Former General Services Administration Administrator Martha Johnson is now a self-published novelist, Businessweek reports.
Johnson, who resigned as GSA administrator in April following a conference spending scandal, has used her time since leaving office to finish a novel she began writing while at GSA during her daily commute from Annapolis.
The book, “In Our Midst,” though, doesn’t focus on Washington politics or life inside a federal agency, but is instead the story of a gay teenager in a small mid-western town.
“I’m finding this to be a hoot,” she told Businessweek. “It changes the subject. Here we are at the Stanford business school reunion [her husband's], they all know the story [about her resignation], they all say, ‘How are you? How are you?’ and I pull out my postcard and say, ‘I’m a published novelist!’ I’m taking major glee in that.”
Johnson is not gay and is not the parent of gay children, but instead bases the story from her experience of serving in a Presbyterian church and watching it struggle with the issue of gay ordination in the 1990s.
The book is published on independent distributor Smashwords and can be purchased for $8.99.
