About My Art
I began painting as a child in a pale attempt to capture the joy I felt every time I set foot in southwest Michigan. From the crunch of the sand to the sound of my grandfather’s rocking sailboat, to the brisk chill of the lake, I wanted to capture the essence of it all. A tall order for a child, but I tried nonetheless.
I briefly flirted with pursuing a career as an artist when college approached, but lacked confidence in myself and my abilities at the time, so I chose writing instead. My love of art, however, remains. I’m a self-taught artist with a love of landscapes, but being self taught, I had so much to learn. In fact, I will forever be learning, and for that I am grateful – it means the mystery of discovery remains.
While I’ll never know if a lifetime of developing my art full time would have sustained me as a career, I’m at the point where I don’t care about that any more. I love to paint, so paint I will.
About My Photography
My love affair with photography actually started in France and I’ve been dallying with it ever since. As a foreign exchange student at the age of 16, I took an itty-bitty Kodak 110 camera with me and it was magical. Ever since, I’ve been in love with the artistry of it all, from capturing sweeping landscapes to stumbling upon intimate portraits. It expands my ability to stop time with paint and canvas and reanimates my memories from last night to the last century.
As long as there is beauty in this world, I will never stop pressing the shutter button.
About My Writing
It thrills me to shout in my loudest outside voice, I’m published! Champagne Book Group reached down from the heavens and plucked my novel, SOME ASSEMBLY REQUIRED, from the ether. They breathed publishing life into it and into me, and my world will never be the same. For that, I owe them a huge thank you.
In other writing news, I have multiple works in progress – in the past it was usually magazine articles – but I can’t be happier to have more than one novel-length fiction manuscript in the works. I have a sweet Christmas romance screaming to get out in addition to a romcom set in Venice, Italy featuring a fish-out-of-water Midwestern artist who falls in love with a sexy local. Talk about a fun fantasy to write. H’mmm . . . give me a second, my mind is in the Piazza San Marco. I also have a sequel to SOME ASSEMBLY REQUIRED simmering away too.
About Me
By day, I’m a technical writer in the finance industry and by night I’m adjunct faculty for Indiana University. In short, nonfiction writing has been my bread and butter for decades, so I achieved part of my childhood dream of becoming a writer.
My original plan, though, was to be an international correspondent. As a 16-year-old foreign exchange student with a love of all things Ernest Hemingway, I was drawn to new adventures, new places, new people – and those experiences still fuel my writing, art, and travels today.
As a career, however, that plan never materialized. Instead, my entire career has centered on technical, nonfiction writing. I only began thinking of myself as a creative writer about a decade ago when I realized I wasn’t using my writing skills as I originally planned. I started blogging and freelancing and that led me to more creative outlets. It was only a matter of time before I figured I should take a stab at fiction and, finally, a novel-length work which became SOME ASSEMBLY REQUIRED.
Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to get back to creating. It’s calling to me….
Getting friendly with the locals in the Pizza San Marco
Robin Winzenread 