Milly Johnson on grafting, greetings cards and life in the "sandwich" zone

The Shift with Sam Baker

Sam Baker Ltd

Society & Culture, Health & Fitness, Personal Journals

4.8 • 525 Ratings

🗓️ 22 November 2022

⏱️ 45 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

My guest today is the dose of salts that is Milly Johnson. Milly started writing books in her late 30s when the birth of her first son showed her the direction she’d been struggling to find. Now on her 20th novel, Together, Again, self-described northern bird Milly has sold over 2 and a half million books and won the Romantic Novelists association Outstanding achievement award. But you’d never know it, because Milly - along with hundreds of other highly successful women - writes books that are considered fluff, lesser, not serious and consequently the literary establishment turns its nose up at her. And her readers. Well, as you will hear, “the queen of feelgood fiction” is not putting up with any of that nonsense. Or anything else for that matter! Milly joined me from her home in Barnsley, where she’s lived her whole life, to talk about being a single mum, life as a sandwich woman and the benefits(ish) of having been ‘kicked around the ring a few times!” We also discussed grafting, how writing greetings cards shaped her approach to fiction, the importance of making readers feel seen and why a comfort zone is just a cosy prison. * You can buy all the books mentioned in this podcast at Bookshop.org, including Together, Again and The Woman In The Middle by Milly Johnson and the book that inspired this podcast, The Shift: how I lost and found myself after 40 - and you can too, by me! * And if you'd like to support the work that goes into making this podcast and get a weekly newsletter plus loads more content including transcripts of the podcast, please consider joining The Shift community. Find out more at https://steadyhq.com/en/theshift/ • The Shift (on life after 40) with Sam Baker is created and hosted by Sam Baker and edited by Emily Sandford. If you enjoyed this podcast, please rate/review/follow as it really does help other people find us. And let me know what you think on twitter @sambaker or instagram @theothersambaker. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Jamie Lang and Sophie Haboo have arrived on Disney Plus.
0:04.5	We're having a baby.
0:05.5	We're having a baby.
0:07.2	I've always wanted to be mom.
0:09.4	And we're bringing you on our journey through everything.
0:12.4	I have no idea what we're doing.
0:13.6	Thank you. I have more of an idea.
0:15.6	I think of it like a Tamagocchi.
0:17.8	At the end of all of this...
0:20.0	We're going to have a little baby.
0:21.8	Raising Chelsea, a Hulu original series streaming exclusively on Disney Plus.
0:27.3	18 plus subscription required T's and T supply.
0:34.9	Hello and welcome to The Shift, the podcast that aims to tell the no-hold bar truth about being a woman post-40, created and hosted by me, writer and broadcaster, Sam Baker.
0:45.4	My guest today is the dose of salts that is Millie Johnson.
0:49.0	Millie started writing books in her late 30s when the birth of her first son showed her the direction she'd been
0:54.5	struggling to find. Now on her 20th novel, together again, self-described northern bird, Millie has
1:01.5	sold over two and a half million books and won the Romantic Novelist Association Outstanding
1:06.7	Achievement Award. But you'd never know it, because Millie, along with hundreds of other highly
1:11.4	successful women, writes books that are considered fluff, lesser, not serious, and consequently,
1:17.9	the literary establishment turns its nose up. Well, as you will hear, the Queen of Feel Good
1:22.9	fiction is not putting up with any of that nonsense or any other nonsense for that matter.
1:27.9	God, I was by myself holding a full-time job down.
	...

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