Jeanie P. Johnson

I am the 11th child in a family of 11 children. Growing up, we read a lot of poetry to each other, and as a result, I started writing poetry at an early age. Later, I graduated to short stories, and then novels. I now live in Texas where many of my stories took place, even though I had never lived there before. Before that, I lived in the North West for almost 40 years. When I was 62 years old, I decided to build myself a cabin, on ten acres, which I did, pretty much by myself, with a little help from some of my children. Now I am refurbishing a small house I bought here. I love living in the country, and for a couple of years lived on an Indian Reservation. I am a cancer survivor, thanks to the support of my family. I have six children and 14 grandchildren. I started writing novels when I was 18 years old. My novel Winslow's Web was my first novel. However over the years, I ended up raising six children of my own, as a single mother, and while I still wrote novels, and told stories to my children, which I made up, I was too busy raising my children, to work on publishing my novels, even though I almost got Winslow's Web published back in the 70's. We lived in an 12 by 18 foot cabin, in the country, without any running water or power, where we had horses, and other animals, for about ten years, when my children were young. Once my children got older, I went back to writing more novels. When I began studying the Plains Indians, I decided to write Gentle Savage, because I wanted others to discover the things I had been learning about the Indians, in a Novel form. I have also written hundreds of poems, songs, and several short stories, about events in my life. I used to read my novels to my children, and then I began reading them to my grandchildren. They all encouraged me to publish my novels, but being a new author made it difficult to break into getting published, before free self publishing came along. I kept getting rejection slips, and finally gave up. It wasn't until my daughter Marni MacRae, who wrote Lady Sun, got her book published through kindle, and did so well with it, that I decided to publish my books there as well. I am so glad I did, because now I have the satisfaction of knowing other people are enjoying the stories that I enjoyed writing. Even if I never was able to publish my books, I would have continued writing novels, because that is what I love doing best, even if no one ever read my work, except my family. One of my pet peeves with reviews, is the person giving the review, instead of writing what they like or dislike about my stories, gives a complete "book review" of the entire story and plot so other readers do not get the satisfaction of discovering that on their own by reading my book. Sometimes it saddens me when people write reviews on my Native American books, thinking I have not done my research of the different tribes. What some people do not understand is that a tribe such as Sioux, is not a blanket representation of all Sioux, since the Sioux and many other types of Native Americans, had several different tribes in their "nation" and not all tribes agreed with each other on how to deal with the white man invading their land. Some Sioux tribes were friendly to the newcomers, and often set up camps around forts and trading posts. Others could be very savage toward the white settlers. Therefore, when I write about savage events that the Sioux participated in, it does not cover all Sioux tribes, but only those tribes who attacked settlers. When I write a story based on true events, I always research the history around the events and use authentic witness accounts to make sure the happenings are accurate, as I weave a fictional story around the events that actually took place. I have been studying several different Native American tribes for over 40 years, and while I might be mistaken in many areas, since many references written about Native Americans do not agree, depending on when and who wrote the research, I can only go by the research I have done, and hope that I am as accurate as is possible. If I do make a mistake, I am happy to admit it, when given counter research to disprove what I have learned about the Native Americans over the years.