We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Anne Marie Wells. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Anne Marie below.

Alright, Anne Marie thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Do you take vacations? How do you keep things going – any advice for entrepreneurs who feel like they can’t step away from their business for a short vacation?

Without a doubt, I take vacations! As an author and illustrator, creativity is vital to my business, and the reality is that sometimes I feel my stores of creativity running low. I find vacations to be some of the most rewarding opportunities to refill my creative reserves.

Imagine your creativity is stored in candles that you keep on your shelf or in your cupboard. Each time you do a creative task, you have to take out a candle and light it. Eventually you’ll run out, right? Well, the crazy thing is that sometimes, a byproduct of the creative tasks themselves is that new candles are generated. This is how writing the first draft of a novel feels for me. The act of creation fuels more creativity. On the other hand, when I am working on edits and revisions of my novels, the work usually burns through a candle without replenishing my stores enough to create a new candle. I feel the same way about making art. As much as I love to draw, the activity doesn’t fuel my imagination and creativity as much as writing does. I love drawing–don’t get me wrong! But making art drain my stores of creativity. Taking vacations is one of many ways I refill those stores.

Once every couple of years, I go with my family on a road trip. The last couple of times, we’ve visited the Arizona/Utah/Colorado area, and wow! Talk about kindling for the fires of creativity! Something about the beauty of nature and being surrounded by fresh air and vistas that are such a drastic change from my everyday environment really sets my creative brain to work. As a Christian, not only do I believe that God created everything I see in nature, but I also believe that He is the ultimate Artist, Author, and Creator. To see the sun setting over the red and pink horizons in Utah as if painted with the strokes of a divine brush. To see the mountains of Colorado towering above me and thinking about how many stories those mountains have been witness to over the centuries. To feel the winds on my cheeks and know that God set them in motion. All of those moments inspire me to creative–to follow in the footsteps of the Creator. To tell stories that uplift and inspire.

Speaking of stories that uplift and inspire, stories themselves have always been a part of vacations for me. My family likes to listen to audiobooks when traveling. We’ve done this for as long as I can remember, going back to the days before my dad retired from the military–when long road trips across country were a frequent part of life. Some of my most vivid memories of being impacted by stories as a child come from sitting in the back seat of our minivan or our chevy pickup truck as my parents drove through the night and we listened to audiobooks. Everything from Sherlock Holmes to Lord of the Rings would spark my imagination. Today, that tradition continues. And each time I ride with my family in a car listening to a story some other author has woven, I feel a new creativity candle being added to my cupboards.

So yes. I take vacations. I love taking week long vacations with my family, but even during times when that isn’t feasible, I love to take a day trip and go somewhere short just to get away from my routine. Go to the zoo, find someplace to go hiking, visit a new coffee shop, or check out a bookstore I’ve never seen before. Even if you can’t leave your business for a whole week, find some time to break out of the norm and refill your stockpile of creativity candles. It’s worth it.

Anne Marie, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

For as long as I can remember, stories and the telling of them were a part of my life. As a kid, I was homeschooled. My mom likes to tell the story of how each day she would put my assignments in a pile. Some kids might have tackled that pile from top to bottom, just doing each assignment on the list until they were all complete. Well, not me! I would dig through the pile until I found whatever project had to do with writing and pull it right out. I always wanted to right first, and I especially loved the creative writing assignments.

Fast-forward to high school. At that point in my life, I had forgotten my love for writing. I still wanted to tell stories, but art was the medium I wanted to use to do that. Eventually, I went to college and earned a degree in art. I didn’t know what exactly my path would look like, but I knew it was where God was leading me. College was where I first encountered the craft of book illustration. My senior year, I took an illustration course. We had to select a classic story (I chose King Arthur), and our assignment was to illustrate it. This project, along with the weekly lectures over various artists from the Golden Age of Illustration, opened my eyes to the world of illustration as a profession. I was especially inspired by the lecture over Howard Pyle. He was a renowned illustrator, but due to a desire for creative control over his projects, he also chose to author his own books. Before that class, I assumed I would become a concept or comic artist. And, in truth, I still thought that going into my graduate program. But the seeds had been planted for me to eventually pursue a career as an author/illustrator.

As a kid, I had created a story and set of characters that I always returned to. It was called Jade Torch, and it was filled with dragon riders, conniving villains, royal families, and political intrigue. For a time, I had tried to write their adventures as a novel. Despite having given up on that dream in high school, I would still occasionally revisit my writing. But in 2018, during the first semester of my graduate program, I decided to revamp the Jade Torch story and produce my own webcomic and graphic novel. I knew it would be an arduous undertaking, but my love for writing had waned. I felt a webcomic would 1) present a challenge and force me to hone certain areas where I was artistically lacking, and 2) was the only realistic way I would be able to tell the stories of the characters I had created as a child. Needless to say, I was wrong, and by mid-2019, production and posting of comic pages had stalled, never to resume. Sure, for a year or so, I kept saying I would get back to it…eventually. But the truth was, the eight or so months I had worked on that comic had taught me something important: I didn’t like drawing comics–at least not all by myself. Comics are often created by a team of artists, and while some comic artists are cut out to be a one-man comic show, I am not one of them.

So for nearly two years, Jade Torch sat abandoned. And I felt a pang of guilt every time I thought of it. I desperately wanted to continue my story, but I had no desire to draw a webcomic. I knew it wasn’t the right storytelling medium for me. When I was still creating pages, I had found myself evaluating the story planned and cutting a lot of content–not because it wasn’t important to the story, but because I wanted to minimize the number of pages I would have to draw.

But in early 2021, the tides turned. I found myself writing again. And I remembered how much I had once loved to write. The act of pure creation was exhilarating! To put my fingers to the keyboard and allow the characters to drag me along on a story was like nothing else I’d ever experienced. There were times I felt less like I was deliberately crafting a story and more like I was a journalist, simply recording what I saw as these characters made choices I hadn’t anticipated. I had rediscovered my first creative love.

A few weeks after taking up my pen again, I finished the first draft of “Jade Torch: The Killing Thought,” book 1 in the Jade Torch saga. I knew I wanted to self-publish, and I knew I would be illustrating it myself–combining my love for written storytelling with my love for visual storytelling. Today, that book is available on Amazon, and I am neck-deep in edits for the second book in the Jade Torch saga. I look forward to sharing the second book with my readers, and I cannot wait to see where the rest of my writing journey takes me.

For you, what’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative?

For me, the most rewarding aspect of being an artist and author is seeing my work inspire others to pursue their creative projects. I recently received a review of my book from a reader who had not only enjoyed the story but who expressed that seeing the illustrations alongside the story had made her feel like she could illustrate a book too. Over the years, I have received so much inspiration and encouragement from seeing the work of other creatives, and it is a blessing to know that I have been able to give back in that way.

Any advice for growing your clientele? What’s been most effective for you?

In addition to my work an a self-published author/illustrator, I also take on various freelance illustration projects for clients. Bar none, the most effective strategy I have found for growing my clientele is networking. Almost every single client I have worked with was due to a connection I had via networking. Often I have been contacted for an illustration gig by someone I met on an unrelated project years prior. You never know what work networking will turn up.

Years ago, I heard the saying “network for other people.” It’s the idea that one of the best ways to network is actually to network for other people. If someone asks you about a job that you’re not qualified for or available to work on, maybe recommend someone you know. In turn, they are more likely to recommend you when the roles are reversed. Several jobs I have had over the years came from this kind of situation–a networking connection I had recommended me to a client of whom I had no prior knowledge. Never underestimate the value of making connections.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://annemariewells.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dragonanne/

Image Credits
Anne Marie Wells