Stark Reflections on Writing and Publishing

EP 417 - Embracing Your Passion for Creativity with Artist and Author C L Fors

May 23, 2025

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In this episode Mark interviews author and artist C L Fors about her recent award win with Writers of the Future and her life in writing and illustration.

Prior to the interview, Mark shares comments from recent episodes, a personal update, and a word about this episode's sponsor.

This episode is sponsored by an affiliate link to Manuscript Report. Use code MARK5 at checkout and save $5.00 off your own personalized report.

In the interview, Mark and Cherrie talk about:

Cherrie's recent win as an illustrator for Writers and Illustrators of the Future for Volume 41 of the annual anthology
Entering the contest as both a writer and an illustrator every quarter since 2016
How Cherrie can be creative in both writing and illustrating based on the same spark of inspiration. Sometimes it comes out first as a story and then later as an illustration, sometimes vice versa
The process of how illustrator winners of Writers and Illustrators of the Future are "teamed up" with a writer winner
Cherrie's four-book epic science fiction series - which is a story about people re-claiming self-determination
The graphic novel Cherrie is working on which, at first, she wasn't sure what medium it was going to emerge into
How a lot of the skills that Cherrie initially learned about art was self-taught, before she received more formal instruction
Learning the right time to make that creative jump as a creator
How when she is in the midst of the process of creating, regardless of whether it is writing or art, Cherrie feels most alive
Taking a step back to understand if she's taking realistic stock of her time and energy
The challenge of getting sucked in to social media
Ensuring that you're not being too hard on yourself
How Cherrie cannot remember a time when she was not doing both art and writing
Publishing her first work (a magazine that had her stories, poetry and art) and selling copies of it door-to-door when she was 9 years old in order to earn money to make a purchase
Getting her Masters in Publishing at Western Colorado University and continuing the program in Genre fiction to get her MFA
Seeing and representing herself as BOTH a writer and an illustrator
Using C L Fors for both her art and her writing
Learning that she has to "go with the flow" and use the time she has to approach her various tasks as an author, an illustrator, a wife, and a mother
Advice that Cherrie would give her younger self
How rejection is just a lesson
What is next for Cherrie
And more . . .

After the interview Mark reflects on a few things that were discussed including Cherrie's advice on continuing to do something once you find the thing that you love.

Links of Interest:

CL Fors lives and breathes stories in multiple mediums: the written word, illustration in watercolor, acrylic, digital, and ink, and the creation of custom jewelry and other artifacts of story. She is an artist with a myriad of interests and experiences that inform and flavor her writing and illustrating. A multipotentialite, mother, author, and adventurer, CL is a science and science-fiction enthusiast with a passion for research based sci-fi, fantasy, horror, and speculative fiction in general. She has at various times in her life been a film actor, military intelligence linguist in the Arabic language, a doula, childbirth educator, and student midwife for birthing, as well as a bellydancer.

Cherrie and her husband, Jason P. Crawford, founded the indie publishing house Epitome Press and together bring the work of talented authors out of the brambles and into the light of day. CL’s debut novel, Progeny is the first installment of the Primogenitor series.The second installment, Breach of Mars is available on Amazon as are the third and fourth books in the series, Crowning of Mars and Futures of Mars.

The introductory, end, and bumper music for this podcast (“Laser Groove”) was composed and produced by Kevin MacLeod of www.incompetech.com and is Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0