By
Johnnie Bernhard
There is an intimacy between a reader
and a novel an author prays she creates. This intimacy evolves from the author’s
imagination or subconscious. A voice or
image I have hidden in the recesses of the past often resurfaces in a character
or bit of dialogue. The character Jonas
in A Good Girl is a blending of the Spanish-American War foot soldier,
South Texas geography, and a mother's heart for a lost son. Leona of How We
Came to Be is created from a WWII memorial in Budapest, Hungry and conversations
with WWII survivors. Leona is the
embodiment of a woman who has lost everything but her faith.
My third novel, Sisters of the
Undertow debuts February 27, 2020. Every day I wonder how readers will respond to
the characters, Kathy Renee and Kimberly Ann, sisters who are as different as
two planets orbiting around the sun, never understanding each other, despite
their years of circling. The idea for Sisters
of the Undertow comes from viewing the rescue of a little girl who was
struggling to keep her head above water when she ventured out into the warm
waters of the Gulf of Mexico in Grand Isle, Louisiana. I witnessed that dramatic rescue over
twenty-five years ago and have never forgotten it.
Nothing pleases me more as an author
than to have a reader discuss a character as if he or she is a living,
breathing human being. I’ve done my job
– the character evoked an emotion with the reader. The intimacy between the two
begins.
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Johnnie Bernhard is an award-winning author of Upmarket Fiction. Both A Good Girl and How We Came to
Be were shortlisted for Fiction of the Year by the Mississippi Institute of
Arts and Letters. A Good Girl was
shortlisted for the 2017 Kindle Book Award for Literary Fiction and a nominee
for the 2018 PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize.
How We Came to Be is a recipient of the Summerlee Book Prize, HM
by the Center for History and Culture at Lamar University. As an author, Johnnie enjoys speaking to
book clubs as well as attending state book festivals and writing conferences as
a presenter and panelist. Sisters of
the Undertow will be featured in a panel at the AWP in March 2020. She is a proud member of the international
Pulpwood Queens Book Club founded by author and literacy advocate, Kathy L.
Murphy. Visit Johnnie on the web at www.johnniebernhardauthor.com Her books are available at retail bookstores
and on Amazon.
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