Joshilyn Jackson: A Home – Grown Talent
By Kelly Oden
Pensacola native and New York Times best-selling novelist Joshilyn Jackson’s latest novel, Backseat Saints, hit the bookstores last month. The novel takes a minor character from her best-selling first novel, Gods in Alabama, and creates a unique and endearing modern Southern heroine all while taking readers on a riveting joy ride.
Joshilyn traces her love of literature and writing all the way back to her early childhood and credits her family, teachers and friends with fostering and encouraging her passion.
Now a wife and mother living in “quasi” rural Georgia, Joshilyn was gracious enough to spend a few minutes talking with Pensacola Magazine about growing up in Pensacola, her amazing husband and living the writing life. We found her to be as sharp, quick-witted and interesting as many of the female characters in her novels.
PM: Hi, Joshilyn. I hear you are a Pensacola native. You spent a good part of your youth here in Pensacola, right? Exactly how long did you live here and at what ages.
Jackson: After my dad retired from the military, I moved here during the middle of third grade and I later graduated from Washington High School. Then I went to UWF for a year before transferring to the University of Georgia. So, from about third grade until I was about nineteen.
PM: What do you remember about growing up here? What were some of your favorite things to do as a child growing up in Pensacola?
Jackson: I was a beach rat. I was like any other child in America. I wanted to be a marine biologist (laughs). And so I was in the PATS (Program for Academically Talented Students), and I got to take marine biology classes through there. I used to keep an aquarium. I rode horses. I did chorus. I did a lot of theatre with the high school group. I did their competitions. Pensacola has a remarkable theatre community.
PM: How often do you get back to visit?
Jackson: Well my husband’s mom lives there. So I get back a couple of times a year at a minimum. Plus, I am very close with a lot of people who work in and run the Loblolly Theatre there. They are family to me. So we come down to see them, too. I am in Atlanta now. We come there every July for Fourth of July, and we are still coming this year.
PM: Pensacola has changed and grown a lot since you were a child. Do you keep up with what is happening here? What do you think about the way Pensacola is growing and changing?
Jackson: For me, it is people that I keep up with. You know, my old theatre teacher from high school, who I believe is still teaching at Washington High School, Mrs. Replogle. I am much more interested in seeing her and catching up with her. I mean it does seem to have grown from a little sleepy seaside village when I grew up there. Now, it seems a lot more metropolitan, which I guess that’s nice in some ways. But I loved sleepy little Pensacola so much.
PM: Do you keep in touch with your high school friends?
Jackson: A few of them. Yes, there are a few people that still live in town that I keep up with. Like my oldest friend in the world is Charlotte Hooper. She and I have been friends since, I don’t know, maybe high school, maybe middle school. Her family, Dr. Hooper and his wife, still live in town and they come to my book events when I’m in town. I still have some good friends from high school, yeah.
PM: What are your thoughts on the oil spill?
Jackson: I’m just heart broken over it. And we have…. I mean seriously…. the most beautiful beaches in the world. If you grew up on Pensacola Beach and spent a lot of time down in Destin and all that, other beaches that you go to just look dirty because the sand is brown. And our beaches just always look like that clear green-blue water and that white, white sand and they just look so clean and beautiful and so it just seems particularly egregious then, on these pristine beaches, that all this tar is coming in. I’m distraught over it, quite frankly.
PM: So how did growing up in Pensacola in particular and along the Gulf Coast in a more general sense, influence you personally and professionally as a writer.
Jackson: Oh, sure. I mean you know Florida— if you go down the long part, that is not the South. But the Panhandle is absolutely the South. You know, I am known as a Southern Gothic writer and, I mean, it’s a very specific kind of culture. Very quirky people. I’m sure it influenced me a lot—The kind of things I like to write about. You know my third novel was set in Pensacola and Mobile.
PM: You definitely have quirky people in your novels. Do you base some of your characters on people you grew up with or that you met growing up in this area? Did Pensacola’s quirky people influence you?
Jackson: I don’t ever base characters on people I’ve known in real life. Although I’ll steal anecdotes and quirks.
PM: Do you still do any theatre?
Jackson: I don’t. You know I have two little kids and a writing deadline. But I do read my own audio books. I love it. It kind of feeds that part of me. I always wanted to read my own audio book. I didn’t do it for my first book. But for my second one, I went to my editor and asked her if I could and she told me ‘No’ (laughs). And she was like ‘you know we really don’t like people to do that.’ They usually want to hire a professional actor. I was like ‘Oh, I have worked as an actor and blah, blah, blah.’ And she said ‘Joshilyn, don’t set your heart on this.’ And I was like, ‘Can I at least audition?’ She said, ‘Yes, you may audition, but don’t invest too much in it.’ So I went and I got a friend to record me reading three different scene and the different voices. I did a fight scene with five male characters. I did narration. I believe she called me back and said, ‘You know what? You can read your own books.’ I won a Listen Up Award from Publishers Weekly and for the last one, I was nominated for an Audie Award, which you know who else was nominated in my category, which is read by the author? It was me, David Sedaris, Maria Shriver, Maya Angelo, and Cokie Roberts.
PM: How did you get started as a writer? Was it a dream since childhood?
Jackson: Yes, I have been writing my whole life. And you know, I have been encouraged in it my whole life. In third grade I won the Cordova Elementary School poetry contest for a poem about my cat (laughs). My mom has hundreds of little picture books that I made with crayolas and staples that I published myself. And I got more into playwriting but the focus was still on writing. So yes, it was what I wanted to do my whole life.
PM: Who influenced you growing up? Was there a specific writer that made you want to do what they did?
Jackson: Well I was a hugely avid and hugely eclectic reader. So I read everything, you would expect a little girl to read like The Secret Garden and all that kind of stuff. I read those books. I also had an older brother about four years older than me that I loved and was very close with and still am. I was influenced by him as well. I read Charlotte’s Webb and then I would read Conan the Barbarian (laughs). And so I also grew up reading a lot of pulp like a teenage boy would like—Edgar Rice Burroughs, H. P. Lovecraft, Stephen King. Lots of sci-fi horror and as well. And then I buried myself in Jane Austin and by the time I was a teenager I had found the Southern Gothic writers and had fallen in love with them. Flannery O’Conner is probably my favorite writer ever.
PM: You are often described as a Southern Gothic writer and I think you describe yourself that way, but do you feel like there is another way to describe your writing? Some people have a strange perception of what Southern Gothic writing is.
Jackson: Certainly the Southern Gothic writers have had an influence on me. But I don’t think I’m writing straight up Southern Gothic, quite frankly. I write what I call book club books. They are the kind of book that if you want to, you can take the book down to the beach with this great big rum drink and read it and have a good time. You could laugh, it would be suspenseful, and you wouldn’t know what was going to happen next. It would be a lot of fun. And that would be great if that were all you wanted. But they are also the kind of books that are doing something else thematically. If you want to have a discussion or a club to talk about it, there is plenty there for you. If you want to be a more invested, careful reader.
PM: They are definitely meaty. You write about some deep issues…abuse, rape, and even racism a little in Gods in Alabama. So are you drawn to darker themes like that?
Jackson: Well, I am. It’s weird because of the way we readers respond to things. It can go a couple of different ways. Like I have readers, and reviewers too, especially for this new book. I have had readers come up to me and say “ I loved _____, but is was so dark, so real, so visceral, and I just wanted you to get away.” Or, I get “ I have never laughed so loud or so hard in my life. That book was so funny.” And they are talking about the same book. And neither one of them is actually describing the book I think I am writing. I am writing somewhere in between that. Because I do take on hard topics and I don’t think my books are funny, but my characters are funny. My characters have good senses of humor. I like a narrator that is sharp witted. Things have to happen, there has to be tension, has to be high stakes, but at the same time the people telling the story have to be fully people. People who are more interested in plot and theme might see my books as dark. People who are more interested in character might see my characters as light and funny. And that is strictly coming from the reader because where I am is between the two things.
PM: Your characters are often women, the main characters. And the stories often talk about their relationships either with themselves or their struggles with men or with other women or the world. Do you find women more interesting or complex to write about? Would be weird for you to write from a man’s perspective?
Jackson: I just write the story that comes to me at that moment, you know. I guess the second book I wrote, which has never been published, has three narrators and one was a man. And The Girl Who Stopped Swimming, I believe had three people, what I call main characters— a woman, her husband and her sister. So, I do write a lot about women’s issues. That’s maybe what I’m into right now. You know I’m a mother and a daughter. And that is a relationship that is intense and interesting to me. I write a lot about motherhood, which involves women (laughs). But it’s not necessarily a choice because for me, the writing and the books come from the issues, they come from the characters. And often time the characters I become interested in are women. I don’t know if that will always be true. It hasn’t always been true. But certainly right now, the book I am writing is about three generations of women in the Mississippi Delta.
PM: This interview will appear in the Women’s Issue of Pensacola Magazine. So how do you juggle being a mother, a wife, a daughter, and a writer? Do you schedule time for writing? Is it difficult to do things like book tours?
Jackson: I tell you what, I mean, this isn’t a good women’s issue, but god’s honest truth I married the right man. I married such an amazing human being. Even back then he knew I wanted to be a writer. He’s always believed in me. He always believed I was so talented and he’s so supportive. Even back when my writing was costing us money—I might have a story here and there, but I was certainly paying more in postage and submitting more stuff than I was getting paid to write. He has always treated my ambition, my job, as just as important as his. Even though his job was paying our bills and you know, letting us live. He would make time for me to write. He is an incredible dad. When my book took off, we both kind of felt that we were not seeing enough of each other and we were not seeing enough of the children. But we both like our jobs. He went to part time. He left his full time business job. Then he started working as an independent contractor and I adjusted my publishing schedule so that he was working less and I was working less. And we could both work, but you know, you can’t have both parents working 80 hours a week and have a marriage and children. Something’s gotta give. So for us, for him, because he is who he is, it was like one of us is going to have to quit our jobs and be home running things or we are going to have to find a compromise. And I don’t know a lot of men who do that. And that is what I want for my daughters—a guy who is that invested in his own children and marriage. A guy who sees his wife’s career as equal, even though they may not be equal at that point in time. I want someone who will take my daughters seriously. And I hope my son grows up to be that kind of man. My first child was a boy. I was so happy when they told me it was a boy. I said to Scott, “The earth needs more men like you and I’m glad it’s a boy this time.”
PM: How has your life changed since becoming a New York Times best-selling author?
Jackson: You know it really hasn’t. The nicest thing that has happened is that people want to read the stories that I write. That they are entertained by them, they enjoy them and that it gives them some stuff to talk about. I’m not really interested in changing my life. I love living here in quasi rural Georgia, with too many animals and hanging out with my mom in the park. We are very involved with our church. There is nothing I want to change. You know I have to travel a lot more. But it is also really fun. I get to go have cocktails with booksellers who are the coolest people in the world. That’s not bad. At home it really hasn’t changed a lot. Now I get to meet readers who feel that they have met my imaginary friends and who will gossip with me about the people I have made up. Which is very, very satisfying to me in ways that I never expected. And you know, I think in the same way if you and I were friends with the same person, we wouldn’t have exactly the same opinion about that person. Readers bring me fresh perspective about my characters that I have never thought about or considered. And that’s neat. That’s kind of where Backseat Saints, my book that just came out, came from—from readers. Rose was a minor character in Gods in Alabama, and readers would always ask me about her. She was a question that always came up. I would keep thinking about her, so I would have answers to these questions that I would get about her. So I kept her alive in my head. Until I literally woke up in the middle of night and woke my husband up and told him that I had to go write a book about Rose. And he was like “it’s three in the morning.” (laughs). And I was like “I’m sorry you’re right.” He went back to sleep and I started writing it right then. I just feel like I am being heard and the stuff I write about is really important to me. I write about redemption. I write about identity. I don’t always have happy endings, but I always have hopeful ones, because that’s just who I am. I’m a hopeful person. I feel like I am being heard. That’s the best part.
PM: You often open your books with a powerful line or image, like in Backseat Saints— “The gypsy told me to kill my husband.” Does that come first for you, or does it come during the revision stage?
Jackson: For me, it always starts with character. I never sat down to write a book that I haven’t been thinking about the characters for a minimum of seven years. The longest I have ever thought about a character before writing about her was eighteen years. I first invented Bernese Frett when I was nineteen or twenty years old. And I bet I thought about her until I was 37 or 38 when I started writing Between, Georgia. And she is a minor character you know, but I built up all of these characters and layered them around her over that eighteen years. And the stuff I am thinking about now, I won’t write about for years. It’s the stuff I have been boiling for years that I write about. When I know the people really well, and I know where they live, and I know the relationship, then I think the characters come singularly or in groups and they will begin to melt together. And when I know the people and their place very, very well, I go in and I set them on fire and see what happens. And that’s how I get plot. I start some trouble. And I watch how that changes and shapes them. And that’s entertaining to me. If I knew what was going to happen next, I would be bored. That’s why my books tend to have plot twists and stuff like that. I like to be surprised in my writing.
PM: What do you think about new technology in writing and reading? I noticed you have a blog and you keep up with that. What about e-readers and on-line literary magazines and self-publishing?
Jackson: You know the Nook, the Kindle, and the Sony Reader— I think it’s great. The ipad is making books sexy. I like that. It’s getting books in the hands of a younger demographic. Younger people are …. you know …. seeing it. It’s really cool. I remember I was at a place talking about The Girl Who Stopped Swimming and I was speaking to about 200 people. I was harking back to one of my earlier books and how they are related. People kept doing stuff and I couldn’t figure out what they were doing. And so I asked what was going on. They were picking up their Kindles and Nooks and ordering my backlist. Because what I had said had interested them. And there it was. That’s really cool. At the same time I worry about what the effect is going to be on independent bookstores, because I really do owe my career to hand sellers--people who are passionate about books, people who are book sellers, who have read my stuff. They have really been word-of-mouth books. The reason I got on the New York Times list was because it was word-of-mouth. They read it and were like ‘have you read this book? You have to read this book.’ And in a lot of ways that’s moving to the blog, so I’m sure it’s going to continue in some form, but that worries me because I love these people that are so passionate about it and have essentially given me a career. I think the independent bookstores do something that is special and important. I hope that there is way for them to get folded in this new technology. Because at this point I have a readership that I have established with my first novel, but there are new voices coming out everyday that I want to read. I am a huge reader. But how am I going to hear about them without that kind of fostering and mentoring that I was blessed to have. I want them to have it, too.
PM: What advice do you have for emerging writers?
Jackson: Write well and that’s where you put your heart. I mean, publishing is not an art and writing is not a business. And you absolutely have to keep those two things separate in your head. One has nothing to do with the other. If you let them merge, you will become a person that you won’t like very much and your work is going to suffer. Keep the writing separate. And remember that the writing is what matters. Publishing is nice. Publishing is awesome, but it’s not the thing that feeds you. What feeds you is getting the words right. And writers who are coming out with their first book will forget that. They get invested in their deadline. They get invested in what their readers want. And they lose the ability to tell the story to the best of their ability. That’s what makes the book good. You can’t write to please some idea of readership. You have write the story that is banging around and demanding to be told and to get out of you. One is business and one is your art. Keep your heart were your work is—in your art. And keep your mind and your savvy-ness in the business part.
PM: What is on your summer reading list?
Jackson: I just love this book. It’s called A Soft Place to Land by Susan Rebecca White. I think it’s fantastic. I think it’s her second book. I’m recommending it to everybody. I think it’s probably my favorite thing I have ever read. It’s a book about two sisters. I love it. Also, I just read Jennifer McMahon’s Dismantled. I know I am coming late to the party, but I love it. I think it’s a perfect beach read. It’s so creepy. You need to be outside in the fresh air with the wind blowing to read that book. It’s spooky but it is so smart with a gorgeous heart to it. I think she is a phenomenal talent. Those are two books I just loved.
PM: Do have a personal motto or words that you live by that you would like to share?
Jackson: My motto is “I’m not interested in growing as a person. I just want to be kinder every time.”