Janet Ritz is an award-winning U.S. author, musician, photographer and editor. The recipient of the 2009 Green Book Festival Award for Fiction and the 2004 Yamaha International Music Production Prize, Janet Ritz is a writer at Inside Forward Productions.
Ritz's first novel, UNDER ERCIYES, received the 2009 International Green Book Festival Award for Fiction. The script adaptation for that book was a 2013 finalist (top ten) in the Write Movies contest. The novel is slated for re-release in Spring, 2014. Her second book, THE FORTRESS, the true story of a soccer player who was a spy during World War II, has been adapted for screen. Her third, AESOP, a historical tale with parallels to current events, is in development as a television series. Ritz also works as an adaptation specialist for production companies, mentors writers in adaptation techniques and edits writers, playwrights, and journalists.
Janet is an accomplished photographer, a 3D designer, and a participant in the Scan the World project that seeks to preserve at- risk artifacts by creating software models and printing them out using unique filaments (clay, marble, basalt, brass). Janet designs and 3D prints models for sets, staging and private collections.
Selected versions of Janet's designs are available for purchase at the Amazon Handmade Store.
The youngest daughter of a pioneering Associated Press reporter, Janet Ritz moved with her family to the San Francisco Bay Area, quickly coming to the attention of the local artistic community who introduced her to both the professional recording studio and creative writing environment.
While attending school, Ritz worked for rock music promoter Bill Graham, studied music theory and orchestration with a protégé of French composer, Darius Milhaud, and composition and writing with the brother of writer Anais Nin, UC Berkeley professor (emeritus), Joaquin Nin-Culmell.
After her schooling, Ritz was hired by Graham's management division to work on later albums by Carlos Santana. Ritz went on to work in production at CBS Records, as well as at other well-known entertainment corporations, and was encouraged by her mentor, Joaquin Nin-Culmell, to explore writing as a profession.
After Bill Graham made the same recommendation, Ritz moved to Los Angeles, California, where she honed her craft as a writer while working as a recording studio musician/producer and performing as a vocalist with various artists, including actor Jeff Goldblum's band and saxophonist Tom Scott.
In 2004, Ritz co-wrote and recorded, with Los Angeles composer, Jonathan Hayes, four of the eleven songs for her 2005 CD release. It was out of this effort that she received the Yamaha International Production Award.
