We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Brittany Johnson a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Brittany, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. What did your parents do right and how has that impacted you in your life and career?

I always joke that even though my debut novel, DEADLY EVER AFTER, is coming out this year, it’s not my first story ever to be published. I’m proud to say that I was a self-published author at the ripe age of four years old. The story, one about a bumblebee that was flitting from flower to flower until the rain ruined her day, can’t be found online, nor is it bound between two covers. There was only one edition, and it was published on the walls of my mother’s all white living room in marker.

Raising a creative child can be fun, but it can also be…a lot. I think many parents in this scenario would have lost it. They would have dished out punishments, time-outs, chores, you name it. But my mother didn’t do any of that. Sure, she was upset, but she knew that this story was very important to me and my development. The last thing she wanted to do was stifle my creativity, so she didn’t. After washing away my words, she bought me giant sticky pads and told me that as long as I write my stories on paper, I can stick them anywhere I want in the house.

And I did.

And that’s not the first or last time she decided to get creative in her parenting.

Once I decided I wanted to be a farmer, and after digging several holes in the backyard, she gave me one designated digging hole, and I used it for years to come. As a pre-teen, I found a passion for baking, and instead of only allowing me to make whatever would create the smallest mess, she allowed me to use every pot and pan as I worked through every baking cookbook I could find at the bookstore. In high school, I discovered a love for photography and film, and she accompanied me to every college visit and displayed my photographs around the house as I went to art college.

My mother was my first creative champion. Instead of telling me to be less of who I naturally was, she found ways to guide me and help channel the energy in productive ways. She never told me not to pursue what I love. She said the opposite, “Do what you love and the money will follow,” and she’s been proven right time and time again.

I wouldn’t be the author or digital creative I am today without her. She’s been my shotgun rider throughout my entire professional journey. She never saw rejections (which are common in publishing) as a means to walk away. She taught me that every no is a countdown to the eventual yes, and boy, did that yes finally come!

I owe everything to her. Pain, struggle, and strife never built up my strength to overcome. Her love and faith in me did, and I will never take for granted.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

I’m Brittany Johnson, an author, journalist, and digital creative located in Southern California, but originally from Northern Jersey and Florida. I’m a lover of all things whimsical, comedic, and human. Above all else, I believe in Happily Ever After. It’s a belief, an ideology, and the basis of everything that I create.

Ten years ago, as I entered adulthood, I knew I wanted to do something that I was passionate about, but I had no idea what that looked like. There was a period of my life when I sampled every potential career path like a wedding guest does food during cocktail hours. This “try everything” phase was very unconventional and nontraditional, but it formed the foundation for what would become my professional creative career. Around eight years ago, I sat down with all the lessons, therapy bills, and dreams that I had garnered up until that point and realized that storytelling was at the center of it all.

The dominoes fell quickly. I wrote and finished my first manuscript within six months. Spoiler alert: It was bad. Like, really bad. Amazing title! But it’ll never see the light of day, and I’m very okay with that.

I didn’t get agented, and it joined the archives. Two more manuscripts followed suit. Over the next year, a global pandemic hit. I was furloughed from my theme park job, living on unemployment, and was stuck at home like millions of others across the globe. So why not use the time given to write the next story?

An idea that I came up with months prior, about what happens on the other side of the true love’s kiss coma in fairytales, popped into my head. On a whim, I wrote the first chapter and sent it to a friend and my mother. Both asked the question, “So what happens next?” I didn’t have the answer, so I threw caution to the wind and decided to keep writing. Three months later, I finished my first draft of what would eventually become DEADLY EVER AFTER. After more rejections and a revise and resubmit, my lovely agent took me on, and we submitted the project to publishing imprints after a full year of further revisions.

No one bit after 10 months, so we worked a bit more on the manuscript before sending it out again. Six weeks later, I had an editor call. Three weeks after that, I accepted an offer. Now, a full year and a half later, five years from the start of this project, we’re less than five months out from DEADLY EVER AFTER, my young adult sapphic romantasy where two dead princesses embark on a quest for true love’s kiss for a second chance at life, hitting shelves.

A lot of authors will have hard numbers for you. “I was rejected XX times.” “I queried XX times.” Truthfully? I don’t have those numbers. I never counted or kept track of them because I believed my success was inevitable. “If” was never in my vocabulary. “When” was. I never questioned that part of my Happily Ever After. I knew it would come, and I was right!

Don’t get me wrong, it was hard. Anxiety kept me awake at night. I sobbed to friends more times than I can count. But none of the hardships outweigh the way that this story and I have blossomed over this journey. Every tribulation I’ve been forced to overcome, from the obvious things like the -isms and -phobias, to balancing two and at times three jobs so I can keep writing, was difficult. But because of it, I’m now able to bring stories about Black girls with big hearts and bigger emotions to your nearest bookstore. I’m proud of my journey and the whimsical fairytales that I pen. It was tough…but I’d do it all over again if it meant that somehow my stories would be in their hands and it’d help them believe that Happily Ever After is real.

My fairytales are my activism. My community is my fuel, and this is only the beginning.

Are there any resources you wish you knew about earlier in your creative journey?

DISCORD. I genuinely had no idea it existed.

Most of my writing career was community-less. Only in the past two years have I found other publishing friends, and it’s made all the difference. I wish I had connected to other writers earlier on, and I wish I had found some form of friendship and community there.

Separately, I started writing in 2018. I didn’t have any college courses (besides one) to help my craft. Little did I know, just as I was getting started, so was a YouTube channel called SavageBooks! Full disclosure: He’s my current partner, but back then he wasn’t. Partner aside, I didn’t know how many online resources there were to help beginner writers learn the art of storytelling. If I could go back in time, I definitely would have taken advantage of that.

Any insights you can share with us about how you built up your social media presence?

You don’t have to do what you think you have to do.

I talk to my author friends a lot about social media and digital strategy. Given that I’ve also been doing that for nearly a decade, I have some strong opinions and insights. Most of them are reduced down to throwing the social media advice and examples you’ve seen over and over again out the window.

If you don’t like dancing, don’t make a trending dancing TikTok. If you hate being on camera, do faceless content. If you’re like me and Canva makes you want to rip your hair out, utilize photography as a replacement.

Social media doesn’t have to be this convoluted thing, and you don’t have to do what you see everyone else doing to succeed. Focus on what you actually want to communicate through your posts, whether marketing a project or telling the world about you. Look at it like a conversation and a means for expression, and then just slowly become more strategic over time.

This has been my tactic and strategy, and it’s working. Social media doesn’t stress me out. I don’t post just to post. I make sure everything I post is intentional. If I don’t laugh at what I make, I don’t post it. I have to love it from creation to publishing, whether it took five seconds or five hours (or more)!

Focus on community and conversation. Not on virality or trends.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://ByBrittanyJohnson.com
• Instagram: ByBrittanyJohnson
• Youtube: ByBrittanyJohnson
• Other: Threads: ByBrittanyJohnson
  TikTok: ByBrittanyJohnson
  BlueSky: ByBrittanyJohnson

Image Credits

Studio images – Anthony Bryce Graham