EWN Columnist profile: Nora Johnson

I GREW up in the UK with the usual, boring middle-class family background – no dysfunctional, neurotic family members to imitate or provide material later on for a nice line in mislit memoirs!

How deprived I feel at this lack of foresight by parents and other sundry relatives.

They could have set me up for life with stories about batty aunts and uncles, grandmothers living in a spirit world and con-men cousins.

Well, there was one uncle, a former SAS member, whose party piece was to explain (and ‘demonstrate’) how many different ways there are to kill a man – 14 apparently – and this to a very impressionable 10-year-old!

He once showed me his CV. Following all the usual dates of army training and work, it displayed one gap of ten years – so top secret it couldn’t be listed.

After post-graduate studies in the UK, I studied Law in Los Angeles (winning the Moot Court Prize – a surreal Perry Mason-type experience) where I lived for a number of eventful years.

One morning, for example, as I rushed up the steps into Law School, a Tax Law Professor was shot dead right in front of me!

This shortly after J. D. (Juris Doctor) Finals; I never did find out if he’d upset some former client or just a student with poor grades…

After working in the UK, Germany and France, I moved to Andalucia where in 2006 I completed my first novel, a psychological suspense thriller, The De Clerambault Code, which has sold extremely well both in the UK and abroad.

One of its themes, stalking, is an increasingly violent phenomenon from which, as I found out to my cost, no one is immune. (One in ten men and women were stalked in the UK in 2011 for instance, an estimated 2.6 million people – British Crime Survey).

A few years ago, I was a victim of this so-called ‘intimate violence’ and so write from bitter, first hand knowledge.

This novel is, therefore, a modern morality tale, a warning to men and women of all ages and from all backgrounds.

My second novel, Soul Stealer, the theme of which is identity theft is also doing well.

Currently, I’m writing a follow up: a crime novel set in the New Forest, Hampshire – the start of a series featuring the journalist protagonist.

Writing is one of my passions, one with which I’ve been involved all my life.

As far back as I can recall, I’ve been writing and involved in journalism.

In LA, I had the privilege, through contacts, of meeting a host of celebrities and appearing in movies as an extra and on local television and radio.

Here in Spain, I’ve appeared on Mark Curry’s Breakfast Show on Talk Radio Europe. This is, however, just a snapshot!

When I have the opportunity, I’ll fill in the bigger picture …