I’d like to welcome Joanna Vander Vlugt to the blog for #WriterWednesday!

A few of your favorite summer traditions: A gin and tonic is my summer drink. That I enjoy drinking on a hot summer evening.

Something summer-related that you’ll never do again: I’m afraid I live a sheltered life. I enjoy so much spending my time in the back yard reading a good book. I do more activities during the Fall and winter.

Favorite summer beverage: A gin and tonic.

A drink that gives you a pickle face: Beer. I’m one of few people who doesn’t like traditional beer. In BC, craft breweries are huge. I like the craft fruit flavored beers and ales, and having a flight of ales.

Best thing you ever grilled in spring: I don’t grill. My spouse does all the cooking, seriously. For the last 34 years of our marriage, he’s done all the cooking and grilling. I love when he grills corn, peppers, mushrooms, and of course, steak on the barbeque.

Your worst kitchen or grilling disaster: Well, the worst kitchen disaster would be not having an oven. We’ve just moved into a new home, and because of supply chain issues, we have been waiting since July 2021 to receive our oven. It’s brutal because although I don’t cook, I love baking.

Your favorite thing to get from the ice cream truck: I love Magnum ice cream bars.

Some dessert that you wish you’d never bought: I also love fruit pies, but I find the fruit pies in grocery stories are a bit of a disappointment. I want more fruit and less sugar.

Best summer vacation ever: Going to Niagara Falls as a teenager.

Somewhere where you don’t ever want to return: We’ve been to Las Vegas. I sound like a prude but we’re really not gamblers. We prefer to see natural landscapes. I do love cities though.

Most favorite place to write/edit in the summer: I am such a creature of habit. Whether its summer or winter, I love writing in the office at the front of the house. I’m not a real “summer” person. Writing early in the morning when it’s dark is a magic time.

The worst place to try to write in the summer because of all the distractions: In a park. There are just too many distractions, and I would want to enjoy the park, instead of writing.

The thing you like most about being a writer: When a revelation on how to fix a plot problem, hits me when I’m walking the dogs. Those moments of inspiration are golden.

The thing you like least about being a writer: My time is split between, writing, creating illustrations and podcasting, and I wish I had more time to write.

Things you will run to the store for in the middle of the night: Nothing. I value my sleep far too much to leave the house.

Things you never put on your shopping list: Cereal. I never grew up eating cereal so I’ve never bought cereal or had cereal for breakfast.

The thing that you will most remember about your writing life: My mother’s support. She is no longer with us anymore, but I remember when I told her I wanted to be a writer (she remembered me writing as a teenager), that afternoon she went to a book store and brought back for me numerous Harlequin romances to help me become a better writer.

Something in your writing life that you wish you could do over: I always wrote as a child and teenager. When I took up writing again in my late twenties, I wish I hadn’t stopped writing after ten years. I wish I had kept going. Writing and becoming an author was my destiny, and as it happened when my mother passed, it was 4 months after her death, that I began writing again.

The funniest thing to happen to you: I once fell into a computer box.

The most embarrassing thing to happen to you: I was waiting for an elevator in a Vancouver hotel, and the elevator doors opened and there was Jared Padalecki from Supernatural. One side of my brain stopped working, and the other side of my brain kept telling me to not act like an idiot. I must have asked him four times if the elevator was going up. In the end I was so embarrassed by my behavior, that I didn’t get on the elevator, and I told him I’d get the next one. When I told my teenage daughters what had happened, they both told me, “Mom, you get on the elevator, even if it’s going to the moon.”

The nicest thing a reader said to you: As authors, we’re supposed to get book reviews, right, well it was when a reader messaged me on FB and said, “geez, Joanna, I can’t put this book down.” I then asked her if I could use her comment as promotional material, she then responded, “yes, of course, now I want to read.”

The craziest thing a reader said to you: A reader who really enjoyed my novel, asked me if my heroine, Jade, was ever going to eat. I never had scenes of her eating. So, in book 2, Jade is eating and stealing fries from a mysterious professor who has given her information about a drug dealer.

About Joanna

Joanna Vander Vlugt is an author and illustrator. As a teenager, she drew charcoal portraits and wrote mysteries. Her short mysteries Egyptian Queen and The Parrot and Wild Mushroom Stuffing were published in Crime Writers of Canada mystery anthologies. Her essay, No Beatles Reunion was published in the Dropped Threads 3: Beyond the Small Circle anthology. Her thriller series features the sister duo, Jade and Sage. The Unravelling was a Canadian Book Club Awards finalists. Joanna is proud of her podcast JCVArtStudio and the many artists and authors she’s interviewed. Her motorcycle illustrations have been purchased world-wide.

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