Writer's Guild Featured!

The St. Louis Catholic Writer's Guild was featured in the St. Louis Review, a publication of the Archdiocese of St. Louis!


Yes, I know, you're wondering what I'm doing at a Writer's Guild. I'm an artist, right? Well, writing is still one of my passions (I wrote a novel when I was 13! It's absolutely horrible!). I do a lot of writing, although I rarely post it online-- multiple essays and articles each week, along with fiction stories written with friends-- and I would do much more if I didn't set artwork as a higher priority during my free time! However, the Guild is not just for writers. We've had wonderful discussions on the role of faith in any creative outlet and since I'm wanting to study graphic design in college, I enjoy listening to them talk about the publishing process.

So, once every two months I drag two of my friends down to this cute coffee shop for the Writer's Guild meetings! We're the youngest, but that just means that we get to learn from everyone else's experiences! Unfortunately I haven't been able to attend as often as I would like (things like SAT exams and visits with my cousins always seem to happen on the same day as the meetings). The reporter attended the July meeting and spoke with everyone in attendance.

She then called me for an interview since there was not a lot of time at the actual meeting, and she was so sweet that my nerves calmed down pretty quickly.

 (I have a very hard time understanding people when I can't read their lips and body movements, or at least know what color their shirt is-- yes, that's a little weird, but... yeah. When my cell rang with an unknown number and I realized it was her, my heart starting doing a little giddy dance. I just knew that I would flounder and ask her to repeat herself a million and one times. However, she was really easy to talk to!)

I was worried that I'd sound strange in the article; after all, talking to someone on the phone doesn't give you a ton of time to plan out what you're going to say! But it's a neat piece and I am so honored and humbled to be a part of the Writer's Guild and that we were featured in this newspaper!

They asked me to bring some artwork to the meeting, and the photographer snapped several pictures. Then, they went and printed my Phoenix painting full-page! I'm honored, humbled, and a little overwhelmed about that!

The only thing is that there were only three of us who were really featured; there are several more people in the guild and they are all really nice and great writers.

I just wanted to say thanks to Ms. Brinker for writing the wonderful article (which you can read online right here), and I hope that more people will find out about the Guild and join in the fun!

There are a few shout-outs in the article, so here are the links: A Plan for Joy in the Home by Laura Dominick, Regina Doman's awesome fairytale-retold YA novels, Mater et Magistra magazine, Gilbert Magazine, and Ink and Fairydust. And, of course, the St. Louis Catholic Writer's Guild and the St. Louis Review newspaper.

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Speaking of Gilbert (which is an awesome magazine, by the way), I don't think I ever shared the second Chesterton doodle that I drew at the Chesterton Conference and which they published! G.K. just looks like the perfect kind of guy to be riding a unicycle, doesn't he?

(The first doodle is here)

A Plan for Joy

I'm very excited to announce that a very big project I have been working on is completed and published!

A Plan for Joy in the Home: A Workbook on Organizing Your Day for Homeschooling Mothers is a wonderful workbook written by Laura Dominick that does exactly what the title says-- it gives awesome tips for homeschool parents. It's available for sale here.

A few months ago, Mrs. Dominick asked if I could do layout for a book that she wrote. I'd met her briefly this summer at the ReginaoCon and had a blast with her daughters.

Of course I said yes!

However, I had no idea how to go about doing graphic design for a book. I've worked on the online magazine Ink and Fairydust, but that is a little different. A book provides a whole new world of publication requirements. For instance, I had no idea how to do chapter pagination or how to add correct page numbering.

Mrs. Dominick was very gracious and understanding as I researched and learned about this brand-new world. Very understanding-- not only was I trying to do this from scratch and make it professional, but I was also plauged with major computer problems that put me behind schedule!

I was so excited to recieve the email with her draft. As I mentioned before, the workbook is really helpful (although I think that I don't really appreciate it fully-- I'm only a homeschool student, after all! And yet it seemed really wonderful to me.) Mrs. Dominick shares various plans for organizing the day, and provides plenty of real-life ideas that her family uses.

In addition to the graphic layout, I also did illustrations for each chapter. The image below is from the last chapter.

 She also asked me to do the front cover illustration. It was a challenging and invigorating artistic challenge, and I'm very happy that she was pleased with it! The drawing was loosly based off a photo of her family. I changed some details, added lots of warm coloring, and made the family more cartoony to fit in with the style of the illustrations.

(For those of you who, like me, appreciate these sorts of details, it was done with black pen and Prismacolor colored pencils on Bristol board. I burnished the prismacolors with a wax pencil finish... which made the second layer of pen lines hard to apply! The title was added with InDesign).

This has been a wonderful experience for me... I've learned so much, so many skills that will be useful in the future. And my work is being published... Yup, pretty excited about that. I'd love to take this chance to say THANK YOU to Mrs. Dominick for allowing me to be a part of this project!

A Plan for Joy in the Home is available both as a PDF download and as a printed book from HERE. Please visit the website!

Mrs. Dominick talks more about the workbook on her blog: HERE. And you can read her far-too-kind comments about working on it here.