Hello! I’m Catherine Johnson, a British Ex-pat who moved from an awesome place called Yorkshire 😉 to New Zealand for four years before crossing the pond once again to live in Canada where I am staying (no more moves please – though I do miss NZ and get big pangs for all things English like wellington boots, rainy days, old cottages, sociable train journeys, Countdown, the royals, yorkshire puddings. Okay I’ll stop now *breathesintopaperbag*). I have managed to embrace ice hockey and -20 long winters. The canada geese are beautiful. Go Canada!
I graduated in business on one of those vacation (oops I mean vocation courses) HND Business and Finance and I’m still not business savvy, oh well. I au paired in France and speak un petit peu de francais. I used to be a bit good at Tae Kwon-Do as black belt British Champion. Now I’m so lazy I can just about manage a dog walk, another oh well.
I’m happy to have the opportunity to write and draw at home in these exciting (scary) times of self-publishing. I am the author /illustrator of two poetry books for children, Weirdo Zoo and The Everglades. I seem to have a theme of odd and weird running through, though I did try to write a couple of serene poems in The Everglades. It was loads of fun dreaming up odd combinations of animals to make one weird animal, like Frogoloctopus.
I published both books with CreateSpace and am currently working on a few other stories, including a Zombie poetry book.
I post a lot of poetry on my blog (soon to be moving to HERE and can also be found on:
Weirdo Zoo(about some weird animals at the zoo)
The Everglades(which has some serene moments and some snorty ones)
Chris The Story Reading Ape's Blog 
Congrats on your books and best wishes, Catherine. We Canadians — many of us – also like wellington boots, rainy days, old cottages, and some – like my husband’s mother – even like Yorkshire pudding and the royals too. (wonder if the royals eat Yorkshire pudding.)
I’m glad to meet you on Chris’ wonderful site.
Cynthia Reyes, author of A Good Home (where there are lots of wellies, rainy days and old cottages…).
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Nice to meet you, Cynthia. Good to hear Canadians love all those things too 🙂 I know the Queen watches Coronation Street 😉
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Great to learn a bit more about one of my faithful commenters, Catherine! Thaks so much for this interview. 🙂
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My pleasure, Clar. Yours next 🙂
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Nice to learn about more of your sordid history, Catherine! Lol! But how long have you been at it? The poetry, I mean!
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Ooh I wrote some illustrated stories at eight then nothing for donkeys years. I started writing an MG novel about 12 years ago after work then had a break when I had Matthew in NZ. When we moved to Canada five years ago I started on picture books and after a couple of years tried poetry too. So short answer is 3 years 😉
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🙂
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Hahaha, love learning more about my Catherine. Love, love, love her books and anything about her. Christopher is a black belt, Catherine. 🙂 Now I get Lynn’s comment over at our tribe. 🙂 (((hugs)))
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Cool Robyn, I didn’t know that either. What a lot of solved mysteries today 😉 *hugs*
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Certainly would not call you lazy…rather productive I would say.
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Awh thanks, Barbara, that’s very sweet of you to say.
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So nice to see you here, Catherine. What a fun read. You have lived in incredible places! And your comment about the black belt – too funny.
~Cool Mom for the S&K Gang
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Cheers! Traveling rocks.
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Reblogged this on Catherine Johnson.
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Very interesting to get to know a bit more about you, Catherine. Excuse me, you were a black belt? Now, I get Lynn’s seemingly left-field mention of a black belt, earlier! Wow. Talk about a woman of many talents! What else have you failed to mention? You weren’t an Olympic medallist at some point, were you? 😉
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Hee hee Yvette! There’s a few of us you know. Young Erik and Donna Martin and one more WANA whose name escapes me. I’m no Olympian lol. My sister could be she’s in Portugal training for Iron man crazy lady! I was British Champion twice a long long time ago. Very much retired now 😉
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A delightful and fun lady even if she does now prefer Canadian bacon to the home grown variety. Ah you can’t beat a good old bacon buttie with either tomato or daddies sauce. Hugs Catherine, maybe one day my poems will be as daft ass yours. xxxxxxxxxxxxx
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‘daft ass’ humour is the rage lol. Yours are very similar to mine, David. It’s that English sense of humour 😉
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