Hello, and welcome to my interview, although it's more of a brain dump. I figure it's fitting to go 1st person considering I'm the one who posts the interviews in this blog.
Who am I, and why did I decide to start a publishing and video production company? Well, there's the fact that it's what I know best. I've been a writer forever and have written all kinds of stuff. The only thing I love to do more is create artwork, which is another huge part of what we produce in children's books and videos.
If we start from my very beginning, I was born in the south suburbs of Chicago but have lived more years of my life in Colorado. Don't worry, I don't plan to go through a boring chronological recount of my life. It's just that these two places say a lot about who I am: comfortable in the big city and even happier isolated in the woods. Since you can get lost very easily in either place, where I've lived could explain why I'm most comfortable in my own head.
I'll bring up life during COVID next, because it really changed my direction. Before it hit, I was running a writers critique group and trying to finish up book 2 in my main fantasy book series. Let's just say that editing my own fiction frustrates me to the point I'm in physical pain. It takes me forever. No surprise, I can be a very unhappy fiction writer. Anyway, I spend a lot of time on distractions, writing the nonfiction I love, helping others refine their stories, and picking up odd jobs. Anything to avoid my own book. COVID was a perfect distraction! I did something very drastic...I want back to school in my 50s. I completed 3/4 of an Associates in Multimedia, Graphic Design, and Illustration. I had so much fun! My doing this kind of surprised everyone, especially sing I had vowed never to take another college course in my mid-40s. Education is another one of those distractions, and I could never settle on a degree. A story for another time.
After all the years I've been a writer, doing various work here and there, helping others has always been something that comes naturally. Bringing my long-time art talent back into the mix, relearning art from a digital perspective, has been a perfect complement to it all. What I'm doing makes me happy, so why not apply it to a business.
Speaking of visual arts, I had no idea how much I'd prefer to tell stories with pictures. Best lesson I got out of college in old age. LOL! Biggest surprise was taking an Adobe After Effects class and falling in love with video editing, which is a key area I'm focusing on for ArmLin House, working hard to bring in lots of clients who want to venture into representing their stories with video.
But I also had a chance to reconnect with my roots by taking a drawing class where we used old school media to draw stuff like the still life I've shared here. I've always had a talent for copying what I see, so this was a fun assignment. Back to my living in my head, spend some time doing this and that's where you'll be for hours upon hours.
I really look forward to talking to everyone out there in many more blog posts. There will be more interviews with all the authors joining us, and I'll be sharing my knowledge as well. And I'll be introducing you to all my artist friends I love working with. There's just so much going on already with the company and there's much more to come.
I am the founder of ArmLin House, as well as the Chief Editor and Creative Director. For over thirty-five year, I’ve worked in technology, business development, marketing, writing, and publishing jobs. In the last 5 years I’ve returned to school and have become a graphic designer and social media video editor. In general, I have A LOT of experience in A LOT of industries and I love to help people, which is one of our main missions as a company. Learn more about me on my LinkedIn page.
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