Brian Johnson: Why I Write

I was in my first tornado at seven years old.

I was in my house alone with a serial killer that haunted my childhood.

I grew up on mythology, epic films, and lots of books.

How can I not write?

In The Halloween Tree, Ray Bradbury wrote about cavemen waiting in shelter for winter to end. Watching the embers of the fire float, the reflection of the wolves’ eyes just outside the firelight, and being haunted by ghosts. Ghosts of memories, ghosts of people gone without time to mourn, ghosts of things of our past. That’s why I write. Memories and a constant nagging feeling of what if?

I grew up with thunder. We had a 30-foot church steeple in front of our house and a TV station behind us with lightning rods protecting their radar. There would be an intense flash of light, air split overhead, then thunder rattled the entire house. I hated thunderstorms and lived in the very active Midwest.

When I was seven, I had two big fears in life, storms and a serial killer that was near where my grandmother lived. One year, we went to the lake on Memorial Day. It had been a stormy night and we had already been to the shelter earlier. The storm grew quiet. We made the mistake of relaxing. As everyone in the Midwest knows, the quiet of a storm is a dangerous thing. A TV meteorologist came on with a tornado warning. It was at the lake and heading right for us. The sun had already gone down and our only light was frequent lightning. We ran for the shelter as it went over the dam that protected our campground. We lost power, people panicked, and I hid in the shelter’s corner thinking this was it.

In the panic of the storm, my father picked me up and took me outside. His infamous words were, “Look at that”. It was dark, but lightning illuminated a wedge tornado with two satellite tornados that hit a nearby town. Something broke in me and my fear became a fascination with weather. Storms will find their way into my stories.

I have always been a creative individual. I grew up on mythology, comic books, and films like Star Wars, Flash Gordon, and Star Trek. On Thanksgiving, I watched the strangest cartoons of the Hobbit and Lord of the Rings. When I would get together with friends, we would recreate these scenes. A snowy playground was the Battle of Hoth, a stormy sky giving background to a sci-fi movie or an epic quest, and as some of my friends hated, waiting for the quiet times and the right atmosphere for me to tell a good spooky story.

A high school teacher challenged me to enter a writing contest. I wrote a vampire short story, that she submitted, and laughed saying it was good, but the people reading it would not understand it. It didn’t win but I had created something.

Years later at my first house, having a squabble with landlords over a hot water heater, I had the local city inspector look at it. He was a man of no laughs, straight business, and no personality. Years later, I watched on live TV as he was captured, then his subsequent trial about the BTK, his inner demons, and why he killed all those people. This was my boogie man growing up and I survived my encounter with him.

These are the ghosts of memories in my head.

Since then, I have published poetry, short stories, and have my third novel coming out soon. I finished my fourth book this last year as well. My characters tend to be tragic, storms weave their way into my books, mythology and folklore edge their way in, and yes, there is evil.

Without the National Writing Project and the Flint Hills Writing Project, I wouldn’t have finished my second novel, and third, and fourth. It has given me a group of people like me, teachers, curious and creative folk, to meet with, discuss, and unload all those ghosts in our minds while keeping the wolves, just at the edge of firelight, at bay.