Barbara Frances has plenty of stories and a life spent acquiring them. Growing up Catholic on a small Texas farm, her childhood ambition was to become a nun. At age fourteen she entered a convent boarding school as an aspirant, the first of several steps before taking vows. The Sisters were disappointed, however, when she passed up the habit for the University of North Texas, where she graduated with a bachelor’s degree in English and Theatre Arts.
Her professors were similarly disappointed when she passed up a postgraduate degree to become a (stewardess) flight attendant, Barbara, however, never looked back. “In the Sixties, a stewardess was a glamorous occupation.” Some highlights included and evening on the town with Chuck Berry and “opening the bar” for a planeload of young privates on their way to Vietnam.
Barbara eventually returned to Texas and settled down. Marriage, children, school teaching and divorce distracted her from storytelling, but one summer she and a friend coauthored a screenplay. “I never had such fun! I come from a family of storytellers. Relatives would come over and after dinner everyone would tell tales. Sometimes they were even true.”
The next summer Barbara wrote a screenplay on her own. Others followed, including Two Women, a finalist in the 1990 Austin Screenwriters Festival. Three more were optioned: Silent Crossing, The Anniversary and Sojourner Truth.
Barbara left teaching and continued to work on her screenplays. In 1992, exhausted by endless rewrites, she did something many screenwriters threaten but few carry out. She turned down an option renewal, done forever with writing—or so she thought.
It was not to be. One day a friend’s child found and read Lottie’s Adventure, her script for a children’s movie. At her young fan’s urging, Barbara turned it into a book, published by Positive Imaging, LLC. For Like I Used to Dance, Barbara drew upon childhood memories and “front porch stories.” Her next novel is a Southern Gothic tale” about a woman caught in the struggle to keep her beloved plantation home from a vengeful archbishop. The Sisters might be appalled but her readers can’t wait.
Barbara’s fans can be thankful she passed up convent life for one of stories and storytelling. She and her husband Bill live in Austin, Texas. She can be reached at barbfrances2006@gmail.com
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