Barbara's Meanderings

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Looking toward the heart of the city

Pictures of Our New Place!!



A lot has happened since I last posted. First of all a giant thank you to Janie Franz for being the best guest author I ever hosted!!! While she was a guest on the blog her book became a bestseller and I am thrilled for her. The interview was considered great from so many people my face is a permanent red!!!!:) Seriously, thank you to all the people both on the blog and off the blog who commented and enjoyed the interview. Janie was an excellent guest author to interview!!!

Today I am very pleased to present a guest author! It's wonderful to do something different for a change and I think once you meet Janie Franz you will see what an usual writer she is.:)

Barbara: Please tell our readers about yourself. Everyone can read your bio, but tell us something that is not on your bio.

Janie: I come from a long line of liars and storytellers. I had an uncle who couldn't read or write, but the man could spin a yarn. When we'd go visiting when I was a child, the women would be in the kitchen, talking about who had affairs with who and showing each other their operation scars. I found that to be so boring and really depressing. The women were so solemn. I'd always slip into the living room where the men were and sit in behind my uncle's big chair and listen to his stories about fishing and hunting and mountain “haints.” His stories were funny and full of mountain expressions---and the men laughed so hard! And they weren't sharing around any moonshine either!

Barbara: How did a southern girl from Tennessee wind up in North Dakota?

Janie: My husband had just finished grad school with a degree in rehabilitation counseling. It was really a niche degree that didn't offer a lot of placements in Ohio where we were living at the time. As my husband was sending out resumes, I knew the possibilities were limitless. We could move anywhere in the country. All I asked was no place flat or cold......Well, guess where we ended up? The flattest, coldest place in the country!

Barbara: You have written two non-fiction books, The Wedding Planner Book and The Wedding Ceremony Book with a Texas wedding DJ, Bill Cox. Would you please tell our readers how this happened?

Janie: I am a full-time freelance journalist. As part of the early days of establishing my business, I looked for writing projects every day. I saw a post for a collaborator for a book on weddings. As Bill and I corresponded, getting to know the scope of the project and each other better, his wife asked him, “Bill, why don't you just call her and talk to her?” His answer was insightful. He said, “I want to see how she expresses herself on paper.”

Bill and I did research, and he sent me a lot of anecdotes about being a wedding DJ. I did a lot of writing and editing. We did the reception book first and then the ceremony book. Bill had the first copies of the reception book printed himself. Because we started seeing a demand, he went to a POD company. Eventually, he changed companies and we have it at BookSurge now, and are very pleased with them.

Barbara: Tell us about the book you wrote yourself: Freelance Writing: It’s a Business Stupid. Why did you write it?

Janie: Actually, I was really tired of people treating me and my business as if I were just occupying my free time with a little hobby. I was at a big entrepreneur show here, doing a presentation on freelance writing, when someone from a graphic design company in a booth near mine came over and asked if I just was doing this little hobby. And that came from a young woman!

I looked her in the eye and said, “You have a graphic design business, right?”
“Yes,” she said.
“It's a full-time business for you, right?”
“Yes,” she said.
“It's just the same as mine. I'm a full-time freelance journalist. I make money at what I do and I pay taxes, just like you.”
Needless to say, that's where the title came from!

But I also saw a need for writers to have good tools that they could use to start a business. I've worked out a lot of bugs in the past decade about doing this. I'll be doing a week-long workshop at the Muse Online Writers Conference in October called Freelance Writing: It’s a Business Stupid!.

If you are my friend on Facebook and/or Twitter you might have been seeing these posts saying how we can't find a place to live since the fire. Yes, we are still living in a hotel, but even that had a problem.:) Last week we were jarred out of our rooms with the fire alarm message. We had to get our coats and of course my computer and go out into the cold night. It was in the teens that night and there was no place to get warm. We got into one of our cars and drove away. When we drove away we learned that it wasn't a fire at all but a flood. A water main had burst causing a gas leak! We had to get another hotel right away and found it less than a mile away. That one was twice the price of our first hotel and believe it or not though the lobby was more plush, our first hotel was better. The first hotel, Residence Inn by Marriott in White Plains, NY needed major help. When we left it water was pouring out of the automatic opening doors and the hotel was ringed by all kinds of fire vehicles. We didn't know it at the time but we would have to spend three nights away from this place. Also my computer got damaged when my daughter dropped it. To make up for it, though, both my daughters bought me a brand new laptop! Yay!!!