We had already read Shine and were completely confused and underwhelmed by it. I believe that, ultimately, talent is less important to writing a good book than is determination.”įranny Billingsley lives in Chicago with her family and currently writes children's books full-time.Īfter the whole Shine/ Chime National Book Award Debacle, there was no way my book club could ignore Franny Billingsley's Chime. It was not until I began writing fantasy that I found my voice. I worked hard at learning how to write and finding my strengths. My early books were simply awful, but I did not let rejections and criticism stop me from writing.
“I worked at the bookstore for twelve years and I loved it because it helped me get back to the things that matter to me: people, ideas, and imagination. When Billingsley returned to the United States, she took a job as the children's book-buyer at 57th Street Books, a major independent bookseller on the South Side of Chicago. “Books like A Wrinkle in Time, Harriet the Spy, and The Narnia Chronicles seemed like the perfect antidote to hideously wearisome legal documents,” remembers Billingsley, who began writing children's books while living in Spain. She graduated from Boston University law-school in 1979, and worked for 5 years as a lawyer - a profession which she “despised.” In 1983, Billingsley visited her sister in Barcelona, Spain where she was “entranced by a lifestyle in which people did not make a lot of money yet lived richly and artfully.” Realizing that she needed to change her life, Billingsley quit her job and moved to Spain with all of her favorite children's books.
Today, her name is on the lips of booksellers and reviewers throughout the country.įranny Billingsley was not always a writer. While Billingsley's first novel, Well Wished (1997), was warmly received by critics, a year ago she was a virtual unknown within a publishing climate that regarded fantasy as a specialty genre.
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