Urban-Reviews.com - Inside Out with Lori Johnson

Urban Reviews: Start by telling our readers about After the Dance.
Lori Johnson: After the Dance is a light-hearted look at love that’s told from both the male and female perspectives. In the story, thirty-four year old Faye Abrahams, a single and cynical pharmacist, professes to have sworn off romance, excluding those that fall between the pages of the tawdry paperbacks she routinely devours. Nonetheless, after a series of unforeseen events, she finds herself contemplating abandoning both her books and her "hit it and quit it" credo for the company of one of two handsome bachelors.

Bachelor #1 is Faye's forty-two year old neighbor, Carl, who, while on the one hand, is a charming, old school romantic, is on the other, a financially strapped, divorced father of three with a man-about-town rep. Bachelor #2 is Faye's old childhood sweetheart, Venard (aka Scoobie), who practically begs Faye for a chance to prove he's truly the changed man his status as a church abiding, celebrity chef and cookbook author suggests.

Faye's choice is further complicated by the sudden unraveling of a decades old secret, she's long kept from everyone except her nutty, best friend, Nora.

Urban Reviews: What inspired you to come up with this story?
Lori Johnson: A couple of things, actually, the first being a reoccurring image I couldn’t shake of a slow-dancing couple. In my mind’s eyes, they were always in silhouette and I kept asking myself who are these people? Why are they dancing? In a sense, the story was my way of attempting to answer those questions.

Around the time I first started seeing this reoccurring image, I was working at the main branch of the public library in Memphis, Tennessee. While there, I become good friends with a woman who was and to my knowledge is still, a big fan of the romance genre. On the surface, my friend is such a stern, no-nonsense type, her enjoyment of stories (I personally view as kind of sappy, predictable and highly improbable) always struck me as odd, if not somewhat amusing.

Anyway, one day I told her I bet I could write a more realistic love story that she'd enjoy, possibly even more than the ones she'd long been in the habit of reading. Initially, my intent had been to write the piece as a tongue-in-cheek parody and a playful poke at the whole "girl falls for the guy next door" type of madness. So using the slow-dancing couple imagery as my guide, every week, I'd hand over five to ten pages of what I'd written and watch as my friend chuckled and shook her head over the material. Pretty soon, when too many days passed without me turning over any new pages, my friend started bugging me about when to expect the next installment. Shortly thereafter, she started sharing the story with her roommate and wah-lah! After the Dance's first captive audience was born (smile).

Urban Reviews: How long did it take you to finish your debut novel?
Lori Johnson: That’s not an easy question from me to answer. I’ve rewritten After the Dance several times over the years and like a cat, it’s had several different lives. In its first life, it was a sixty-page novella, entitled No Illusions. The novella, which I penned while working at the library in Memphis, took me maybe two to three months to write. The first fifteen pages of No Illusions were later published as a short story by the same title, in Obsidian II: Black Literature In Review. I didn’t actually start expanding the work and trying to turn it into a full-length novel until years later. The amount of time I put into each subsequent revision varied anywhere from two to six months.

Urban Reviews: Can you tell us how you secured your book deal?
Lori Johnson: Oh, it’s been quite the long and arduous journey (smile). I think it might help to admit that initially, I had little interest in turning After the Dance into a novel. As I mentioned, in its original sixty-page incarnation, the work was never meant for an audience beyond myself and a few of my library friends and co-workers. But during the course of my participation in a workshop, led by another Memphis author, Arthur Flowers, a seed of another sort was planted. After Flowers read the work, he strongly encouraged me to expand the material into a novel. At the time, in addition to working on other things, I truthfully wasn’t much interest in expanding the piece and thus dismissed the notion.

Of course, many years later, I changed my mind. In 1999, I started sending out an expanded version of the project. But after my first few, attempts to secure an agent for the work were met with rejection, I shelved the project and again dismissed the idea. Shortly thereafter, a series of life-altering events, (my grandmother’s stroke and subsequent placement in a nursing home and my spouse’s job-loss which led to our relocation to Cleveland, Ohio) forced me, for a time, to put writing on the back burner altogether. It wasn’t until 2004 after revising the work and changing the title to After the Dance that I felt up to submitting the work to agents again.

In March of 2004, I sent the work to Anita Diggs, who at the time was working as an agent with the Literary Group. Even though she declined the offer to take me on as a client, she gave me quite a few specific suggestions for revising my manuscript. After implementing a number of those changes, I started sending the manuscript out again and immediately saw an increase in requests to read the full manuscript.

In January of 2005, Janell Walden Agyeman, an associate of Marie Brown, asked to see the work. By the summer of that year, she’d agreed to take me on as a client. In August of 2006, Kensington expressed in interest in After the Dance and offered me a two-book deal.

Urban Reviews: Are you working on any upcoming projects?
Lori Johnson: I have several uncompleted projects awaiting my full attention. But the next novel I hope to see published is currently entitled, A Natural Woman. At the moment, I rather not say too much about A Natural Woman, beyond the fact that I view it as a love story that contains just a hint of mystery.

Urban Reviews: At what time of day do you enjoy writing most?
Lori Johnson: While I've disciplined myself to write whenever a portion of free time avails itself, what I've discovered over the years is that I prefer editing and rewriting in the mornings or during the daylight hours. But my best creative writing generally occurs after eleven o'clock at night. 'Round about midnight, when the house is quiet and everyone else has gone to bed, is when I have a tendency to drift into a zone of sorts. That's when the writing becomes much more fluid and intense.

Urban Reviews: What do you like doing in your spare time?
Lori Johnson: I spend most of my free time with my family. We're big fans of outdoor art, food, music and other such types of cultural and family-oriented festivals. The great weather in Charlotte allows us to enjoy those kinds of activities almost year round. Being that my son is very involved in sports and music, I also spend quite a bit of time cheering him on at his events. Of course, I enjoy reading and listening to music as well as going to the movies, concerts and theatrical performances with friends.

Urban Reviews: What do you want the world to know most about you?
Lori Johnson: I'd like folks to understand that while on the surface, a lot of my work appears fun and playful, it is never without more than a few serious undertones. For me, writing is and always has been both a very serious and a very spiritual endeavor.

In addition, I think something I wrote when I first started my blog (Lori's Old School Mix) bears repeating: My work is heavily influenced by music. I grew up listening to my mother's Aretha Franklin and Al Green, my father's Miles and Coltrane, as well as the James Brown, Johnny Taylor, B.B. King and Bobby Blue Bland that typically greeted my ears in the dark North Memphis cafes, grills and smoke-filled lounges that kept one of my grandmothers gainfully employed. That's why, for me, beneath the words there is always music--whether a throb, a hum, a quiet melody or a rhythmic beat. In a sense, my approach to writing is about chasing the music. I know if I'm able to string together the "right' combination of words, I'll find it. I know once I've found it, I can make the piece sing.