Biography

GAZING OUT OF THE ABYSS: PERSONAL ANECDOTES FROM HELL

Anecdotal biography: GIVE'M HELL!

Janrae Frank

I started attempting to write when I was nine, while looking for a world to live in that had more possibilities and hope than the one in which I lived. Many writers have a similar story to tell. There are writers out there who experienced far worse than I did and have, and writers who have experienced much better. My earliest memories of reading fantasy, the genre I most often write in, are of Carbonel the King of the Cats and Half-Magic. I was roughly ten years old and we lived near enough to a small local library that I could walk to it. That should have been safe enough, except that I was a lone white child living in a black neighborhood in Los Angeles. So unlike most writers, I learned to fight back young.

When I was a few months shy of thirteen we moved to a neighborhood that was roughly a third white and two thirds hispanic. There was no library within reach and I had never been in a bookstore. My exposure to books at that point became severely limited to what might be found in a department store. May Co. carried Terhune's novels of the Sunnybank Collies and Walter Farley's Black Stallion books. Again, limited access because my family was working class and hardcover books were expensive. However, across the street from us lived an aunt and uncle who had an incredible (tome then) number of books just waiting to be read: the Greek Tragedies, the Russians (of which Nikolai Gogol became my favorite) and Shakespeare. I did not read another fantasy novel between the ages of twelve and eighteen until I discovered Tolkien and then Howard, both of which struck me like a bolt of lightning. Fantasy had suddenly become legitimate in my imagination, though not to the family's. The one aunt I showed my material to told me to stop writing fantasy: if I had to write, write mainstream which was more acceptable.

Family influences

Mama

My personal experiences color my work, my attitudes, my perceptions and I draw from them to create my fiction. So anote about the personal is appropriate here.

The parental bond was with Mama and Papa who raised me, my grandparents, and not with my mother who was in and out of my life at intervals like an obnoxious older sister or my German-born father with whom I had three unpleasant encounters (we have not spoken since 1984) and who may be dead by now for all I know. Mama and Papa gave me love and acceptance, toy guns, train-sets, a complete line of Tonka trucks, and all the boys toys my heart-desired. They also thought it was funny when I got asked each time we moved to a new neighborhood by the local boys as to whether I was a boy or a girl. Big joke.

Whenever my mother would have a fight with my first stepfather or he would ship out, being a Navy officer, she would move herself and my two half brothers in with us and start the process of trying to turn me back into a girl. This created a difficult dichotomy for me since I had always thought of myself as male. This always occurred whenever there was no one to call her on it. Barbie dolls and dresses, Nancy Drew books, which I tossed in the garbage, creating a pattern of run, hide and think; and then come out and slam the assholes. But even more importantly it laid the groundwork in my subconscious that would reappear in early adulthood in my inter-gendered characters, cultures, and attitudes.

Whip Them With A Pencil

At eight, 1962, month of September the event that really began the first shaping of me as a writer occured. I'll always remember the month because it was the month before my eighth birthday: I had polio. The first year I could not walk at all and got around by wall-walking since it only affected one leg. The left side. That's fortunate. It could have been worse. I remember being scared shitless when the leg quit working and left me crawling around on the floor. Mama was lying down with a bad headache, I was in the front room and it was getting dark and I couldn't reach the light switch because I kept falling down. The feelings and memories of having the darkness of the living room close around me will always be there. The polio was a reaction to the vaccine. I was technically a Navy dependant, but my step-father did not want Mickey taking me to the base to see a doctor because he thought I was faking it to get attention, except that the whole left side was like ice and it still tends to get that way. I ended up at a county hospital and while I was there Mama gave me an expensive silver pen and pencil set with the admonition: Whip them with a pencil. I interpreted that as writing books and getting good grades.

Mentor

I wrote my first novel at eighteen, The Moonstone of Reyanon. I carried a pen and a pad of paper around with me for years while working on it. The entire time I was terrified of people finding out what I was doing, lest they make fun of me. If someone asked, I told them, I'm working on a secret project. Eventually, having completed it, I put it aside for other writing attempts. I still did not feel it was right yet and desperately wished for a mentor, someone I could safely allow to see it. I went to college at the local junior college and worked off and on. I lived with Mama and Papa and spent a lot of time doing the driving and shopping for them as well as several other elderly relatives. One day I saw this ad for an exclusive New York women's college and I impulsively sent the novel along with my application to the admissions office. I got a call from both the Dean of Admissions and the President of the College, asking me to come. There I found my mentor, Paul Kane, who was poet-in-residence. I learned more from him than I have during the rest of my life. Paul went on to earn a Guggenheim fellowship in 1998. We're still in touch.

Published Author

Me and Hank, years ago.

A year later I sold my first story, The Ruined Tower, to Jessica Amanda Salmonson. Moonstone sold to Donning/Starblaze, a small publisher with a good reputation. Then came Amazons! edited also by Jessica. Five stories about Chimquar the Lionhawk appeared in print in less than two years. Then personal matters intervened and I moved from fiction into editorial, journalism and freelancing. Now I have a collection of the Chimquar stories out from Wildside Press and my life has come full circle again. It feels good.

GODWAR CENTRAL