I am thrilled to have interviewed author Julie Whitney, who shared with us details of her writing life, her book ‘Astra In Hollywood‘, which was released on 4th March 2024, and answered a few fun questions. This post contains affiliate links.

Julie Whitney is a public relations professional with forty years of experience in public relations and marketing, having worked on both the agency and client side as well as in the television industry. Her company, Phillippi-Whitney Communications, LLC, founded in 2000, represents both large and small clients in a wide variety of industries.

She has promoted dozens of authors throughout her career, often supplementing the efforts of the internal PR teams of their publishers. She also works as on-camera talent, appearing in both television commercials and video podcasts. She even appeared as an extra in the movie Grease, which was shot on location in the summer of 1977 in Los Angeles. Astra In Hollywood is the second book in the Astra The Lonely Airplane series.

She lives in Cincinnati with her husband Dan, a corporate pilot, (Captain Dan in the book), who as a naval aviator and USNA grad, flew the P-3 Orion, and then flew a Gulfstream G100 (Astra) for 13 years. With four grown children, they are now empty nesters, and love spending time with their Black Lab Brody, and also enjoy traveling, boating, golfing, and all types of physical fitness.

My husband Dan, a formal naval aviator lost his job as the Chief Corporate Pilot of a beautiful G100 Gulfstream Jet that he had flown for over 13 years quite unexpectedly on May 5, 2020 due to the pandemic. His company decided to eliminate the corporate flight department and sell the plane. I went with him to say goodbye to the plane and clean out his stuff from the hangar that evening and asked if I could sit in her interior and I began sobbing. I was emotionally distraught not just over his job loss, but for this beautiful plane who would be sitting all alone in a cold, dark hangar day after day, wondering why she wasn’t flying and where Captain Dan was.

I literally went home that night and started writing the first book!, entitled Astra The Lonely Airplane. But I couldn’t stop writing, and the ideas keep on flowing, so the second book, Astra In Hollywood was released on March 4, 2024! A third book is also in the works.

I saw the situation from the plane’s perspective, and tried to personify exactly how she was feeling. The book is therefore written entirely from her point of view. I then got out my laptop and started writing.

I have always been very good at writing poems for my friends for every occasion, and so I started writing in rhyming couplets, which came quite easy to me.

The original G100 Gulfstream 100 jet was manufactured in Israel, and it was called the Astra. So I decided to make the airplane female and call her Astra. Then I pictured her sitting all alone in a cold, dark hangar without Captain Dan, and that is how the Lonely part came about.

The first book ends when Astra lands in her new home in Hollywood, so it was easy to name the second book Astra In Hollywood.

Astra The Lonely Airplane Characters:

Captain Dan, (Astra’s Pilot) is named after my husband Captain Dan.

Stu, Astra’s new owner, just seemed like a solid name to me, and it rhymes with very many words, including new, view and flew, which is key!

Astra In Hollywood Characters:

Learjets are very sleek and I wanted the look of the character to be sexy, since she transports movie stars, so I chose the name Lana, as to me it seems like a good name for a movie star. I also wanted the alliteration of the two L’s with Lana and Learjet.

Hank the Cargo Plane is huge – nearly 10x Astra’s size. Hank rhymes with Tank and I think of him as “Hank The Tank “– large and burly.

Helen the Helicopter is rather dizzy and frazzled. I also went with the alliteration for this character of the two H’s, and Helen is the first part of the word “Hel” icopter.

Since Astra The Lonely Airplane was based very loosely on a real-life event, it was relatively easy to think of the basic plot. She loses her job, is all alone, and eventually finds a new home and owner. I relied on my husband, (good ole Captain Dan), to help me with the technical details about Astra’s characteristics and capabilities such as airspeed and wingspan, both the book and its accompanying two-page glossary.

As for the second book, Astra In Hollywood, I researched Learjets, Cargo Planes and Helicopters to find out what their various skills and uses are, and provided the illustrator with numerous photos and also art direction on how I wanted them to be represented, personified and proportioned.

An airplane that can communicate, (albeit through facial expressions and actions), and react emotionally to different situations by crying or becoming angry is highly entertaining to children. They love it when inanimate objects can communicate.

It happened rather quickly. I started writing in May, 2020 and submitting to publishers and literary agent in June, 2020. I sent out tons of queries, and got a fair amount of rejection, many automated responses and also some positive feedback that kept me going! I signed with my publisher in August, 2020. The first book, Astra The Lonely Airplane was released on March 2, 2022. The second book was already written before the first book was even published, and a third book has been written also.

The Astra The Lonely Airplane series – compelling, amusing, heartfelt

For me it’s balancing my primary job as the owner of a public relations consulting business, with the children’s author job. I have to work on book-related matters when I am not working on a tight deadline for one of my PR clients, and therefore cannot devote the amount of time I truly need to the book.

The first book, Astra In Hollywood will engage children ages 3-10. It’s perfect for the younger kids who can memorize its rhyming verse long before they can read. Elementary age children will be able to learn to read or read on their own. The book teaches valuable life lessons such as adapting to big changes in one’s life, such as a move to a new location, dealing with difficult people and having hope. It also teaches a bit of math and geography and all about airplanes and aviation. It comes with a two-page educational glossary and also a 3-minute video of Captain Dan giving kids a tour of the real Astra! There are free activity and coloring sheets for all ages on my website at astrathelonelyairplane.com.

The second book picks up where the first book ends, as Astra wakes up in her new hangar in Hollywood! She meets a colorful new cast of friends that are all quite different from her. This book teaches children about moving to a new place and making new friends that may be quite different from them. It also teaches them that although their friends may have skills that they do not, they can still contribute in their own special way. Although Astra is not the newest, glitziest or largest plane in her hangar, she realizes that by using her clever brain, she can help them and problem-solve when they are struggling! She learns that being a good friend and helping others is the most important skill of all.

Yes, my black Labrador Retriever Brody snores soundly beside me on his “couch” that I gave him as I work in my home office. I couldn’t do this without him! Of course, he has to get up to bark ferociously at the front door when the mail carrier, Amazon, FedEx or UPS delivery person arrives.

I am definitely a morning person. I usually write first thing with my black cup of coffee, in my home office before heading to the gym. In the spring and summer, I find that the back patio or screened porch is a lovely place to write. And for some reason, the shower or hot tub are where I tend to really clear my head and get some great ideas!

I write primarily in my home office, surrounded by photos of family and friends.

I will be hiring either John Travolta or Tom Cruise, both experienced pilots, to play Captain Dan.

I will be hiring Denzel Washington, who also played a pilot, although a not so good one, (LOL) to play Stu, Astra’s new owner.

I will be playing the famous movie star who has a crush on Captain Dan who flies around in Lana the Learjet. After all, I was an extra in the movie “Grease” many moons ago, and I still do have a crush on Captain Dan!

It is actually my dream to turn my books into a streaming children’s animated television series. I certainly have enough ideas to do so!

He says “I have an idea for your next Astra book, my dear Julie. Astra can rescue a family of owls who are losing their beloved home due to deforestation, and fly them safely to a new, secure area near her hangar in Hollywood, where she and her friends can keep an eye on them.”

A big thank you to Julie Whitney for sharing her writing life with us and for a wonderful interview.