Woodmont resident Frank A. Juliano Jr., enjoys reaction to first book

Frank Juliano is a born story-teller and often entertains his wife Nancy with stories from his imagination about pirates who came ashore or characters who get lost in time. Last October, one of these stories actually became his first novel, Entr'acte. The title is a French word which means “between the acts” – like an intermission, or more accurately, a musical interlude performed between acts of a theatre production. Frank has always had a fascination with Broadway, especially during its heyday in the 1930s, and his novel is set there and then.
            His heroine is Joyce Waszlewski, who takes off for New York City to try her hand at acting, after two years of college as a theater arts major. Joyce’s grandmother, Muriel, who had been a Broadway chorus dancer in the 1903s, had just died and Joyce had inherited both her love of theater and a small trust fund. Nearly 70 years earlier, Muriel and her sister Connie had left Maine for the Great White Way, but when Connie disappeared without a trace in 1939 and was presumed murdered, Muriel returned home, married and settled down. Joyce’s parents were afraid that Joyce, too, would meet an untimely end in New York. The novel is a mystery in which Joyce’s life in New York connects with the disappearance of her aunt many years earlier.
“Joyce is very open and honest, and just charges ahead, not worrying about a thing,” said Frank, who modeled his heroine after his wife, Nancy, who he calls his muse and his inspiration. The couple has been married for 23 years.
Frank dedicated his book to Nancy, and to his late mother, Anna DePalma, who loved the theater and books and was a writer herself. “She used to take me to the Shubert in New Haven, where we saw a lot of plays before they made their Broadway debut,” he said. Frank, who lives right behind the Fannie Beach Community Center, donated an evergreen tree on the Fannie Beach lawn in memory of his mother. “She’s the reason I grew up loving the theater,” said Frank, who lived in East Haven originally, and then Waterbury, before moving to Woodmont in 2001.
Frank is a journalist who has worked at the Connecticut Post newspaper for the past 18 years, serving as the Milford bureau chief since 2000. Previously a reporter for the Trumbull Times and the Waterbury Republican-American, Frank has also been an adjunct professor of journalism at Southern Connecticut State University.
Frank is active in the local community, including the Woodmont Civic and Recreation Association, the Milford Historical Society, St. Agnes Church, among others. He was also a tutor with the Literacy Center of Milford. He received his Bachelor’s degree in journalism from Marquette University, in Milwaukee, and is currently a candidate for a Master’s degree in American studies at Fairfield University.
Frank has enjoyed the reaction to his book, which is available in local bookstores, as well as on amazon.com. He has spoken at area bookstores and book clubs, including the Woodmont Evening Book Club. “Acting is an industry based on people’s dreams,” he said. “For years, acting – particularly on Broadway – has attracted people from around the country and the world. It gets in their blood.”
To write the novel, Frank did considerable research about the history of Broadway and life in the 1930s, and studied clothing, lifestyle, notable personalities and even New York City neighborhoods of the time. But he also drew on personal experience. “My in-laws have property in Sebago, Maine,” he said, “and so I set the book in Maine.” And he admitted, “Connie looks like my sister-in-law.”
He went to some writers’ workshops to perfect his dialog-writing, since his work as a journalist does not rely heavily on dialog. The book took about nine months to write, although the story had been percolating in his head for more than a year-and-a-half. Since he works full-time, he had to write the book after work, weekends and vacations. He would often use graph paper to plot out the chronology, the family tree of his characters and the sequence of events in his novel to make sure there were no inconsistencies. He frequently bounced ideas off Nancy, who was his partner throughout the process.
Over the course of his career, Frank has won numerous awards for news stories and features in the Society of Professional Journalists’ annual competition. Frank is available for talks and autographs. You can contact Frank by email: skynyd@gmail.com

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March 2007 - Diana Walsh

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