J.K. Franko was born and raised in Texas at a time when what he really wanted to do in life – writing and film – were not considered legitimate jobs. His Cuban-American parents believed there were only three acceptable career paths for a male child: doctor, lawyer, and architect.
After a disastrous first year of college pre-Med, he ended up getting a BA in philosophy (not acceptable), then he went to law school (salvaging the family name).
Franko was on law journal. His work was cited by courts, and he was recognized on the National Law Journal’s “Worth Reading” list – which for law is the equivalent to a top review in the New York Times.
While moving up the big law firm ladder, Franko also published a non-fiction book and a number of articles.
After ten years as a lawyer, he decided that law and family life weren’t compatible. He went back to school where he got an MBA, and later pursued a PhD, crossing the line from well-educated to over-educated around the turn of the century.
He left law for corporate America, with long stints working in Europe and Asia.
It was his wife who pushed him to write novels. And, after thousands of hours writing, and seven or eight literary miscarriages over the course of eighteen years, he completed his first book, finally launching his career as a writer of fiction.
Ironically, although he started writing fiction before any of his three children were born, they were all old enough to see and remember their father’s first book launch.
