The legendary Parris Afton Bonds kicks ass! Now that I got that out of my system we can proceed. She is a woman with a fierce, loving, and nurturing heart. Ms. Bonds is a proud mother and grandmother to a remarkable family. She is also a sultry siren and while I also hold that title, Ms. Bonds, was the groundbreaking trendsetter who paved the way for me to claim my title and perfect it Morasco style!
Ms. Bonds is a storyteller of the highest order and she believes in love. In fact, she believes in all that hearts and flowers bunk, and that is what makes her such a class act. Ms. Bonds is timeless and so is her writing career. Bonds has penned over 37 novels, is the co-founder of Southwest Writers Workshop, and cofounder and first vice president of Romance Writers of America. The Parris Award was established in her name by the Southwest Writers Workshop to honor a published writer who had given exceptionally of time and talent to other novelists. Noticeable recipients of the Parris Award include the late Tony Hillerman, and the Pulitzer Prize nominee Norman Zollinger.
Bonds inculpates her detailed enthrallment with historical romances and, specifically, Native Americans, to novelists she had read as a child and teenager such as Rafael Sabatini, James Fennimore Cooper, and Edna Ferber. The quandary of the Native American as defined in the tome Romana by Helen Hunt Jackson, most influenced Parris Afton Bonds.
Ms. Bond bestows her time to instructing creative writing to both grade school children and female inmates.
Ms. Bonds has once again given me the gift of an interview and I am extremely thankful. As a teen, I was whisked away to mysterious domains with dynamic characters as only Ms. Bonds can construct. Growing up amid chaos with my family of origin, Parris Afton Bonds was heaven-sent. Ms. Bonds inspired me to imagine beyond what I was born into and I will always be grateful for the visualizations and yet another amazing full circle moment.
Enjoy!
Parris, please share how you came up with the concept for Dancing with Wild Woman?
The concept for Dancing with Wild Woman came to me in two parts, Diane—in researching for an earlier novel, Indian Affairs I stumbled across a little known novel by Frank Waters, The Book of the Hopi. What appeared to be a dry documentation about the Hopi, masters of desert survival, turned out to be an enthralling and tantalizing desert Da Vinci Code. From it my plot sprang to life. But my main character, Janet Lomayestewa, was born when I read a newspaper article about the Shadow Wolves, an all-Indian team who tracks illegal aliens and drug smugglers under the auspices of Arizona's U.S. Customs Department. Janet may very well be my favorite character of my 37 novels, so real and vivid is she. She resonates with that wild soul part of me. In my latest novel, Call Me Crazy (Book II of the Janet Lomayestewa Tracker Series), she is once again tugging at my spirit to pursue the adventure that lies just across the border of the comfort zone.
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