By Joyce Coronel
Members of the audience sat on the edge of their seats, utterly entranced as Arizona author J.A. Jance provided her adoring fans a glimpse into the life of the woman who has written dozens of New York Times best-selling books. “How many of you have been to one of my book signings before?” she queried the group at her appearance at the Tempe Public Library. Most all raised their hands. Clearly, she was among friends. Jance was in town to promote “Cold Betrayal,” the 11th in her Ali Reynolds mystery series. “Did any of you come here expecting to have a literary event?” Jance asked, arching a brow. “Good luck with that!” she chuckled. Literary fiction, Jance explained, “is where not much happens to people you don’t like very much.” And, she announced, there would be no reading of selections from her latest tome,” the latest in the popular mystery series. “Sitting up here and reading to people who are perfectly capable of reading on their own seems like a fool’s errand,” she proclaimed. At 70, Jance sits, rather than stands, as she tells her audience how her own life is woven into the stories she writes. Describing herself as a one-time “fire-breathing feminist,” Jance grew up in Bisbee. The third child in a large family, she attended Greenway School in Tucson, where she had the good fortune to be assigned to Mrs. Spangler’s second-grade classroom with its vast collection of books awaiting students who finished their work. Jance discovered the Wizard of Oz tales. Fascinated by Frank Baum, the author of the series, she decided right then that she would someday be an author herself. As fate would have it, she didn’t pen her first book until she was 41. Jance is a prolific author who has produced several series of books during the last 30 years. The twists and turns of her own life loom large. In 1962, during her senior year of high school, for example, she spearheaded a petition drive to force the administration to allow a pregnant classmate named Linda the right to participate in the graduation ceremony. The school superintendent called her parents and told them Jance would be given a scholarship to the University of Arizona provided that she stop passing the petition. That’s when the future author made an important decision. “There were seven kids in our family, and that scholarship was the only way I could attend the U of A. Had I not, I certainly wouldn’t be sitting with you now,” Jance said. Linda did not graduate but her boyfriend did. “I’m still ticked about that, by the way,” Jance said. The incident influences her writing decades later as readers of the Ali Reynolds books are treated to plot lines involving scholarships. Jance said she regularly gets mail from fans who don’t hold back when it comes to sharing their opinions about her work. “A woman wrote, ‘Why do you put all that scholarship junk in the books? It has nothing to with the plot.’ Guess what? That scholarship stuff has a lot to do with me. I write the books and I get to put what I want in the books!” It’s that person behind the dozens of books that patrons of the Tempe Public Library heard from at the March 11 book signing, one of 19 Arizona appearances this spring during a 44-stop book tour of four Western states. Jance is a prolific author, and her colorful life has imbued her books with a flavor readers find irresistible. There’s always an Arizona connection. Some of the pain in her own life flavors her writing. Jance still remembers a creative-writing professor back in the 1960s who would not allow her to take his class. Girls become teachers or nurses, not writers, he told her. Jance said she ended up marrying a man who was allowed into the creative writing program at the university. “Don’t make mystery writers mad,” Jance told the crowd. A character who turns out to be a killer in one of Jance’s books happens to be… a creative writing professor. Her first marriage disintegrated in the face of her husband’s alcoholism. “He imitated Faulkner and Hemingway by drinking too much and writing too little,” Jance said. “He told me shortly after 1968 that there was only one writer in the family and it would be him.” Jance coped by writing poetry on sheets of paper at the kitchen table during the night. Eventually, the marriage fell apart. “I divorced him because I needed to save my life,” Jance said. The man died of chronic alcoholism in 1983. “After the Fire,” a book of poetry and prose, tells the story of some of the darkest times in the author’s life. Before her debut as an author, Jance spent two years as a high school English teacher in Tucson and five years as a librarian in Sells on the Papago, now Tohono O’odham, reservation. The Walker books — she’s just completed the fifth installment in the series — highlight the Tohono O’odham Nation. Kris Baxter, the public information officer for the Tempe Public Library, said Jance drew a large crowd when she spoke at the “Writers on Writers” series the library presents to aspiring authors. Jance asked if she could return when she launched her next book. “We were absolutely thrilled,” said Baxter.”She has a number of character series that people just absolutely love. We’ll probably bring her back in another six months.”
