I was born in Didsbury, Alta., the middle child of three, and raised on a farm east of town. I credit my rural upbringing to my active imagination and my love of books by Laura Ingalls Wilder. Being a rural child, it was common to see my nose pressed into a book to and from school. I preferred reading over doing chores, practicing piano or doing homework. I knew from an early age that I would write at least one book someday.
Poetry became an outlet for my emotions in my later teen years. When I did not know how to process my feelings, I would allow the sensations to flow out onto paper. Poetry is very natural for me and requires little work. This is how I view my world, as a poem.
Reading books to my children was one of my favourite pastimes. To this day, both of my adult children are avid readers. While raising my children, I took a program at the Institute of Children’s Literature based out of West Redding, Conn. I received a certificate in Writing for Children, and it was this program that fostered my passion to write children’s books.
Gracie’s Playful, Dusty Day is my first published children’s picture book. Our family pet beagle, Gracie, was my inspiration for the story. She was with us for 13 years and filled our home with memorable adventures.
Gracie tended to bark incessantly at inanimate objects, anything that could move in a breeze, from a plastic bag to a feather. It was Gracie’s shenanigans that bolstered my imagination, bringing to life this playful story where Gracie is desperate to show her owner what is hiding under the bed … dust bunnies! It is an imaginary story that will have children mesmerized by the possibilities of our imagination if we have just the right friend to take us there.
Originally, the story was written as prose and did not rhyme. It was one of my assignments in the program I took with the Institute of Children’s Literature and took me about a month to write and edit. My instructor praised my work and told me I should attempt to take it further, but, instead, I tucked it away and let it sit for ten years before deciding to pursue publication. After pulling it out again, I chose to make it a rhyming story to capture the attention of little readers. As I said earlier, poetry is natural for me and requires little work, so it was only natural to go this route and I was happy with the result. Rhyming comes so easily to me that I had the rough draft of the revisions done in a day, but then comes the editing.
Gracie’s Playful, Dusty Day was published in June 2023. It is available at Indigo Crossiron Mills and Indigo Online, and also Red Deer Chapters. It is also available on Amazon, both Canadian and United States, multiple online book retailers, as well as directly from me. The manuscript for my second Gracie story is completed; watch for that in 2025!
I am passionate about writing and continue to write a little bit everyday for without an opportunity to write, I feel incomplete. I have numerous picture book manuscripts and am working on a novel intended for adults.
It is my hope that my followers feel the passion behind the words they read and that my stories will leave readers wanting more!
You can find me on my website at lorrainejanzen.ca, Instagram @lorraine_storyteller or Facebook Lorraine Janzen Author, and my email is ljauthor23@gmail.com.
