Northern soul
The Romantic Novelists’ Association couldn’t have chosen a more fitting writer to receive its 2020 Outstanding Achievement Award than Milly Johnson, whose twentieth novel, My One True North, was published last month. Milly writes romantic novels that don’t just celebrate love, but friendship, kindness, community and the possibility of second chances that turn a life around. She is a proud Northern writer from a working class background who has worked her socks off to bring those values to life in books that are warm, funny, tough, compassionate and uplifting.
We meet in Barnsley, where she lives, by the Kes statue in the library that commemorates another Barnsley writer, Barry Hines. Milly, resplendent in cat’s eye glasses, red lipstick and leopardprint, is a force of nature, and just like her books. ‘My books are me, on paper,’ she says. ‘They’ve got my heart and soul in them. The way I speak is them. They are me.’
My One True North, alternately heart-rending and hilarious, tells the story of solicitor Laurie and fireman Pete, who lost their partners on the same night. Both join the same counselling group. It’s inevitable that they’re going to end up together, but the course of true love is anything but smooth for this star-crossed pair.
‘I’ll tell everyone they’re going to get together in the end,’ says Milly. ‘But it’s how. I think, I’m not going to make it easy.’
She learned this approach from reading her grandma’s Mills & Boon books. ‘Mills & Boon were part of my journey. When I was younger I was a bit dismissive about Mills & Boon and picked up a prejudice. And then we were on holiday, stuck in a hotel, with a suitcase of Mills & Boon.
