Interview with author, Janie Franz

Today, it's my pleasure to introduce Janie Franz, author of THE BOWDANCER on her first stop of a two-week virtual book tour.  THE BOWDANCE is a tale about Jan-nell, a young healer and keeper of village lore, despairs of ever finding the child who will be the next bowdancer or a man worthy enough to love.

Let's begin by allowing Franz to give us some insight into the life journey that influanced her to write her debut book.

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I’ve been a full-time freelance journalist for ten years. Prior to that, I did a lot of tutoring colleges students with learning disabilities and editing for professors, preparing journal articles for publication, and drafting proposals for them to speak a national conferences. Currently, I’ve built my journalism business to the point where I don’t have to look for work every day since I have a stable of clients I write for regularly.

But something was missing. There was a creative part of me that wasn’t fulfilled. I had been writing short fiction since I was a child, but never seemed to find the right fit between publication and manuscript.

This year, my novella, THE BOWDANCER, was picked up by Breathless Press, as the first installment in a new series, The Bowdancer Saga, that is launching a new subgenre for the publisher.

1. Why BOWDANCER? What prompted you to write it and what do you hope your readers will get out of it?

While I was trying to find my notes for the second book in the Bowdancer Saga, The Wayfarer’s Road, I found my original notes on THE BOWDANCER. I remembered that I first discovered Jan-nell, the bowdancer, in a meditation. I saw her take that first bowshot shooting a flaming arrow across the night sky. The story just unfolded about who the bowdancer was and what her conflict was. There was such sadness in her that she had not found the next bowdancer to teach.

When I came out of my meditation, I scribbled down the notes I found and put them away. Her story wasn’t written for awhile. I used the name for a brief jewelry making business, Bowdancer Jewelry, and sometimes thought of myself as The Bowdancer when I meditated, but I never had another encounter with her again.

When I finally wrote Jan-nell’s story, it took me in a direction I didn’t expect with the entrance of Bastin and his band of bandits. I presented the story at a graduate level writing seminar I was taking as an undergraduate (as a much older than average student pursing a degree in anthropology) and offered it for critique. Needless to say, genre fiction drew disdain and a few noses went up in the air because it was a romance. I had feminists on one side complaining about my ending because it involved a man, and I had closet romance readers saying the ending was not what they had come to expect in the genre.

I do think the whole Bowdancer Saga empowers women, even though we are sometimes caught by circumstances. Women have a resilience that allows us to flow with those circumstances perhaps a bit better than men. THE BOWDANCER begins the saga, which will present a series of books that explore gender, roles, cultures, the arts, spirituality, and different concepts of family---and hopefully will offer some romance and adventure along the way

2. Tell us a bit about your protagonist, Jan-nell, and how he/she came about.

Jan-nell is the bowdancer, a healer and spiritual leader who also preserves the lore and history of her village through story-songs and dances. The giant bow she carries calls the children to lessons, which are often tales and stories about the important people of the village. The bow also is the instrument with which she dances and sings the story-songs. She creates story-songs for special events such as weddings and births. And the great bow calls everyone to celebrations (weddings, harvests, etc.).

The bowdancer, however, is frustrated because she hasn’t seen a child yet who is bright enough to become the next bowdancer. Only when she has trained that young one will she be permitted to find a man and marry and perhaps have a child of her own—if she hasn’t become too old to bear a child.

Jan-nell is a virgin and she is highly intelligent. She also lives on the outskirts of her village, apart from her people, partly by choice and partly by their semi-reverance of her. So, in lots of ways she is very lonely.

3. Please share with our readers a little about the plot, the characters, the setting of your novel.

My book blurb describes the book this way: Jan-nell, a young healer and keeper of village lore, despairs of ever finding the child who will be the next bowdancer or a man worthy enough to love.

When Bastin and his bandit crew interrupt a wedding, Jan-nell is called upon to treat one of the men who has been injured. Bastin is a highly intelligent man who has his own story to tell and he shares that and more with Jan-nell. They are intellectual equals but perhaps not spiritual ones. A quirk of fate shatters all that Jan-nell knows.

The village is located on the plains of this world I’ve created that is much like our own in a much simpler time. Many of the spiritual and medicinal practices that Jan-nell engages in are common among indigenous peoples in our own world and might even have some of us remembering what our grandmothers and greatgrandmothers did when the pharmacy wasn’t in a local strip mall but in their backyards and the woods and fields around them.

I do want to stress that no particular culture has been used to model my characters in THE BOWDANCER Saga. I have not co-opted anyone’s particular beliefs or lifeways. If anything, I have drawn upon some of my own spiritual experiences and my own familiarity with herbs.

By the way, Bastin is a play on the word bastion, which is a protected part of a castle wall.

4. Please describe the greatest challenge you faced in writing this book, why it was difficult, and how you resolved it.

Writing THE BOWDANCER was easy. In fact, writing the next two books in THE BOWDANCER Saga were easy. I just needed to keep writing, even though sometimes I didn’t have a clue in both books where the story was going.

The hardest thing, however, was not the writing at all, but believing that I had actually been published and that my publisher wanted more stories. I had a tendency to minimize my work in the beginning during the editing process with my publisher and before the next two books were written. I tended to say to my family---well, it’s only a novella; well, it’s only an ebook; well, it’s only my first book; well--- You understand.

I let one of these “well, it’s” statements slip into an email announcing my book to novelist Stuart Clark whom I admire. And he gave me a very writerly kick in the pants, telling me that I should own my good fortune and own my work. That was enough for me. I am extremely proud of THE BOWDANCER. Yes, it is a novella. Yes, it is an ebook. But it is now part of a wider bulk of work that hopefully readers will enjoy as much as I do.

5. How much and/or what kind of research went into writing this book?

The first book took no research at all. But, I have had to do some herb research for the next two books, and I started looking at clothing and housing during the middle ages to give me ideas. I make no claims on period dress or historical accuracy because these books take place somewhere else other than earth, but it could possibly have occurred somewhere in our distant past. I do have a degree in anthropology so I have a concept of how cultures and viable communities work. That, I think, adds a realism to my writing.

6. What is the most difficult part of writing in general for you and what do you do to overcome it?

The most difficult part of writing fiction is finding time for it. It is writing of a totally different stripe than journalism, which I sometimes call: data in and data out (but rearranged in the middle somewhere to grab the hook from which the article hangs). I have a talent for it, and I can do it quickly with just a final proof. No rewrites. No editing. Just research, interview, transcribe, write, proof, and send.

Writing fiction, on the other hand, transports the writer as much as it transports the reader. Writers are brought into their worlds. They hang out with their characters. And, they watch them do things that perhaps the writers never intended--even if an outline is used!

For me, it is finding the right time to do that and knowing when to stop and start again.

I found over the past couple of months that writing in the evening is best for fiction, even if it takes me into the wee hours. With longer books like The Wayfarer’s Road (Book II) and Warrior Women (Book III), I try to write at least one chapter in the evening.

7. How do you balance your time to make time for writing?

That is a good question. First of all, my children are grown and my husband has a creative life as well—he’s a singer/songwriter. So, there are not a lot of family and social demands on my time.

However, I’m a full-time journalist. I have to make time for that as well as writing fiction because journalism puts food on the table. Since I immerse myself in fiction, I really can’t write it during my work day. That is exclusively used for journalism: answering the phone, handling emails, doing interviews, transcribing interviews, writing articles, doing research, maintaining blogs, listening to CDs and watching music DVDs for review, and posting calendar items to my online music magazine.

I also do marketing for my books in the late afternoon before dinner. Then I can move completely into fiction writing in the evening and on weekends. That allows me to dive into the world I have created and not have to worry about being interrupted. I can keep focused and just write.

8. What impact would you say completing BOWDANCER has had on you personally and on your writing?

When THE BOWDANCER was accepted for publication by Breathless Press, I felt complete. I had finally taken the step to becoming a published fiction author. And I was not going to let this opportunity lie like a seed stored in a jar and not put into the ground. I pulled out everything that I had wanted to work on and then some—and this time I knew the work would be completed and polished. But THE BOWDANCER Saga has consumed me. I had quite forgotten that fiction writing, like visual art or sculpture (or songwriting sometimes), is really a spiritual experience.

9. Who has been the greatest influence on you with respect to encouraging you to write and become a published author?

My first support came from the late John D. Engle, Jr., my high school creative writing teacher, who published seven books of poetry in his lifetime and had been an editorial associate for Writer’s Digest. He was the first to put the idea into my head that I could really become a published author. That was well over four decades ago!

My husband, also, has been supportive, especially since he’s a creative person, too. However, like a lot of wives, I still felt I had to prove to my husband that writing was profitable. That came with the journalism when I sort of “jumped off the cliff” and started doing it full-time. After ten years, even with fluctuations in clients, I have built that business into something relatively stable. Fiction was still something I couldn’t put much time into because it would take away from journalism. My husband respected my work because he saw tangible results.

When THE BOWDANCER was accepted for publication, I saw genuine admiration in my husband’s eyes. And when he saw just how happy I’d become with the writing of the new books, we began a collegial relationship that has been interesting. Since the next two books have lots of songs referenced in them, my husband and I are working on a companion musical CD or several mp3s we can offer with the series.

Yet for real writerly support, that has come from the writers of the Muse Online Writers Conference who have been there for me through my most recent dreams of writing fiction. Through workshops, forums, and personal emails, they have supported me and many other writers. And I am truly grateful for them.

The biggest surprise regarding support, however, came with THE BOWDANCER’s acceptance. That came from authors whose books I had reviewed previously. I chose three authors to ask for book blubs, and I was humbled by their responses. You can read those on my page at Breathless Press and on my website (http://thebowdancersaga.wordpress.com). What is also surprising to me is the response I am still getting from authors I reviewed who are sending in their congratulations. It has been more enthusiastic than that of friends and family!

10. With respect to your writing, please give us some insight into your writing process. In other words, did you outline the chapters? Did you think about the plot for a while before writing it? What steps did you take before you wrote the first sentence?

With the first book, THE BOWDANCER, I just wrote the first scene, the one I saw in my meditation, the one about the flaming arrow.

For the next two books, and the one I’m currently working on, I use a very loose outline, telling me what I will be writing in each chapter. The beginning of each book is unique, and I try to create a memorable starting place.

11. What are you working on now? What's next?

I’m currently working on The Lost Song, the fourth book in THE BOWDANCER Saga. I’m hoping I can write one of my favorite types of books—the map quest. I love stories that deal with maps, clues, codes, and adventures to find things. Yes, I’m a great fan of movies such as National Treasure, Sahara, the Mummy series, the Librarian TV movies, and the Indiana Jones films. Books and movies that offer that kind of puzzle and adventure are my ultimate pleasure.

I just finished the edits for the third book, Warrior Women. I fell in love with these characters, and I cried when the book ended. Then my daughter suggested that I write another book about them. So, some of them will appear in The Lost Song.

12. Any words of wisdom and advice to aspiring writers?

First of all, read as much as you can. Enjoy the work of others and find out why you like it. Look at your favorite authors and see how they handle your writing problems. And not only read within the genre you write but also read other genres that you enjoy. You can always bring elements of those into your favorite writing genre.

Next, write as much as you can. Don’t worry about it being good enough. Just write. Finish stories you have in your heads. Take time to go in and read your work first as a reader and enjoy the story you are telling. Then you can smooth over the rough spots or flesh out other areas.

Save what you write. You may think that what you wrote is crap, but later on you may want to revisit your story and punch it up. (And, yes, I have crap in a drawer, too. Some of it may see the light of day in a new dress with an updated do.)

Finally, believe in your work. If you think you have a story to tell and you think your work is good, don’t let someone else talk you out of that. One day, you will find the right publisher or editor.

About the author:

Janie Franz still calls herself a Southerner (she was born in Tennessee) though she has spent more than half her life living in North Dakota. She holds a degree in anthropology and has an unquenchable curiosity, which may explain the broadness of her journalism credits that include regional, national, and international publications. She has co-written two books with Texas wedding DJ, Bill Cox (The Ultimate Wedding Ceremony Book and The Ultimate Wedding Reception Book), and has published a writing manual, Freelance Writing: It’s a Business, Stupid! She is also a prolific book and music reviewer, and runs her own online music publication, Refrain Magazine.


She has been a radio announcer, a booking agent for a groove/funk band, and a yoga/relaxation instructor. She has been happily married to a singer/songwriter for almost four decades. They have a daughter who is a fiber artist and is married to an animator, and a son who is the executive chef of The Toasted Frog, a high-end martini bistro, and who plays drums and blues harmonica with local bands.


THE BOWDANCER is her first published work of fiction.