Q: When did you realize you wanted to be a writer?
A: I realized I wanted to be a writer when I noticed that all the cutest, smartest boys in high school were on the newspaper staff. Later, The bug for journalism bit, though. So I don’t mind admitting my ignominious beginnings.

Q: How and when did you make this dream a reality?
A: Only two years after that I was hired by the Salt Lake Tribune as a staff writer when this dream began to take shape. They call themselves a “Great Pulitzer Prize Winning Newspaper.” I based a chapter in my novel This Is the Place on what I did, completely unashamedly, to get that job so young. And, yes, This Is the Place is still available on Amazon. In fact, it has had a kind of rebirth since Mitt Romney is running for President and the novel is set in Utah. Coincidentally, even one of the minor characters in it is running for an elected office.

Q: What’s the most important lesson you’ve learned so far in your writing career?
A: I learned that every field of writing is entirely different and requires study and work for proficiency. My work as a journalist and publicist helped with my literary writing (and certainly helped with my nonfiction HowToDoItFrugally.com series of books for writers!) but it wasn’t enough. I now know that each time I start to write something different (a poem, a screenplay, a short story delete exclamation point), I’d better do my homework and a lot of it.

Q: What are you working on right now?
A: I’m working on the third book in the How To Do It Frugally series, one I hope to give away to writers if I can get a grant to do that; and a memoir called Here’s How I Don’t Cook.

Q: Name some authors or books that have influenced your writing life in a positive way.
A: I like all the writers who try to give something back to the writing community. That includes nonfiction writers who do what they can to pass on the expertise necessary to make writing joyful (like Patricia Fry, Fern Reiss and Peter Bowerman), and writers who share of themselves liberally like Ray Bradbury. I like writers like Harper Lee and Leo Tolstoy who explore themes that can make us all better human beings. The ones like Patricia and Fern inspired me to do something similar, especially when I saw so many of my fellow writers falling into the same potholes I had. You know, like making costly promotion mistakes or worse, not promoting at all!

After I started teaching for UCLA Extension Writers’ Program, I started editing. That was when the idea for The Frugal Editor was born. Authors were being assigned very poor editors or their books weren’t being edited at all. I jumped into the gap and then decided to use the practical stuff I had learned in the process to write a book that could help. I didn’t do it alone, though. A couple dozen agents weighed in. Most of the agents I worked with were as eager as I was to help authors avoid the little mistakes that immediately tip off professionals that they aren’t professional. Sometimes even when they are professional!

Q: What have you recently read or what are you reading right now that you would consider an outstanding work?
A: I just returned from BEA where I signed copies of The Frugal Editor for publishers, editors, librarians, bookstore buyers, etc. So I collected a few free copies of my own including Hosseini’s A Thousand Splendid Suns. I loved it. I also was given Lisa See’s Peony in Love. I haven’t read it but her last book about the Nushu-speaking women of China inspired a poem I hope to publish as a chapbook. So I do recommend her work often.

Q: What excites or ignites your soul?
A: Sharing my love of writing and sharing my writing.

Carolyn Howard-Johnson’s first novel, This Is the Place, won eight awards. Her book of creative nonfiction, Harkening: A Collection of Stories Remembered, won three. An instructor for UCLA Extension’s world-renown Writers’ Program, her book The Frugal Book Promoter: How to Do What Your Publisher Won’t was named USA Book News’ “Best Professional Book 2004,” and was given the Irwin Award. Her second book in the How To Do It Frugally series is The Frugal Editor: Put Your Best Book Forward to Avoid Humiliationand Ensure Success. Her chapbook of poetry Tracings, was named to the Compulsive Reader’s Ten Best Reads list and was given the Military Writers’ Society of America’s Silver Award of Excellence. She is the recipient of the California Legislature’s Woman of the Year in Arts and Entertainment Award, and her community’s Character and Ethics Committee awarded her work promoting tolerance with her writing. She was also named to Pasadena Weekly’s list of 14 “San Gabriel Valley women who make life happen.” Her website is www.HowToDoItFrugally.com. Her e-mail is HoJoNews@aol.com.