In the words of the late Frank Sinatra, former Indianola resident and Gentry High School graduate John Chance Jr., can also say, “I did it my way.”
The 1989 graduate, who now makes his home in Okinawa, Japan, has self-published two books this year with several more waiting in the wings.
Chance’s literary work, An Orphan On Sunday, has been on the way since 2013 and his first in a series of three novels, "The Lonely Road to Cross: Woomlick,” which was also published this year, dates back even further.
Chance said he decided to publish the books himself after conferring with colleagues and several others, including his wife, who had helped him gather information. And, once he had completed his research, he determined that self-publishing was the best route for him to take.
He said that his mother, Mildred Chance is the "Genesis" of him completing An Orphan on Sunday, which he affectionately calls “Orphan.”
However, he credits his wife, Dr. Tiffany Chance, with coming up with the title of the manuscript. Chance said he ran a series of titles past her and Orphan is the one that she accepted.
Referencing his wife, Chance said, "She walked with me through all of these processes. When we were dating she read one of my earliest pieces and after that she was my biggest fan as a writer, always pushing, trying to get me to put things out there."
He said Orphan has been keeping him busy and has generated a lot of interest. "There's a small symposium of individuals who are interested in the educational components of Orphan because there's a lot of lessons there in terms of my experiences," he said.
He has yet to receive any movie deals, but Chance says he is still hopeful. “I'm just taking it all in stride as it goes. There's a marketing firm that has reached out to me, so I am working with them back and forth. It's just hard to do things remotely for me being that I'm in Japan. But, I'm having to learn how to use all of these technical systems because as an instructor, I was purely a book and pencil type of guy," he said. Chance considers the irony of that as humorous.
He said the concept of Orphan sprung forth in 2013 when he spoke at a symposium of more than 200 people at Mid Pacific Institute in Honolulu. “And I had such a profound experience when I spoke to them that I decided to start the book," Chance said.
The writing is an expression of the barrage of emotions he experienced because of his father, John Chance Sr.'s death. He said his mother was uplifted by her faith in God and he saw that, but his emotions took him in a different direction. "For me it was anger. I was angry because my dad was being taken away from me. So I created this character who spoke to me and who would tell me things about God to pull me away from my faith and from God.”
The character had a compelling impact on him. “In one scenario he, this character I created, told me that God had forsaken me and that I wasn't his child anymore and that as a matter of fact I was his orphan on his sacred Sunday," Chance said.
Orphan, the book, is the spawn of the pain he suffered at the loss of his father. He said that the period surrounding his father's passing was an extremely difficult time for him. "Trying to adjust to losing someone that was that important, and that's not to say that my mother wasn't important, she was too, but this guy was my mentor.”
Chance said the senior Chance was so much more than a father; he was also his career coach. He said during his earlier years in school when they were asked to select their heroes, especially during Black History month, it was always his father. "I had mine in my house and I knew that at a young age, but I just didn't know how profound of an effect he would have on my life," he said.
He praised his mother for giving him one of the biggest boosts of encouragement that he received while completing Orphan. Noting that he only told her about it when it was near 75% complete, he said she told him it was a must that he finish it.
Chance stated that after she told him that his writing “just took off." He also mentioned a classmate, who had recently lost his father, but had read Orphan and stated that what he appreciated most about the writing was that it helped him see the senior Chance in a different light, more so as a father than just the principal and coach that everyone knew.
"The thing that has struck me is what people are taking away from the book. It's been very therapeutic for me and it took me seven years to write it, but I don't regret that because it was a process and finishing it was like a load being lifted," he said.
Chance said what he hopes people will take away from Orphan is a glimpse of his pain and suffering so that they will be better equipped to handle their own in times of loss. "So if it's something that you're going through where you want to give up or you lost someone and you're angry or you're hurt, maybe this book can help you."
Chance added, "Ultimately, all I want this book to do is to help people."
Woomlick is the subtitle of the first novel in Chance’s Lonely Road series and it too is available on Amazon. He categorizes it as historical science fiction. “The Lonely Road to Cross is one of the earliest pieces that I wrote back at Mississippi Valley State. So that's my baby that's the one that I hold on to tight because she's been neglected, she's been abused,” he said.
Chance explained, “I tried to get her with several literary agents, maybe about 40, all of them said no and only three of them gave me any feedback."
Chance, who now makes his home in Okinawa, said he has been writing since grade school and recalls a particular incident in which his mother, who was a high school science and biology teacher at the time, discovered some of his poetry writings during the time he played football for Gentry High.
He said she posted them in her classroom where some of his teammates saw them and they began to tease him saying that he was soft because he was writing poetry. "But it didn't stop me," he said.
Chance said the experience was actually a mechanism to point out that his writing journey was probably not going to be smooth. "It was always my passion. Writing was my passion. Teaching was my calling, but writing was always my passion."
After graduating from Gentry, he attended Prairie View A&M University for two years before transferring to Mississippi Valley State University.
His original intent at both institutions was to major in English and Pre-law, but it was his father who encouraged him to go into education. “He wasn't the type of father to say, ‘you would make a horrible attorney.’ He never said that, he never said anything about me practicing law. He just kept emphasizing that I should go into education."
Chance said that he eventually heeded his father's advice and changed his major to English Education and it changed his life. He fondly remembers one of his first assignments, teaching a GED class, where many of the participants were older than he, but they all remembered his parents.
He stated, "It was tough, it was a challenge, but I won them over." Chance said he never knew the actual test results from that encounter. "But the overall experience itself, I was able to help them. It changed my life and put me on that path of being an educator."
Chance said, “Everything that I faced in my career, all of the adversity, all of the obstacles, he (his father) told me about it in advance and he kind of coached me through it ahead of time and he prepped me for it ahead of those things happening to me."
Chance said graduating from Valley and his father's death converged on him at about the same time and was so overwhelming that the only thing he could think to do was leave. "It was very hard for me to grieve, being reminded of him everyday. Everyone compared me to him from what I wore, how I laughed, how I sounded, even the cologne. They would always make a comment about my dad, which was okay, but emotionally it was pressing for me."
He said after having a conversation with his mother about how he felt, he broke his local contract within a year and relocated to the Midwest where he taught school for three years.
He met his wife while teaching there. But, as he tells it, he actually met her mother first, who confessed that she watched him for about a year before introducing him to her daughter. "She said she wanted to see what kind of man I was," he said.
His wife, who is in the military, attended and received her doctoral degree from Vanderbilt University and decided to pursue her career as a nurse practitioner. She is currently a board-certified nurse practitioner with a double certification in women's health and adult medicine. She was able to secure a position at an Air Force medical facility.
They lived in Hawaii for 20 years after leaving the continental United States, which is where they raised their two daughters, who are now 20 and 25 years of age. "They attended the same school where I taught from grades elementary all the way up to high school."
While in Hawaii, his wife had a choice of transferring to several military installations, so they chose Okinawa because the culture was so similar to Hawaiian culture that it wasn't much of a transition for them.
He is not currently in the classroom, but is willing to return for the right opportunity. However, his desire is for an advisory type position in education as he continues to work on his other books.
Orphan is currently in eBook and paperback format. For anyone who is interested in buying one or both of his books, visit Amazon.com. Do a keyword search for either title, An Orphan on Sunday or The Lonely Road to Cross. Both works are authored by Keith Johns, which is his pen name.
