Author Spotlight: Susan Johnston Taylor Author of Animals in Surprising Shades

Everybody, welcome Susan Johnston Taylor to the blog! I had a spectacular time talking with Susan and it was uncanny that when she reached out to me, I already had her book on my shelf to read! The universe is a mystery. Anyway, onto the interview!

Could you tell us about your book that just came out?

Yes, it’s Animals in Surprising Shades: Poems about Earth’s Colorful Creatures. It is a STEM poetry collection that goes roughly in rainbow order and introduces kids to lots of animals in different colors as well as some different poetic forms.

I thought it was so interesting how it had so many different aspects in it, because it had the poem and then information about the creature. What part came first?

The inspiration came from reading about the Malabar Neem Squirrel or Malabar Giant Squirrels which live in India. I have a laminated photo that I show when I go to storytimes. They are really cool colors like navy blue and bright purple and gold. So, that sparked the inspiration for exploring animals in colors that you might not expect.

Then I started thinking about, ‘okay, maybe this could be a concept book.’ Wanting it to not be an info dump and for it to be really lively and engaging. I had read a lot of Jane Yolen’s  poetry collections about animals so, I thought ,’well, if I were Jane Yolen, I would write this as a poetry collection.’

Then I thought ‘well, I’ve written poetry for my entire life so why couldn’t I be the person to write this as a poetry collection?’ Then at that point, I got the idea to organize it in rainbow order to give it a fun structure. Kids really like that because after a couple I’ll say, “Okay, we’ve had red. We’ve had orange. What color do you think comes next?” And they yell, “Yellow!”

Oh, that’s fun! It’s so interactive and not even just having a poetry collection but so many different kinds of poetry. How long have you been writing poetry?

I started writing poetry–not great–but I started writing and submitting my poetry probably when I was like nine or ten. And I had written some other poems in adulthood and I’ve done that National poetry month, writing a haiku a day for the whole month of April. 

I actually think that it is easier to try to mix up the poetic forms because if I had to commit to the same rhyme scheme and the same poetic form throughout, I think that constraint would be really challenging for me. Whereas giving myself the freedom to mix it up like, okay it’s not working as a haiku, let’s try something else–I think that gave me a lot of freedom to jump around and experiment and not be locked into one form. 

Was Animals in Surprising Shades the first full manuscript that you’ve written or did you write other books before that one?

Oh, no. I’ve written other manuscripts before this one. They were good for me to develop my craft so that I could execute on this idea.

Is it what got you into children’s literature? Because I saw that you’ve done writing in the adult market as well for articles and things of that nature.

I’m still a freelance writer and for a long time I was writing mainly about personal finance and business. And several years ago, I was starting to burn out. Just writing article after article about mortgages and insurance. And my husband was like, “Please, please try writing about something else because you are just really burnt out and you’re driving everyone around you a little batty.” So, I thought, ‘What is the furthest thing I can think of from articles about personal finance and credit cards and mortgages? What is the most different thing I could come up with?’

My dog, Sebastian, was just sitting there looking at me very very sweetly and I thought, ‘what if I wrote a picture book about Sebastian? That would be diametrically opposed to what I have been writing.

I thought that was kind of preposterous and I said it out loud, but my husband was like, “Well, no. I think you should write a picture book about Sebastian because it would be a good creative challenge for you–a good palate cleanser.”

So, my first manuscript was about Sebastian trying to get adopted and had kind of an anti-bullying message. It was sort of sweet but also kind of derivative but it was good practice for me to start writing and got me interested in writing for children.

I saw you write different genres, too. I saw a children’s historical graphic novel as well on your site. What does that look like for you, balancing the different types of writing?

I’ve actually written a lot of historical fiction. Two of them are leveled readers that are out and then 11 more are coming out later this year.

Congratulations, that is exciting!

They’re part of a full collection from an educational publisher. I don’t think you’ll be able to purchase like one or two of them and they probably won’t be available individually on bookstore shelves but I absolutely love–in addition to writing the STEM poetry–I absolutely love writing historical fiction. 

So, those were fun projects for me and I would say I started pursuing writing for the educational Market–I saw someone posted in 12 x12 several years ago and I thought that might be a good outlet for me too. I hadn’t sold my book yet, so I thought this could be another way to get a win, get published, and also build my credibility for selling a traditionally published book.

I started doing that and writing leveled readers. Several of them are high-low readers, high interest for teens but low reading level for people who are maybe reluctant readers. That’s a really fun challenge to keep the vocabulary and the syntax simple but also have it be engaging. 

You’ve mentioned before the publishing process being slow and writing a lot of other books before you got to the ones that are published. What do you do when you hit an obstacle? How do you keep going beyond that in the writing world?

I’m pretty determined. In the short term, maybe take a walk, snuggle with my dogs, go read something new. A lot of times the advice is to start a new manuscript. But for a while I have felt like I have all these manuscripts that I love and that I’m really proud of and it felt like an animal shelter where I was at capacity and I was like I’ve got to find a home for these stories, there’s no more space for more stories!

But then I went to a conference a couple of weeks ago and Carter Higgins was leading an intensive on picture books. She sparked an idea that I just sent out to my critique partners today. So, now I have a new story that I’m working on and I think that’s really good because I’ve done a lot of revision on my projects and it’s good to be open to revision and willing to reimagine a story but sometimes you get to a point where the idea is only ever going to get you so far. You need a fresh idea to write to really stand out.

Yeah. How it’s like you’ll never finish editing, it’s just the time to walk away. So, why do you write? You mentioned you were sending out poems when you were like nine years old, so your reason must have started young.

I think and I don’t know if this is the reason when I was a kid, but I feel like my reason now is the thread that runs through pretty much all of my stories for kids is spreading kindness and curiosity. Obviously, the curiosity is very clear in Animals in Surprising Shades but I think there’s sort of a secondary message of kindness because some of these people might say some of these animals are weird. But there’s a message of embracing the weird and the wacky because they make our world more vibrant.

I think you’re in 12×12 also because that’s how I found your book and it found its way onto my shelf. But how has the writing community affected your life since you started?

It’s been a huge source of support and inspiration. I’m in at least two critique groups that I connected with through the Writing Barn here in Austin. And I’m in 12×12 and that’s kind of different from the other writing that I do for adults. It is much more sort of solo but kidlit people are very collaborative and supportive. So, that’s been wonderful to learn from other people. 

And I joined a marketing group that formed out of 12×12. I think it was the end of 2021 when we formed. We were planning last year and getting ready and this year we started marketing our books really in earnest. That support and the sounding boards and the critiques and the feedback and also seeing what’s possible, seeing other people soar is very inspiring.

You told us about your book, but where is it available and what is the best place for readers to connect with you?

It’s available pretty much everywhere, barnesandnoble.com, bookshop.org. There might still be some signed copies available from BookPeople in Austin and Interabang Books. It’s even in Canada, the UK, and there’s a retailer in Australia that carries it too. It’s pretty widely available wherever you buy books.

And the best place to connect with me is probably Twitter or Instagram, they’re both @urbanmusewriter.

I can’t thank Susan enough for her time to do this interview. I learned a lot and enjoyed hearing more about her writing journey. Next week stay tuned for Priya Parikh, the author of Dancing Devi!