WA author Rachael Johns on how her writing career launched

Rachael Johns has vivid memories of the first time she moved to a small country town. It was a move that would change her life.

RACHAEL Johns has vivid memories of the first time she moved to a small country town.

The West Australian author has made her name in rural romance fiction, but her own introduction to living in the bush came as a 25-year-old.

That’s when Rachael, her husband and their three-month-old son moved to Kojonup, 265km southeast of Perth.

“It was really bad timing because it was New Year’s Eve when we moved so everything was closed,” she recalls.

“There were no playgroups open for the whole holidays, no toy libraries, no storytelling at the library — none of the things that give you that social interaction when you’ve got a young baby.

“I had no clue about small towns ... Initially I felt it was very cliquey in small towns and I was never going to feel at home.

“I felt very much like an outsider.”

But, as readers of romance fiction will know very well, first impressions are not always right.

And, thankfully, that turned out to be the case here.

Rachael says by the time the family left Kojonup six years later, “I felt like that was home”.

“I had three kids then, and I had people I could call on.”

Kojonup proved a turning point in Perth-raised Rachael’s life for more reasons than just a tree-change. It was also the site of her inspiration to turn her hand (or, more accurately, her pen) to romance.

“I’d been trying to write for a number of years before then,” she says.

“I did a writing degree at uni, so they want you to write the Booker Prize. That really wasn’t me. I enjoyed reading things like Bridget Jones’ Diary and that.

Rachael’s new book, due for release next month.

“I was trying to write what I thought I should be writing.

“And then when we were living in Kojonup, I was working in the local library and I saw people getting out Mills and Boon books.”

Having heard stories about how much money Mills and Boon authors could make, Rachael decided to “stop trying to win the Booker Prize”.

“I’m going to give this romance thing a go.”

But she said it was harder than she thought it would be, and she had a number of rejections from the publishing company.

“Then a couple of other writing friends who had just published in rural romance said to me, ‘Why are you trying to do Mills and Boon and jump through all these hoops? You live in a small community, write a rural romance’,” she recalls, adding that the genre had just had a bit of a boom.

Rachael says she initially felt like “a fraud” because she didn’t have any farming experience herself.

But she had plenty of people around her who did, and by then she thought of herself as a “converted country girl”, and had “fallen in love” with living in a small town.

She had also seen first-hand how communities could respond to a tragedy.

Her husband is a supermarket manager, and Rachael recalls that when the Kojonup co-op burned down 10 years ago it had a “massive effect on that town, but it also made people come together and help each other out”.

“I learnt that in small communities it can be really tough, but also really heart-warming and amazing when people support each other through tough times, which I don’t think you get as much in the city.”

So she gave writing one more go — and “that was the one”.

“A lot of writing is luck and timing,” she says.

“You’ve got to have the goods ready, but I came into rural
romance at a time when it was booming.

“Finally, after 15 years of trying to write various things, finally I
wrote the right thing at the right time.”

Rachael has now published more than a dozen books and her newest, Something To Talk About, is due for release next month by Mira.

She says the plot revolves around a male teacher moving to a small country town and immediately attracting the attention of every single woman.

That is, except for the heroine, whom Rachael says is an amputee. The character was inspired by Rachael’s boss at the Kojonup library. “She is just amazing, she can do more than most people with two arms.

“She can knit, she is part of the ambulance volunteers.”

Rachael, a former teacher, now writes full-time at the family’s home at Swan Valley.

She says she writes to entertain, but also feels that rural romance can be sold short.

“People often forget that romance novels also deal with a whole load of topical issues of the day,” she says.

MORE COUNTRY LIVING

POETIC PRAISE

THE SEEDS OF SUCCESS FOR COUNTRY KIDS

LINKIN’ PARK TO NATURE

“And they can be just as important.

“We’ve got such a wide readership, and our books are accessible, so it’s a way to entertain primarily, but to raise some important rural issues,” Rachael says.

“Just because it is enjoyable doesn’t mean it is not important.”

●Something To Talk About by Rachael Johns is scheduled for release next month.