Donald P Johnston Interview Published on: 27, Jan 2023

I grew up in rural East Texas a long time ago. My parent’s home was in the edge of the piney woods, a location rich in flora and fauna. My brother, sister, and I learned a lot about nature by growing up in this environment.

Growing up in the country definitely colored my writing. My published novels have scenes set in natural locations, i.e., jungles, rivers, deserts, parks, etc.

When I was five years old, I found a tattered science book with the first ten pages missing. The first intact page showed a monarch butterfly emerging from a chrysalis. I believe that incident was the ah-ha moment that drew me into the world of science.

While serving in the Air Force in Panama, I wrote a weekly gossip column for the base newspaper and won 2nd prize in a short story contest. During the early years of my career as a chemist and biologist, I wrote numerous technical articles and research reports, some of which were published in trade journals. However, during that time, I wrote no fiction.

Seventy-five years after the monarch butterfly incident, I retired from the corporate world and began to write as a hobby. Naturally, sci-fi was my genre of choice.

I’m the only writer in my family. My brother and sister are my number one fans (it’s a tie). They both think I’m the next Philip K. Dick (haha).

2045 is 100 years after the first atomic bomb test in the White Sands National Park. A meteor strike near the Trinity Site 100 years later seemed like a good way to kick off a sci-fi novel. The location also provided the opportunity to mention the UFO crash at Roswell in 1947, secret aircraft tests over the White Sands, and the like.

My creative juices flow early in the morning, so I get up at six-thirty, have a light breakfast, and write for about three hours.

I don’t believe anyone can write a novel (bestseller or otherwise) unless they have a passion for it.

I kept investment notes over twenty years before writing the book, so I had all the information needed. Still, it took a lot of work to get the notes in order to present them properly. Though the book is less than 100 pages long, it took about as much work as a 75,000-word novel.

Note: This book discusses the stock market, so it’s not a novel.

My protagonists are composites of eccentric scientists I’ve known–the “who” of my inspiration. As for the “what,” I’ve always liked political satire, so I decided to mix the two and see what happened.

I’ve worked as a bacteriologist, chemist, senior chemist, and lab manager; therefore, writing a scene about a lab experiment was easy. The hardest part was the world-building. To make it easier, I chose the Houston area, a “world” I know, for my setting. The hard part about that approach was deciding what the area would look like 100+ years in the future.

No, not in the sense of writing a “travel guide.” However, in my novels, the protagonists travel to places I’ve been, i.e., Disneyland, The White Sands Missile Range, jungles, rivers, beaches, state parks, zoos, museums, etc.

Very little has changed; however, one thing has–a few of my friends (fans) introduce me as their “favorite author.” I like that! I gave up a couple of hours of TV every day to write but don’t miss it at all.

Rather than hoping to inspire them by the content of my writing, I hope to inspire them by demonstrating the persistence required to write a novel. I have several friends who have been writing for years, but have never finished anything.

Since I’m comfortably retired, I don’t write for a living. To some degree, this frees me to write for myself.

I don’t outline a novel in great detail before starting it; therefore, unplanned plot and character twists pop up repeatedly. One of my favorite twists occurred in The Dar Lumbre Chronicles. The protagonists were searching for a missing scientist who’d been frozen in cryonic suspension and stored at an unknown location. The location turned out to be beneath a ride in Disneyland. They found the missing scientist; moreover, they found Walt Disney there as well. Naturally, they revived both of them.

I didn’t start writing fiction until I turned eighty, so my first goal was to live long enough to become a published author, which I did! I’ve published two more books since then and expect to publish my fourth this year.

Another goal was to put one of my books in a bookcase between novels by Philip K. Dick and Ray Bradbury. I’ve done that too. They’re lined up this way: The Man in the High Castle, The Dar Lumbre Chronicles, and Fahrenheit 451. They look good together!

At my age (86), a ten-year schedule seems a big reach, but my plan is to write a book every two years as long as I live. It’s great fun–I’m never quitting.

I believe the major trap is failing to set a regular writing schedule and sticking with it. The only way I know to avoid this trap is by developing more self-discipline.

I’m working on a political novel entitled By Means of Peace which will be finished around July 2023.

After finishing By Means of Peace, I plan to start another novel immediately, The Photosynthesis Gene. In this sci-fi novel, human hemoglobin will be replaced by chlorophyll so people can survive by photosynthesis, just like plants (please don’t steal this idea!).

My experience with AllAuthor has been good. Since joining, I’ve had increased sales and reviews. In addition, the author interview helped me organize my profile.