Curmudgeon’s Creed

THE CURMUDGEON’S CREED

BY

JANRAE FRANK

If you don’t want a blunt, honest answer: DON’T ASK A CURMUDGEON.

If you don’t want a blunt, honest review: DON’T ASK A CURMUDGEON

If you’re thin-skinned and vindictive: DON’T ASK A CURMUDGEON

If you can’t take the heat, get out of the kitchen, but DON’T STAND THERE WITH A CURMUDGEON

If you must get in someone’s face, IT HAD BETTER NOT BE A CURMUDGEON’S.

If you must spam the messageboards, AT ALL COST AVOID THE CURMUDGEON’S. IF

NONE OF YOU HAVE FIGURED THIS OUT YET, ALLOW ME TO EXPLAIN IT: I AM A CURMUDGEON

Hello, I’m Janrae Frank.

I’m a curmudgeon. (As if you have not guessed that from my entries and the Curmudgeon’s Creed I composed.)

I earned my status as a literary curmudgeon over the course of 30 years in the publishing industry.

Mama used to tell me that I had all the tact of a porcupine. Perhaps I was born to be a curmudgeon.

When I was eight years old, I had polio. I spent three lonely weeks in the contagious disease ward. I was not allowed visitors; however Mama could stand at the door and wave at me. She bought me an expensive pen and mechanical pencil set. It was silver. Mama gave me that with the admonition to “Whip them with a pencil.” I took that to mean getting very good grades and learning to write books.
I have managed to do both.

When I was eleven years old, I started to think of myself in the male pronoun. It was not the simple wish for maleness that some girls experience; I actually thought of myself as male. In some of my social circles, I am called Jack.

It was not permissible to be a bi-sexual (until very recently) and as a result I was very sexually confused. Every time I fell in love with a woman, I was convinced that I was a Lesbian. When I would turn around and fall in love with man, I was convinced that I must have actually been straight. As I became more knowledgable, I realized that I was a bi-sexual.

All of this shows in my fiction.