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L L Templar is the author of fantasy novels. She is a manga artist, a teacher and a master’s degree student, who lives in the northern California.

EB: Tell us about your collaboration on Rafer Thorne.

LT: There were a lot of us that merged our skills together to create Rafer. Eight of us were on the main team, but there many other students, parents and professionals that were involved. Our goal was to create the ultimate YA fantasy novel. So Young adults needed to be part of its creation. It also meant that it needed great illustrations and lots of them.

I was the main writer and artist, but the crafting of the story and additional art all came out of various imaginations, including high school kids. It was amazing how the illustrations and story grew with the different perspectives and talents.

Eliah, my co-author, was a graphic illustrator in the corporate world and added professional polish to the art, and she also used her zany imagination to write back stories, poetry and sequences to the manuscript. Some sections of the story we wrote together, sitting at the computer side by side. My husband, Gary, also an art student at SOU, illustrated creepy things like Blahtchuuk the Netherworld Imp, and imaginary animals like the enchanted mice, Eek and Tisk. Seventeen-year-old Victoria did the cover illustration and Fifteen-year-old Emily created a Manga, graphic novel sequence showing Kiyah the Elf’s battle with Gluuk the Goblin.

With all of us imagining the story and art together there was no limit to the depth of our story world. For example, we had long discussions on goblin insults. We wanted gross and morbid and brainstormed ideas together. The one I especially liked was, “Moldy pile of ogre vomit!” We created flying ships based on real engineering principles, and we dug into ancient Celtic mythology and dredged up Nahg the shapeshifter. Together we created imaginary beings, gnomes, goblins wizards, dryads and naiads, but also a very real world of teens struggling to survive as foster kids in a big city.

EB: How did the project get started?

LT: I began writing the story when I was a teenager, because I loved the fantasy genre. Years later when I was a language arts teacher for the Beaverton school district, my students motivated me to keep working on it. As part of a creative writing project, I asked my students, who were 13 and 14, what their ideal novel would be like. This is what they told me:

1. They liked Goblins, Elves. Dragons, wizards and magic. 2. But they also liked to have someone in the story that was a teenager that they could relate to, somebody like themselves so that they could imagine themselves in the story. 3. They liked an epic adventure— super heroes saving the world from dire evil. 4. They also liked pictures, lots of pictures. They especially loved Manga. (Manga is a style of illustration originating from Japan)

I could not find any one book like what they described, so I thought, “I can do this.”

EB: It’s a sci-fi fantasy set in 1976 San Francisco. Is that period interesting to young adult readers?

LT: What I found in talking to my students is that currently there is the same nostalgic fascination with the 1960s and 70s as there was in my generation with the 50s, which created the popularity of “Back to the Future” and “Happy Days.” The “Hippy era” is rich with culture – the flower children, the mingling of ethnic groups, the birth of rock ‘n roll, and the revival of a belief in magic. It was also a world in which teens were beginning to face the same issues that they are facing today; gangs, drugs, dysfunctional families and abandonment. It was the perfect setting for a magical adventure, but it was also where I grew up. I have been told by great writers, “write what you know.”

EB: What was the most challenging aspect of the project? And the most rewarding?

LT: The most challenging aspect was integrating the talents of various individuals, including teens. Being able to work together in a cohesive group and merge our abilities, while keeping conflict to a minimum was not easy.
However, the most rewarding aspect was the exact same thing. We did it! We accomplished something greater than any one of us could individually. Cooperative learning worked! A collaborative project model worked! The feeling of accomplishment for all of us when the first printed copy of the book arrived from the publisher was so exciting it’s hard to describe. I’ll never forget the reaction of 15-year-old Emily when she saw her art in print in a real book. She danced around the living room saying, “I’m a real artist!”

EB: What’s next in the series?

LT: Next is the second book in the series, Rafer Thorne II, The Staggering World, in which a group of teenage Halflings (half Fey and half human) including our hero Rafer travel through a porthole into the fairy world of Kynmahnduu. In this otherworld they continual the battle against the forces of the Void and their nemesis Sharh the Dragon Queen, who is seeking to invade Earth with her army of Goblins, Dragons and netherworld beings. We are also working on a series of extended edition e-books that are fully illustrated, in color, with interactive maps and animations.

EB: Tell us about some of your influences as a writer.

LT: My greatest influence was my dad, Tom Albright. He was a best-selling author and art critic for the San Francisco Chronicle. Because of him I was immersed in both creative writing and art from my earliest memories. I also spent a lot of time in the studio of his best friend, Bill Snyder a professor of art at UC Berkeley and a Disney artist. Consequently, I fell in love with the art of Disney. I started college in graphic design when I was just 14. Which meant I was only 17 when I got my first job as a graphic illustrator. I also published my first creative writing piece at that time. A gothic horror serial called The Chains of Evil.

Then I switched gears and went back to school to become a teacher. Here I would have to say that my greatest influences were my students. But it’s when I teamed up with Eliah Brave, a mom to three of my best and brightest students that I really begin to fly. She was a graphic illustrator and a book producer. We merged our talents to create a cooperative project that also included the talents of her teenaged kids, and Rafer Thorne was born. Since then other teens and students from the University have joined the team, like Zach Pearson who is an animator at SOU, and my husband Gary.

EB: Rafer is a 15-year-old boy. How did you go about capturing that voice?

LT: I began writing the book when I was a teen and although Rafer is the main character, the story is actually told by Grace, who was me when I was seventeen. I was very close to my brother Greg growing up and there is a lot of Greg in Rafer. That’s the main story line, however we also have a student author, Steven Trujillo, a Hispanic young adult, who is writing Rafer’s Journal. Excerpts from the Journal are scattered throughout the novel in Rafer’s voice. Steven approached me one day with a Rafer’s Journal page that he had written and said, “I am Rafer.” When I read what he had written and it so brilliantly fit the character, I said, “Wow, you really are!”

EB: What’s been the response to the book so far?

LT: Great. We have five stars on Amazon, we have book signings in local bookstores coming up, we’ve been on local TV, and we’ll be on a creative arts radio show in San Francisco. A major book store chain has also expressed an interest, which I’m working on right now. Getting seen by more people and in the bookstores is the next step in the process.

EB: Thanks for talking with us.

LT: Thanks for having me on your blog.

You can see more of Rafer Thorne the authors’ blog here or website templarbrave.com on the Rafer Thorne Facebook page on Twitter (@LLTemplar1) and Instagram (Rafer Thorne). Bookstore can order copies wholesale by emailing leenah144@outlook.com.

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Dante Fumagalli is a senior at Southern Oregon University studying English and Art History. He is passionate about education, the arts, and accessibility.

EB: Tell us a little bit about your internship at MoMA.

DF: I interned with the education department at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City from June 8 to August 12. My time was specifically split between Community and Access Programs; School and Teacher Programs; and Interpretation, Research, and Digital Learning.

EB: What sort of things did you do?

DF: Being split between three different departments, I ended up doing a lot of varying tasks. With Community and Access, I mostly helped facilitate programs. MoMA offers a wide variety of programs for people with disabilities and it was great to see the extent of how MoMA serves these populations. I also got to attend and help facilitate a professional development conference for teachers called Connecting Collections which is hosted by MoMA, The Met, and The Guggenheim. It was amazing being able to meet people from all of these different museums, in addition to teachers from around the world who came to New York to learn more about arts education. I got to develop a lesson plan for a gallery session centered on the essential question: How did artists in the 1960s make use of everyday objects to explore political, personal, and conceptual themes?

EB: What did you learn?

DF: I learned a lot about best practices in museum pedagogy. At Southern Oregon University, I’m a staff member and a docent at the Schneider Museum of Art. My general teaching style when leading groups through the museum was friendly, but also primarily didactic. At MoMA, they stress the importance of inquiry-based teaching strategies. Watching professional museum educators and going through the many training resources that the museum offers really has changed the way that I approach teaching in these spaces.

EB: How did the work complement or expand on your academic studies?

DF: When I was working on my lesson plan, I made use of a lot of the theory that I’ve learned in both my art history and literature classes. One piece in particular that I used was Black Girl’s Window by Betye Saar. I first was exposed to Saar’s work in a class I took called Race, Gender, and Ethnicity in Art with SOU professor Jennifer Longshore. We discussed how her assemblage piece, The Liberation of Aunt Jemima used found objects to compose a comment on racist imagery in the United States. This was a great foundation for my work with Black Girl’s Window, which similarly uses found objects.

EB: What was the most interesting aspect of the internship? Any surprises or revelations?

DF: For me, the most interesting part was helping out with the program Meet Me at MoMA. It’s designed for people with Alzheimer’s and their caretakers. The framework for the program is hugely influential in Museum access worldwide, so it was incredible to see the program happen. Educators at MoMA are very patient and for this program they really extend their inquiry-based methods and bring out discussion amongst participants. At one point during the program, we visited a Roy Lichtenstein painting and one man who had been mostly silent the whole time became visibly excited and told us a story of how he had gone to school with Lichtenstein. It was really moving.

EB: How did you like New York?

DF: I loved New York, though it was very overwhelming at first. The day I arrived, after I picked up my bag, I just remember stepping outside of the terminal at La Guardia and trying to make sense of all the chaos that was going on ahead of me. And that was only in Queens! I lived in Belmont, a neighborhood in the Bronx right across from Fordham University which was nice but also meant that I had quite a commute. If anything, though, that commute motivated me to go out and see the city much more than I probably would have otherwise. I made a concerted effort to go see all sorts of sights after work. My MoMA ID also allowed me to attend other New York cultural institutions for free so I definitely tried to make the best of that. During my time I visited The Met, The Met Breur, The Studio Museum at Harlem, The Bronx Museum of Art, The Guggenheim, The Brooklyn Museum, and MoMA PS1. It’s crazy to me that with all of that, I still missed out on so many other things in such a crazy city.

I definitely want to come back after I graduate. I’ve been doing research on year-long museum education positions in the city and I’ve found that The Met, MoMA and The Brooklyn Museum all offer paid 12-month internships I’m going to be applying for. I found that once you get used to getting around this city, it’s easy to become attached. So many of the other interns I met shared this feeling with me; it definitely brought us closer.

EB: Any advice for other students thinking about internships?

DF: Don’t sell yourself short. You don’t have to be at a school like Harvard, Yale, or Columbia to get one a coveted internship in the professional world. While I was filling out my application, I nearly talked myself out of it. I thought there was no way that they were going to accept me, a student from a small school in Oregon who isn’t even an art history major, at one of the most well-known museums in the world. Even my first day, I still could hardly believe it. It didn’t help that the first person I met was working on his PhD in art history and here I was still in school. But I was able to contextualize the experiences I have had and relate them to the mission of MoMA in my application and in my interview. And I think that’s the most important thing when applying for jobs. You have to give yourself credit for what you have already done and see how that fits in where you’re applying.

EB: Thanks for talking with us.

DF: Thank you! I appreciate getting the chance to reflect on and talk about my experience.

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Writer Carole T. Beers is a descendant of Oregon Trail pioneers, who worked as a reporter and dance critic for the Seattle Times newspaper, where she won several awards and interview such celebrities such as Katharine Hepburn, John Wayne, Clayton Moore, B.B. King, and Rudolph Nureyev.

She has a life-long love of writing and riding, and got her first horse and her first author autograph at eleven. After earning a B.A. in Journalism at University of Washington, she taught writing at a private school, wrote for romance and horse magazines, such as Modern Romance and Western Horseman, and began her career as reporter.

She also received a number of awards as horsewoman, including the 2012 American Paint Horse Association’s National Honor Roll Championship in Amateur Walk-Trot Horsemanship and Trail, and Reserve National Championship in Amateur Walk-Trot Western Pleasure.

Today Carole T. Beers still rides and writes. She pens mystery and adventure books and stories for adults and teens and her book Saddle Tramps combines two sassy women, show horses and crimes. She has also written a forthcoming novella, The Stone Horse, inspired by Zuni carvings of spirit animals, contributed to the collaborative mystery novel, Naked Came the Rogue, and has several projects in the works. We talked about her recently released Saddle Tramps.

EB: Tell us about Saddle Tramps.

CTB: The book is a fast and fun read set in the high-stakes western horse-show world — a world seldom if ever explored in fiction. In many ways it speaks of a New American West, where old traditions such as courage, honor, and connections to horses and the land are challenged by new yet strangely familiar crimes and passions. Retired reporter, Pepper Kane, aided by her Lakota-policeman lover, Sonny Chief, and her horsey buddies, tracks down the killer of a valuable stallion. And yes, there’s a gunfight at the end!

EB: Saddle Tramps is kind of a western but set in modern Gold Hill. How did you choose the setting and time period?

CTB: I write what I know. Both from my own heritage and history, but also what’s happening now. I wanted readers to experience some of the pride and other emotions I carry for the New West, which for me is in Oregon, Washington and California. And of course to learn something of this area — mainly the Rogue River Valley, first chronicled in Zane Grey novels of nearly a century ago. Tiny Gold Hill, where our heroine lives, is where in 1850 a five-pound nugget was found, launching the Oregon Gold Rush a year after the famous rush in California. I lived in Gold Hill once. The region is breathtakingly beautiful and truly Western flavored!

EB: You kill a horse at the very beginning. Did you worry that readers might be upset?

CTB: A bit. But I wanted to start the story with a bang, show its horse centeredness in a subdued yet compellng way, and then quickly get on with the crime-solving without offing a human. I’ve worked up to killing people in my present writing projects.

EB: I was fascinated with the description of the showhorse culture. Which characters were the most fun to write?

CTB: The heroine, naturally, but also her elusive but devilishly handsome lover, Sonny Chief. He is a traditional Lakota man, but also moves well through the modern world. Pepper’s buddies, such as her sassy best friend and dramatically inclined hairdresser, Freddie Uffenpinscher, additionally got me up and writing happy. Ditto that self-important, grizzly-bear sheriff who harasses Pepper for messing with his investigation!

EB: Pepper Kane is horsewoman and former journalist and so are you. Are you like Pepper?

CTB: There are several things an author and a lady shouldn’t tell (but sometimes does): Her age, how the book ends, and the names of real people who inspired certain characters. However, as I cannot sue myself. I confess that she and I share many qualities — with her name and some details changed to protect the guilty.

EB: You were also an award-winning journalist with the Seattle Times. What were some of the highlights of that experience?

CTB: Talking with and digging up facts about all manner of people, dead or alive, still stand as a cumulative highlight of my nearly forty-year newspaper career. I wrote news about lawbreakers and lawmakers. But mainly I wrote features, reviews and profile obituaries. I still feel privileged to have known leaders in the arts, business, politics, science, education and spiritual ways, as well as cowboys, cooks, test pilots, farmers, loggers, housewives and the homeless, I covered visits by Queen Elizabeth and Presidents George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton as well as by arts luminaries such as John Wayne, Katharine Hepburn, Cary Grant, Peggy Lee, B.B. King, Frank Sinatra, Jr. and writer J.A. Jance. It is not so much the news from Microsoft, Boeing or the City of Seattle that I remember, but the people, and their sharing of deep and fascinating stories.

EB: How has your work as a journalist informed your fiction writing?

CTB: I am not satisfied with presenting sketchy stories, settings or personalities. I am driven to go long, go deep, and bring out the hidden quirk or fact. Then deliver it with flow, cleanly and compellingly to readers. Make it so I’d want to read it. If I don’t care, why should they?

EB: You were also the dance critic, so I need to ask you this. How is dance like horse riding?

CTB: Both require centeredness, in-the-moment yet forward focus, ever-changing balance, an ability to isolate and use different muscle groups, attunement to one’s terrain (stage) and co-performer. In ballet, as in show riding, one is pulled up and out looking, yet oddly relaxed, Moving with purpose, conviction. Yes, I am a dancer. With a thousand-pound partner who speaks no English!

EB: What are you working on currently?

CTB: You mean besides marketing myself and Saddle Tramps? I recall you said one of your interview subjects said he was too busy being an author, to write! I am beginning to write a second Pepper Kane mystery, tentatively titled Final Cut, about the mysterious death of a leading horse judge at a world championship show in Texas. I’m also doing a rewrite of a young-adult novel, Hannah and the Mustangs, and readying several short stories for publication in short-story eZines.

EB: Tell us a little about your writing process.

CTB: Ideas and writing directions bubble in my brain just about 24/7. Sometimes I deal with them consciously, sometimes not. But when an idea for a character or situation keeps returning, I will jot a note. Mainly I write a bit every day, usually in the morning, when I and the day are fresh. From one to four hours, depending how it’s going. My best writing times are when the plot or character is at a critical point. Then I have to sit there tapping keys until it’s all resolved. The best inspiration, aside from reading authors you like, is write what YOU like!

EB: Thanks for talking with us.

CTB: It was a great interview, Ed. Your questions cut to the heart of what we do, and make us think constructively about what we do. So we can maybe do it better.

Carole T. Beers’s Saddle Tramps is available at Bloomsbury Books in Ashland, Oregon, and in print and eReader formats online.