Hello – I’m author Brigid Johnson. I wrote my first book 5 years ago due to the urging of people who read my blog (there were 12 million of them so you know -NO PRESSURE :-) ) That was four books ago. All have been best sellers, three of them going to #1 on Amazon though I was humbled when I got my first poor review on my biography because, “the author just talks about herself”. Writing is a way to grow, and learn, and improve your craft and though I’m a scientist by trade after many years as an airline pilot, it’s something I dearly love to do. For me, writing happens at an antique teacher’s desk on a computer my husband and I crafted out of a 1940’s analytical balance (what can I say, I’m a geek). I’m married to an engineer and our spare time is restoring a 1915 Mission Bungalow and corralling 2 rescue Labrador retrievers. 100% of all my sales proceeds go to animal rescue and support organizations including Search Dog Foundation in California.
I’ve worked as an airport fueler, a flight instructor, a secretary at a funeral home, a pilot for the U.S. Government, an airline pilot, and a corporate pilot, but am better known in my family as the one who, during college, got fired as an elf in Santa’s workshop (don’t ask).
I have a day job working for one of those three letter “alphabet groups” which is nothing like on TV. I can’t do a Sudoku puzzle in an hour let alone get a good DNA match but I love solving the puzzle. It was a great second career after getting my doctorate in Criminal Justice when I outlived two siblings and a Mom and my Dad needed some care, which is hard to do if you are gone three weeks out of the month eating meals that would have tasted really good warm.
My motto – no regrets. Take up that thing that makes your heart race, and whether you get bucked off or ride off into the sunset, enjoy every single minute. Life is the greatest adventure. Don’t miss it.
Title: True Course - Lessons From a Life Aloft
Author: Brigid Johnson
Genre: Memoir/Young Adult
Publisher: Outskirts Press
Book Blurb:
The Amazon #1 best seller from award-winning Brigid Johnson - the tale of how one woman's life in the sky forged an unforgettable destiny.
Raised in a small factory town in the 1960s, when aviation was predominantly a male profession, with parents who didn't support her ambitions, Brigid nevertheless learned to fly.
Hers was a busy life of setting limits and learning philosophies of growth and risk well beyond her years, even as she juggled two jobs, college, and a rescue Siberian husky whose wandering spirit put her own to shame.
From first solo to an airline career, and finally a decision to hang up her wings for another profession when her elderly father needed her care, Brigid captures with understanding, humor, and grace the moments that change the path of our lives.
With lyrical expression of her love for flight, she writes old and new stories of family, adventure, and the thrill of taking to the sky.
True Course is more than a memoir or a story of the lure of aviation--it's a story of learning to let the spirit soar and unfurling the wings of personal freedom, an inspiration to adventurers everywhere.
Excerpt:
You're in your thirties happily playing kerosene warrior, loading up a transport plane, simply getting ready for your responsibilities that night, the four bars on your shoulders a reminder of your duties. You don't know if it was pain or illusion that drove you to the skies, leaving broken hearth and home for that greed of adventures that flutters out there somewhere beyond. You don't look inward too closely, being more focused on what is outside, for what is there behind the darkness is more final than simply the loss of one's illusions.
You're all aware of it, and one night, while waiting for the fuel guy, you get word that a plane is down, and someone says, “Isn’t that the one that John was flying on?”
You pause for the rest of the words, there at that moment before the sun plunges into the edge of the earth, the shapes and forms of aircraft fixed by that already fading explosion. But you can't stop what you’re doing, each of you has one ear tuned to the task, men moving and working, shadows on the wall, not of flesh and blood, which is so fragile, but shadows of enduring hope and will, quiet as the murmur of your breath as you work, one ear still listening.
Waiting for that phone to ring.
Buy Link:
Author Biography
A former commercial pilot, Mrs. Johnson grew up out West where she later received a doctorate in Criminal Justice in order to pursue a career in that field after hanging up her wings. She lives in the Midwest with her husband and rescue dog. Mrs. Johnson is active in animal rescue and donates 100% of her writing proceeds to animal rescue organizations across the United States as well as Search Dog Foundation. She is a two-time winner (Silver, Gold) of the Reader's Favorite International Book Award as author L.B. Johnson.
Follow Brigid on Twitter: https://twitter.com/LBJohnson8