Interview with Joanne (J.C.) Paulson
- Jun 12
- 6 min read
Since I last interviewed you, The Maddox Verdict has gone out into the world. How does it feel to have written a whole series?
Lily, I don’t know yet. When I started all this almost ten years ago, I had no intention of writing a series. I wrote Adam’s Witness to basically save my sanity. Then people asked, “When is the next book coming out?” And I said, “Sorry . . . what?”
Did I have another book in me? Well, I decided to give it a go. I suppose after the second one, I had become addicted to the process and my characters, so here we are.
I do think series should probably end at some point. I had sort of five or six wider points I wanted to make in the books, and now I’ve presented them. It’s both a relief, in a way, I think, but also . . . an ending. Is that sad? I’m not sure yet.
Tell me about your books.
Fundamentally, I am driven to write about social justice issues, but I try to make the stories action-packed, character-driven and plot heavy to pull readers through. I hope the books are not preachy while also delivering messages.
So there are six such novels in The Adam and Grace Mystery Series, where issues such as racism, misogyny, and corporate greed are explored. These are Adam’s Witness, Broken Through, Fire Lake, Griffin’s Cure, Two Hundred Bones (a novella), and now The Maddox Verdict.
Blood and Dust, my attempt at a historical western, also has some of that social awareness tucked inside a hero’s journey. And there is also a little bit of it in the children’s book, Magic Mack and The Mischief-Makers.
What inspires you to write?
Fury.
And an inability to shut up.
Has your writing process changed since you wrote Adam’s Witness?
Not much, no. As you know, I’ve been a journalist for more years than I care to admit in print, so I’m somewhat trained to follow a process to the extent possible. If you don’t have a process, a rhythm, nothing gets done by deadline. So I slowly figured out something similar with Adam’s Witness, it worked, and I carry on.
I write when I can. Before I start the next session, I re-read the previous chapter and go. Then the thing gets several edits, goes to beta readers and editors, is re-edited and there we are.
What was your favourite research activity for a book?
I’m torn between the research for Griffin’s Cure and Blood and Dust. For the former, I needed a “thing” to wrap the plot around — which proved to be a fungus with remarkable healing properties. It took me (and my husband) hours of research to hopefully get that more or less right. What I have found fascinating since then is that some of the properties we came up with, while based on research, are actually being investigated at university facilities today. I’m kind of thrilled by that.
The longest research period came for Blood and Dust. I am sure I spent at least as many hours researching as writing. Probably more. Historical fiction requires a great fat lot of effort; you want to try to get it right, and if you’re looking 150 years into the past, you need to remember that no one had cellphones or automobiles or running water. Ha.
How do you think you have grown as a writer since you published your first book?
I’m not sure if I have.
You have a number of different writing-related hats that you wear. How do you manage switching between them?
Yikes. Well, it’s juggling time that’s the biggest problem. I work maybe two-thirds time these days, but I still have extremely busy what I call “in real life” work weeks. So that has to come first, of course, due to the need to eat and so on. I don’t find it all that difficult to switch writing styles, though. My books, I think, have a bit of a journalistic style. It’s just what it is, the way my head works.
Do you have any thoughts on the changing world of book publishing we should bear in mind?
So many. But let me say this. For the first time, in the back matter of The Maddox Verdict, I said that this book was written for humans by a human about humans. I will not use artificial intelligence beyond sort of image manipulation for covers (it is physically impossible to generate a proper genre-related cover without some of that) for anything. Not for writing and not for research. The intense hoohaw around AI is warranted and a discussion society must have. Let us remember that AI has largely been built on the brainwork and sweat and art of real humans. That, to me, means we have basically been plagiarized in many respects.
What advice would you give other writers?
Oh dear. That would be an essay or six, I think.
Briefly, if you write, you must read. Brains absorb things like word usage, style, grammar and character development without even realizing. This will help anyone write faster while also creating something readable before the first edit.
Read a good book on novel-writing basics. Try Stephen King’s On Writing, for example. When I started writing novels, I was pretty clueless, so tips from established authors helped me figure out how to structure chapters and so on.
Avoid overusing words. Don’t use a physical response, such as shrugged or chuckled, for a dialogue tag. Use emotional beats to show, not tell, how a character is feeling.
Et cetera!
What have you learned about marketing?
Not much. Ha. And the environment changes all the time. What worked for me at the beginning is failing spectacularly now. I would say look into BookBub offerings if you can afford it. Definitely try to create your own reader list and protect it in some kind of bomb shelter. We cannot predict when a social media platform will crash, and today, many authors are being hacked and removed from them as well.
Is there anything you would do differently if you were starting out now?
There was a time when I wished I had tried to find an agent or publisher from the hop. Now I am not so sure. Having a publisher carries zero guarantee of big success, although for many, obviously, it helps. I do get exhausted by the launch process now, and I’m learning to loathe marketing; it’s all so time-consuming. A lot of work. A lot of money, if you’re doing it “right.”
But having a publisher does not entirely take the author out of marketing, so there is also that.
What is your next project? What should we be looking out for?
I am about halfway through a romantic thriller connected to the Adam and Grace universe with largely new main characters. I really want to try marketing a book with a fairly clear genre that at least somewhat follows the rules of tropes. I’m not sure I’m succeeding. I seem constitutionally unable to write a basic romance. Sigh.
Thank you so much for this, Lily.
BIO:
Joanne (J.C.) Paulson, a long-time Saskatoon journalist, has been published in newspapers including The StarPhoenix, The Western Producer, the Saskatoon Express and many other publications over more years than cares to admit.
Her unquiet brain requested a shift from fact to fiction about ten years ago, when she started madly writing mystery novels based in Saskatchewan. Six of those have been independently published: Adam’s Witness, Broken Through, Fire Lake, Griffin’s Cure and a novella, Two Hundred Bones. The sixth and final book in the mystery series, The Maddox Verdict, came out in May. A romantic thriller will follow as a standalone with different main characters, but within the Adam and Grace universe.
She is also the author of a traditionally-published historical fiction/western entitled Blood and Dust, and a wee children’s book, Magic Mack and The Mischief-Makers.
Paulson lives in a rambling bungalow in Saskatoon with her husband, goldsmith Ken Paulson, a human mine of useful plot ideas.
Links:
Website: https://www.jcpaulsonwriter.com/
Substack: https://joannepaulson.substack.com/
Book One of the Adam and Grace Mystery Series: mybook.to/AdamsWitness
Amazon author page:
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