalking the storm was born.
• 3:21
  SPEAKER_03: Wow.
• 3:22
  SPEAKER_03: I love that.
• 3:23
  SPEAKER_03: And I I actually I'm not gonna share it now because this is about you, but I have a very similar story for one of my books.
• 3:28
  SPEAKER_03: And so I loved hearing that.
• 3:30
  SPEAKER_03: That's so wild.
• 3:32
  SPEAKER_03: Um, as the story was taking shape, was it taking shape right away?
• 3:37
  SPEAKER_03: Like, did you consciously know, realize that it was gonna be suspense?
• 3:41
  SPEAKER_03: Like, I walk me through a little bit of that actual writing process of of how it started coming to life for you.
• 3:47
  SPEAKER_03: I know like I know it was like just copying down the dream, but then obviously it it evolved, of course.
• 3:54
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 3:54
  SPEAKER_01: So I kind of just got down the basics, you know, what the dream was.
• 3:59
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and then I went back to develop characters a little bit.
• 4:02
  SPEAKER_01: And as a non-writer, you know, that was a little bit of a struggle.
• 4:06
  SPEAKER_01: How do you develop a character?
• 4:07
  SPEAKER_01: How do you write it so that your readers are interested and they buy into your characters?
• 4:13
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and so the the chapters in the book actually began to grow at that point.
• 4:19
  SPEAKER_01: So developing them.
• 4:21
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and a lot of it was feeding off of my own background of being a nurse for 38 years.
• 4:25
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, some of the characters, not exactly, but based somewhat on people I had actually interacted with or had experiences with.
• 4:34
  SPEAKER_01: So that's kind of where the characters developed from, and it kind of just rolled into a psychological thriller.
• 4:42
  SPEAKER_01: Um, as nurses, we use a lot of psychology to try to get our patients or family members or other coworkers to um do what we want them to do without them thinking that I made you do this.
• 4:58
  SPEAKER_01: I guess a lot of psychology.
• 5:00
  SPEAKER_01: So you're like, a great example is you know, a patient I had many, many years ago, um, a little more on the well-to-do side, came to the hospital and client, you know, she said, Well, I'm paying to be here, so you will take care of me.
• 5:15
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm like, You have to get up and walk, and you know, otherwise you're gonna have more issues.
• 5:20
  SPEAKER_01: Well, she wasn't buying into that, so I'm like, Do you really want to be here with us for you know four or five more days because you develop pneumonia or you get a blood clot?
• 5:28
  SPEAKER_01: You know, so when you propose things like that to people, then they start to think, oh, I probably should get up and walk or get out of the chair, you know.
• 5:37
  SPEAKER_01: So I think we use a lot of psychology in that term.
• 5:41
  SPEAKER_01: This was just a lot deeper and more on the um, I wanted people to think about what I was saying while I was writing.
• 5:49
  SPEAKER_01: So there's a lot of conversation in the book about the room.
• 5:54
  SPEAKER_03: So the room is the the shack where the former patient actually, when he took me during the hurricane, that's not me, but you know, oh I listen, I get that slip because we live inside this story so much that we're we're I don't know about you.
• 6:09
  SPEAKER_03: Do you watch your your books as you write them?
• 6:11
  SPEAKER_03: Do you see it like a like a movie?
• 6:13
  SPEAKER_03: Are you watching it?
• 6:14
  SPEAKER_03: Correct.
• 6:14
  SPEAKER_03: Yes, yeah.
• 6:15
  SPEAKER_03: I totally got this.
• 6:16
  SPEAKER_03: As soon as you said it, I'm like, yeah, I know exactly what you mean.
• 6:18
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 6:18
  SPEAKER_01: So, you know, it her trying to convince him that this wasn't a good idea, that it was a bad idea.
• 6:25
  SPEAKER_01: So they talk, she talks about the room.
• 6:27
  SPEAKER_01: You invited me into the room, which in reality the room is relating to the shack he's holding her in.
• 6:33
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and then she talks about he invites other people because there's another character in my book that um I don't really want to divulge a lot because it's part of the twist.
• 6:43
  SPEAKER_01: Yep.
• 6:43
  SPEAKER_01: But she talks about this shack.
• 6:46
  SPEAKER_01: You need to go out and check, you know, the walls of the room because they're not gonna hold through this hurricane.
• 6:51
  SPEAKER_01: So kind of those kind of conversations.
• 6:54
  SPEAKER_01: So she's trying to convince him that he needs to let her go.
• 6:57
  SPEAKER_01: And the whole time she's actually planning an escape.
• 7:01
  SPEAKER_01: Because as a nurse, she's observing the room, she's looking to what she can use, what can I use to get out, those kind of things.
• 7:09
  SPEAKER_03: So so tell me.
• 7:10
  SPEAKER_03: Um, so your your protagonist is Camille, correct?
• 7:14
  SPEAKER_03: Correct.
• 7:15
  SPEAKER_03: Tell me a little bit about her and specifically how much of Cindy is in Camille.
• 7:23
  SPEAKER_01: Really, not a whole lot, other than the nurse part.
• 7:25
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 7:26
  SPEAKER_01: Um, in the book, it talks about her background.
• 7:29
  SPEAKER_01: She is raised by two parents who are not a meteor, an oceanography couple, and they're testing waters and they're on the sailboat and they take their kids with them.
• 7:39
  SPEAKER_01: And so she actually has a really good life.
• 7:42
  SPEAKER_01: Whereas other than my mom, uh, my home life wasn't all that great.
• 7:46
  SPEAKER_01: So my home life actually probably is a little closer to Brett's home life.
• 7:50
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 7:51
  SPEAKER_01: And so Brett is the antagonist who is the former deranged patient.
• 7:56
  SPEAKER_03: Gotcha.
• 7:57
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 7:57
  SPEAKER_03: Um, so what caught my attention about the book is that Camille's kindness becomes the focus of someone else's Brett's obsession.
• 8:06
  SPEAKER_03: Um, as you were writing her, how did you think about that tension between wanting to help someone and realizing that you needed to protect yourself?
• 8:15
  SPEAKER_03: Because it's a very challenging way to portray all of that balance.
• 8:20
  SPEAKER_03: Was it was that a struggle to do?
• 8:22
  SPEAKER_01: It was to a certain extent, because I really have never personally experienced, you know, a stalking event or, you know, anything in that nature.
• 8:30
  SPEAKER_01: I've had a couple of patients that, you know, you kind of leave the room and you're like, I'm gonna be really careful with this one.
• 8:37
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 8:37
  SPEAKER_01: Um, you know, not sharing too much, because they want to know.
• 8:40
  SPEAKER_01: They want to know everything about you as a nurse, you know, where you went to school, you know, your home life, you know, where you live, all those things.
• 8:45
  SPEAKER_01: So sometimes you just have to be really cautious um with patients.
• 8:51
  SPEAKER_01: So that was a little bit of a struggle, and I could only put myself in what I thought um a person who was being stopped might feel.
• 9:00
  SPEAKER_03: Right, right.
• 9:01
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 9:02
  SPEAKER_03: You um I I just want to mention something back from the beginning when you talked about um the the actual process, the start of the writing journey.
• 9:11
  SPEAKER_03: One of the questions I I like to ask my my author guests is uh what kind of writer they are they are.
• 9:18
  SPEAKER_03: And I always ask, are you a pancer or a plotter?
• 9:21
  SPEAKER_03: And I, you know, some people know what that means, others don't.
• 9:23
  SPEAKER_03: A pancer is somebody who just sits down and starts writing, and a plotter is somebody who will like, well, do the outline and you know, character uh, you know, sheets and everything where they, you know, list all the characters, characters you know, like they go through this whole massive process.
• 9:37
  SPEAKER_03: And then there's people like you and I who are pants, we sit down and the story tells itself um to us.
• 9:45
  SPEAKER_03: So what I was wondering is, did you know that about yourself?
• 9:50
  SPEAKER_03: Maybe not, I don't mean necessarily the term panther, um, but did you expect to be that kind of writer?
• 9:55
  SPEAKER_03: Like I because it kind of sounds like this whole thing caught you off guard.
• 9:58
  SPEAKER_03: Did that part catch you off guard as well?
• 10:00
  SPEAKER_01: It did catch me off guard.
• 10:02
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and then after I kind of had written like the eight chapters, I did go back as a panther or whatever you called it.
• 10:11
  SPEAKER_01: And a plotter.
• 10:13
  SPEAKER_01: I did form an outline, kind of like, and it was rough, like this chapter, I want this to happen, this chapter, you know, this happened, like descriptions of Brett, you know, character development of the other person.
• 10:26
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so I have to say I'm a little of both now.
• 10:31
  SPEAKER_01: Um, in the beginning, I would have to say yes, I was it just I just sat down and blurted it all out, and and then I went back and kind of planned it.
• 10:38
  SPEAKER_01: So I think a bit of both.
• 10:40
  SPEAKER_01: Sure.
• 10:41
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 10:42
  SPEAKER_03: Um this is actually a great point to mention that there is a book two.
• 10:46
  SPEAKER_03: This is two books thus far.
• 10:49
  SPEAKER_03: Um did you know as you were writing book one that there would be a book two?
• 10:54
  SPEAKER_03: Did you already, as you were in the process, did you already envision this as a series or did it catch you off guard again?
• 11:01
  SPEAKER_01: No, it actually as I was finishing up book one, I was already writing book two.
• 11:06
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 11:06
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 11:07
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and then I actually in my computer I'll have I have places where it says ideas for book three and ideas for book four.
• 11:13
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, I love so I I I kind of did know, but I wasn't really sure at the end of book one what I was gonna do with it.
• 11:22
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 11:23
  SPEAKER_01: So um, yes and no.
• 11:25
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, yeah, no, that's fair.
• 11:27
  SPEAKER_03: Um, what was there anything that made the writing of book two different than the writing of book one as far as what you went in, knowing and understanding about the process?
• 11:37
  SPEAKER_03: Did it change the way you wrote at all?
• 11:39
  SPEAKER_01: Um, not really.
• 11:40
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 11:41
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, actually, book two was a lot simpler than book one because characters were already developed.
• 11:46
  SPEAKER_01: True.
• 11:47
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 11:47
  SPEAKER_01: Some of the characters don't carry over to book two for obvious reasons.
• 11:52
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so but they were already developed.
• 11:55
  SPEAKER_01: But using the island and her working in an addiction clinic was kind of really what gave me that path.
• 12:04
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 12:05
  SPEAKER_03: Um, as someone who's worked as a nurse for many years, and uh just someone who's probably like the rest of us watched TV shows and movies and read books that have nurse characters in them.
• 12:19
  SPEAKER_03: Um, what do fictional nurses tend to get wrong that you were determined to get right?
• 12:24
  SPEAKER_03: Was there anything in particular that you're like, Alyssa, they always get portrayed as whatever, I'm gonna tell you what it's really like?
• 12:31
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I don't know that I can like really give that a specific answer.
• 12:36
  SPEAKER_01: Sure.
• 12:36
  SPEAKER_01: But it was really important to me to try to reveal exactly what happens.
• 12:44
  SPEAKER_01: And on the floor that I worked, the last hospital that I worked, we did a lot of um initial recovery from alcohol and drug use before the patients could go on to rehab because they have to be stay medically stable.
• 12:59
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 13:00
  SPEAKER_01: So that gave me that background to know, well, this is what we're gonna do during this step and then this step.
• 13:05
  SPEAKER_01: And that was important to me because if other medical people either read your book or if it ever goes into a movie, I wanted that to be very accurate.
• 13:14
  SPEAKER_01: That's probably one of my pet peeves in shows that are medically related, is they're sometimes not very accurate.
• 13:21
  SPEAKER_01: And so I'm going, no, no, no.
• 13:23
  SPEAKER_03: Sure, absolutely.
• 13:25
  SPEAKER_03: I I totally get that.
• 13:26
  SPEAKER_03: It's like um, it's like, you know, for me, seeing how writers are portrayed in in movies, like, okay, that's not at all how that pro or not just writers, but like the writing process, the publishing process.
• 13:37
  SPEAKER_03: Like, oh, they just wrote a book and it went straight to a publisher and it was taken just like that.
• 13:41
  SPEAKER_03: Mmm, doesn't really always happen.
• 13:43
  SPEAKER_03: It can.
• 13:44
  SPEAKER_03: You just got this awesome author.
• 13:46
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, oh, and they're giving you an advance.
• 13:48
  SPEAKER_03: Wow.
• 13:49
  SPEAKER_03: You're you this is your very first book.
• 13:51
  SPEAKER_03: You have no presence in the media world, and they're offering you a you know, multi-million dollar advance.
• 13:56
  SPEAKER_03: That's so cool for you.
• 13:58
  SPEAKER_01: And they don't talk about the hundreds of quarry letters that you send to publishers and the hundreds of rejection letters that you get from the you don't you don't see any of that part, right?
• 14:08
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it's exactly and I wasn't aware of a lot of that because you know my career has always been as a nurse.
• 14:15
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 14:16
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I mean, you you truly jumped into, you know, such a different uh world.
• 14:21
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, it had to be like it was for me as well in the beginning, like a crash course, basically.
• 14:25
  SPEAKER_03: Like you were learning everything on the fly, right?
• 14:28
  SPEAKER_03: Like, oh, okay.
• 14:29
  SPEAKER_03: I learned by making tons of mistakes, by the way.
• 14:31
  SPEAKER_03: I I don't know if you did.
• 14:33
  SPEAKER_03: We I don't I'm gonna I'm gonna deflect the blame off of me and say we just didn't have the same resources when I started that we have now, like how I just learned like it's not my fault.
• 14:41
  SPEAKER_03: It's it's the resources' fault.
• 14:44
  SPEAKER_03: It's the environment.
• 14:44
  SPEAKER_03: They did it.
• 14:45
  SPEAKER_03: Environment.
• 14:46
  SPEAKER_03: Come on, it's not me.
• 14:47
  SPEAKER_03: But yeah, no, it's it's just such an amazing world um we're we're in now where there is so so many resources and and opportunities to to find the information that you need that you know aspiring authors weren't um able to access before.
• 15:03
  SPEAKER_03: So uh what a time to be alive.
• 15:05
  SPEAKER_03: I love it, I love it.
• 15:06
  SPEAKER_01: And we, you know, in nursing, we joke all the time about um, you know, we'll we'll be at lunchroom or at the front desk or whatever, and we're we're telling stories about our patients and we're giggling and we, oh, you should put that in a book.
• 15:19
  SPEAKER_01: We've always joked about that.
• 15:21
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm like, maybe I should.
• 15:23
  SPEAKER_03: Yep.
• 15:23
  SPEAKER_03: Well, listen, you um you accomplished something, you took it to the next step.
• 15:28
  SPEAKER_03: That so many people who say that, that I should write a book, or I've boy, have I got a story I could tell.
• 15:34
  SPEAKER_03: So many people say that and have said that, and they don't take it to that next step.
• 15:39
  SPEAKER_03: So you get to be in that percentage of people who actually did it, which I I think you get to pat yourself on the back for that because it is, it is a big accomplishment.
• 15:46
  SPEAKER_03: People who don't, you know, write books, and I'm not playing the world's smallest violin here, but the truth is that people don't realize how much goes into the writing process, like how much you pour into that whole thing.
• 15:59
  SPEAKER_03: So, and and that's why a lot of people, you know, have dusty manuscripts sitting in a bottom drawer somewhere in a file on their computer that just stays there.
• 16:07
  SPEAKER_03: So um, you know, congratulations on on actually doing it from start to finish and then going on to the next one.
• 16:14
  SPEAKER_03: And the next book.
• 16:15
  SPEAKER_01: And book three is about three quarters, maybe.
• 16:19
  SPEAKER_01: That is so I'm really struggling with book three to be honest.
• 16:22
  SPEAKER_01: Motivation and of course I had to move from Florida to here, right?
• 16:27
  SPEAKER_01: You know, and just trying to get my mom settled and myself.
• 16:29
  SPEAKER_01: It's it's been it's been a real distraction, sure, should I say?
• 16:33
  SPEAKER_01: So it's been a little difficult.
• 16:35
  SPEAKER_01: Plus, I'm bringing in some new characters, so I'm back to book one with character development and so yeah.
• 16:42
  SPEAKER_03: Um, is your are your characters traveling, changing locations as well?
• 16:49
  SPEAKER_01: Um, Camille is not.
• 16:52
  SPEAKER_01: She's gonna stay a nurse on the island working on the mainland.
• 16:55
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but right now she kind of is off in a different area.
• 17:01
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 17:02
  SPEAKER_01: Um, how to say it without giving away the book because it's certainly not been published yet.
• 17:07
  SPEAKER_03: I can tell you're a suspense writer because you're able to be nice and cryptic with you know the tease of mmm, there's gonna be something you're gonna want to know about.
• 17:16
  SPEAKER_01: But the end of book two kind of leads me a little bit into book three.
• 17:20
  SPEAKER_01: So, book three, and I'm gonna admit right up front, I hate romance books.
• 17:25
  SPEAKER_01: Always have, always probably will.
• 17:28
  SPEAKER_01: Yep.
• 17:28
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but I'm introducing a little bit of romance with um book two has a character, an FBI agent that comes in to help identify um a drug den um on the island and some overdoses that Camille has noticed as a nurse.
• 17:45
  SPEAKER_01: So um Agent Carter is introduced at the end of book two.
• 17:49
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 17:50
  SPEAKER_01: So book three is gonna take that a lot farther.
• 17:53
  SPEAKER_03: I love that.
• 17:54
  SPEAKER_03: I love that.
• 17:55
  SPEAKER_03: I have mixed feelings about romance.
• 17:56
  SPEAKER_03: I think I like romance in the way that that you're doing it, that you do it.
• 18:01
  SPEAKER_03: It has to be part of a larger story.
• 18:03
  SPEAKER_03: Like it's almost like the footnote, right?
• 18:05
  SPEAKER_03: It's almost like the aside, like, yeah, there's some romance in it, but this is the story.
• 18:09
  SPEAKER_01: Right, right.
• 18:10
  SPEAKER_01: Because to me, romance is like, okay, you know, after years of, you know, reading Nora Roberts or any of the others, it's like, okay, you have a character, you have another character, and these either they hate each other or they love each other or they hate each other.
• 18:23
  SPEAKER_01: She hates boy meets girl and they hate each other.
• 18:25
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 18:25
  SPEAKER_01: And they always end up together.
• 18:27
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, they always you already know.
• 18:28
  SPEAKER_01: You already know.
• 18:29
  SPEAKER_01: And it's like this is gonna go.
• 18:30
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 18:31
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, can't we throw a little twist in there, you know, or something?
• 18:34
  SPEAKER_01: So I I and I think that's the reason why I dislike the romance so much, is because they have rules that they can't, you know, they in a romance, you can't introduce a third character that's gonna twist your plot.
• 18:49
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 18:49
  SPEAKER_01: Which to me is like, why write it?
• 18:52
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 18:52
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 18:53
  SPEAKER_03: Oh, yeah.
• 18:53
  SPEAKER_03: People, yeah.
• 18:54
  SPEAKER_03: If you don't follow the unspoken rules of romance genre, you get in trouble.
• 19:00
  SPEAKER_03: You get your hands slapped and they get mad at you.
• 19:02
  SPEAKER_03: They'll let you know, yeah, it's the wildest thing, isn't it?
• 19:05
  unknown: Right.
• 19:05
  SPEAKER_03: All these rules.
• 19:06
  SPEAKER_03: And technically, like each genre has like certain rules that you have to like adhere to, otherwise, you know, somebody's somebody's gonna send you an angry email.
• 19:15
  SPEAKER_03: So I don't know.
• 19:15
  SPEAKER_03: I don't want to make anybody mad.
• 19:17
  SPEAKER_03: So follow the rule.
• 19:19
  SPEAKER_01: So that's kind of you know, that's kind of where I'm at.
• 19:22
  SPEAKER_01: I'm like, okay, because personally in my in a personal life, I've been happily divorced for better than 25 years.
• 19:28
  SPEAKER_01: So romance is the last thing on my agenda, and I couldn't even tell you how to go on a date because it's been so long.
• 19:37
  SPEAKER_01: It's like, okay, I and I I have no interest in it.
• 19:40
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I mean, I'm happily divorced for a reason.
• 19:42
  SPEAKER_03: Yep.
• 19:43
  SPEAKER_03: Well, I I caught that drift by the word happily divorced.
• 19:46
  unknown: Right.
• 19:48
  SPEAKER_01: My friends always say, How can you say you're happily divorced?
• 19:51
  SPEAKER_01: I'm like, Because I am.
• 19:52
  SPEAKER_01: I'm completely content.
• 19:54
  SPEAKER_01: I love my life, I'm happily divorced.
• 19:57
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 19:57
  SPEAKER_01: Because I don't have to worry about that other party, or sure what are they doing, or how are they treating me, or how are they treating someone else?
• 20:05
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, it just so happily comes in very, very friendly for me.
• 20:09
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, yeah, it does.
• 20:11
  SPEAKER_03: And you know, to to be for anyone at any point in their life to be content and satisfied and pleased with their life, I don't think, you know, and whatever that means for you, right?
• 20:21
  SPEAKER_03: Whatever that looks like for you, I think is is a beautiful thing because people who are at peace with their their life and their circumstance and their situation are able to kind of project that out.
• 20:30
  SPEAKER_03: And you do exactly that.
• 20:32
  SPEAKER_03: You from the moment we started chatting, I'm like, oh, I like her.
• 20:35
  SPEAKER_03: I like her so much.
• 20:37
  SPEAKER_01: Don't get me wrong.
• 20:38
  SPEAKER_01: My life has been full of storms.
• 20:41
  SPEAKER_01: Sure.
• 20:41
  SPEAKER_01: This which is kind of where the book titles came from was storms.
• 20:45
  SPEAKER_01: Because no matter what, no matter who we are, no matter what walk-a lot we come from, or even where we want to go or are headed, we still have storms.
• 20:55
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, whether they're inside or outside, whether they're emotional, grief, loss, love.
• 21:01
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, we all experience storms.
• 21:03
  SPEAKER_01: How we deal with them is what's important.
• 21:05
  SPEAKER_01: And trying to get people to understand that, yeah, you might be in the middle of, you know, a hurricane right now, but there is an in-road, there is the white light, so to speak.
• 21:17
  SPEAKER_01: So, you know, trying to get people to understand that, you know, we all have mental health crises, we all have, you know, in emotional crises.
• 21:25
  SPEAKER_01: There's help.
• 21:26
  SPEAKER_01: We need to know that there's help.
• 21:29
  SPEAKER_01: You have to be at least a tiny bit strong to reach out for that help.
• 21:35
  SPEAKER_01: You know, whether it's addiction to drugs or alcohol, you know, whether it's mental illness.
• 21:40
  SPEAKER_01: PTSD is a big premise in book two on how she deals with PTSD.
• 21:46
  SPEAKER_01: And it's actually her boss at the hospital unit, the clinic, that says, okay, you're angry, you're upset, you're reacting poorly to people, you're um emotional where it comes to loud noises or unexpected.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_01: Event in the day.
• 22:02
  SPEAKER_01: And we need to get you into some counseling or some therapy because you're a great nurse.
• 22:08
  SPEAKER_01: We want you here, but we can't have you here right now.
• 22:12
  SPEAKER_01: So that's kind of her push to reach out for help.
• 22:15
  SPEAKER_01: Even as a nurse, we're not perfect.
• 22:18
  SPEAKER_01: We all need a little bit of guidance.
• 22:20
  SPEAKER_01: Sure.
• 22:21
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 22:21
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, talk about a high stress job.
• 22:23
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, it's it's such an oftentimes thankless job, too.
• 22:26
  SPEAKER_03: So um, you know, what a what a a great resource to have that knowledge and that understanding to write a character like this with that depth.
• 22:36
  SPEAKER_03: Um, and you know, and I think that's honestly, people who start off writing, um, you know, that's one of the, they find that that's one of the hardest things to write characters with uh a depth that are that are multifaceted and and you know, three-dimensional and not just a flat character.
• 22:54
  SPEAKER_03: And it it sounds like you've done such an amazing job of of bringing Camille to life and and uh all of your characters.
• 23:02
  SPEAKER_03: So I I commend you for that.
• 23:03
  SPEAKER_03: I I'm looking forward to reading this series.
• 23:05
  SPEAKER_03: It sounds absolutely phenomenal.
• 23:06
  SPEAKER_03: So no pressure or anything, but let's go on book three and four.
• 23:09
  SPEAKER_03: Okay.
• 23:11
  SPEAKER_01: Get to it, girl.
• 23:12
  SPEAKER_01: Get to it, lady.
• 23:13
  SPEAKER_01: Come on now.
• 23:14
  SPEAKER_01: No rest for you.
• 23:15
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and that's probably, you know, just thinking of you know, the storm, that's probably one of the big things in book three, is she now has been through trauma not only once, but now twice.
• 23:28
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 23:28
  SPEAKER_01: So how does she deal with that from an emotional?
• 23:31
  SPEAKER_01: She's a very she's a nurse, she's a very compassionate nurse.
• 23:34
  SPEAKER_01: She wants to help like all of her friends, all of her neighbors.
• 23:37
  SPEAKER_01: How do I now take this trauma and apply it to me so I'm not bitter, I'm not angry, and I don't automatically assume everybody's gonna take me or be cruel to me, or you know, are what's your ulterior motive?
• 23:52
  SPEAKER_01: So that's kind of my struggle right now in book three is I still want her to be compassionate, but I also now want her to be really cautious.
• 24:00
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, yeah.
• 24:01
  SPEAKER_03: I love that.
• 24:01
  SPEAKER_03: I love that.
• 24:02
  SPEAKER_03: I love the I love the character development, that arc of her changing and growing throughout all of these experiences, which is such a human thing.
• 24:11
  SPEAKER_03: It's such a a real human aspect of of our life experience, right?
• 24:15
  SPEAKER_03: Like who we are.
• 24:16
  SPEAKER_03: We're the same person, but we're also so changed from who we are.
• 24:19
  SPEAKER_03: We're even five years ago.
• 24:21
  SPEAKER_03: I think each one of us, if you're growing and developing, you know, and I love that your characters um have are showing that that growth as well.
• 24:29
  SPEAKER_03: It's so cool.
• 24:29
  SPEAKER_03: Hard for you, I'm sure.
• 24:30
  SPEAKER_03: It's a challenge for you, but we as the readers appreciate it.
• 24:33
  SPEAKER_03: So right, right.
• 24:34
  SPEAKER_01: Because I mean, ultimately we can all take that trauma and put it in our back pocket and just hide from the world.
• 24:40
  SPEAKER_01: But is that reality?
• 24:42
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, can I really take that and hide from the world?
• 24:44
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, you have to deal with people or even family.
• 24:49
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, so it's it's difficult.
• 24:52
  SPEAKER_01: It's difficult.
• 24:53
  SPEAKER_01: So I'm really struggling with that right now, but I'm gonna get there.
• 24:56
  SPEAKER_03: You will.
• 24:56
  SPEAKER_03: I know that you will.
• 24:57
  SPEAKER_03: I know that you will.
• 24:58
  SPEAKER_03: Um, tell everyone where they can find your books.
• 25:01
  SPEAKER_03: And if you're doing any events uh anywhere, you feel free to throw that in.
• 25:04
  SPEAKER_03: If there's a website, and then of course, I tell everybody at the end of the show.
• 25:08
  SPEAKER_03: Um, everything will be in the show notes.
• 25:10
  SPEAKER_03: You guys will be able to click right on those links.
• 25:12
  SPEAKER_03: Um, but I like for you to tell everybody too.
• 25:14
  SPEAKER_03: And if you have any last message you'd like everybody to know, please share.
• 25:17
  SPEAKER_01: Um, my books are available pretty much everywhere.
• 25:20
  SPEAKER_01: I mean Amazon primary, um, Barnes Noble's Google Reads.
• 25:24
  SPEAKER_01: I do have audibles for book one.
• 25:26
  SPEAKER_01: Um, book two has been narrated, but it hasn't been posted to any sites yet.
• 25:31
  SPEAKER_01: So I am working on that.
• 25:32
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but they're again, they're they're pretty much they're pretty much available.
• 25:36
  SPEAKER_01: You know, just Google, you know, Stocking the Storm or The Storm Within, and they're it'll come up.
• 25:43
  SPEAKER_01: My website is Cindy Ljohnson Book B-O-O-K dot com.
• 25:48
  SPEAKER_01: Um and you can order from there.
• 25:50
  SPEAKER_01: And again, that website's pretty new.
• 25:52
  SPEAKER_01: So again, we're just right now the link goes from my books to Amazon because I haven't got like Spotify or any of the other um storefronts completed yet.
• 26:04
  SPEAKER_01: So that's that's still in progress.
• 26:06
  SPEAKER_01: Very cool.
• 26:07
  SPEAKER_01: Um as for events, I am gonna do in Severeville in I want to say it's the end of January.
• 26:16
  SPEAKER_01: I'm gonna do a book signing there.
• 26:17
  SPEAKER_02: Thanks.
• 26:18
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and I'm working on a Barnes and Noble here in Knoxville.
• 26:21
  SPEAKER_01: But the move kind of threw a little bit of everything out of whack.
• 26:24
  SPEAKER_01: Oh my gosh, I bet it did.
• 26:26
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, absolutely.
• 26:27
  SPEAKER_01: I had a barn, I had a Barnes and Noble signing that I was doing in Naples by because of the move, we were still waiting on Knoxville to say, okay, we'll take her.
• 26:37
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, and they will, they will.
• 26:39
  SPEAKER_03: They'll be they'll be lucky to have you.
• 26:41
  SPEAKER_03: That'll be awesome.
• 26:42
  SPEAKER_01: Some of my more successful books signings have literally been at assisted living facilities.
• 26:48
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, I love that.
• 26:49
  SPEAKER_01: So if you think about it, people at assisted living, they're still independent to a certain degree, and they're they're that's they do puzzles and they read.
• 26:58
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 26:59
  SPEAKER_01: So those have been some of my more successful ones.
• 27:02
  SPEAKER_03: I love that.
• 27:02
  SPEAKER_03: That's so awesome that you do that.
• 27:04
  SPEAKER_03: Oh my goodness.
• 27:05
  SPEAKER_03: Cindy, I can't thank you enough for coming on the show and and sharing your story and your stories with us.
• 27:11
  SPEAKER_03: I appreciate you so much, and I wish you the absolute best of luck with the rest of the series.
• 27:15
  SPEAKER_03: Thank you so much for having me.
• 27:17
  SPEAKER_03: I appreciate it.
• 27:18
  SPEAKER_03: Absolutely.
• 27:19
  SPEAKER_03: Anytime.
• 27:20
  SPEAKER_03: All right, guys.
• 27:20
  SPEAKER_03: Thank you for joining us, and we will see you in the next episode.
• 27:23
  SPEAKER_03: And again, all of those links will be in the show notes, so go check them out.
• 27:27
  SPEAKER_03: Take care, guys.
• 27:27
  SPEAKER_03: Thank you, Elsa.
• 27:28
  SPEAKER_03: You're welcome.
• 27:30
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