Interview with Janrae Frank, publisher

My good friend Susie Hawes, author of Evas Son, agreed to post for me today. She gave me a great interview with Janrae Frank, publisher. Here it is!
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Overcoming Limitations

Interview with Janrae Frank


I had polio when I was eight. Actually I was seven and just six weeks away from turning eight.


Whip Them With A Pencil

In 1962, month of September the event that really began the first shaping of me as a writer occurred. 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.

The reasons that polio cripples is that it creates lesions on the spinal column.

My left leg atrophied. Mama hung soup cans on it and made me lift it. I would be in high school before I discovered proper leg weights to use on it.

I never stopped trying to cope with my disability and Mama never let me stop. She helped to teach me to walk and run and again.

My leg stayed cold as ice. It is still cold more often than warm.

As a young teenager, my physical therapist was also into karate and in an effort to persuade me to do the boring exercises, which by then I hated, he persuaded me to work with a sensei who was familiar with disabled people. I spent five years working with him.

It was not boring and my leg got strong. But it was never like the other one and never would be. He taught me a bit different than the others at times, showing me alternate ways to use my leg to get the effects I wanted. I have a form of drop foot, so I learned to land my kicks with the top of my foot instead of the bottom.

But I kept plugging away at it.

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.

Janrae Frank, author, editor and publisher, can be reached at http://www.daverana.com , her publishing company.