About Carrie

Hello.

My name is Carrie L. Lewis and I am a writer.

Sounds like the beginning of a seven-step program, doesn’t it?

I suppose, in a way, it is. I’ve been writing for almost as long as I’ve been an artist. I’ve been painting portraits of horses and other pets for over thirty years, but have been drawing since I was old enough to hold a crayon.

Writing took longer to take hold, but Mom tells me I’ve been an avid looker-at of books since I was old enough to sit on her lap and listen to a Golden Shape Book (anyone else remember those?).

I don’t know for sure when the notion that I could write my own stories first occurred to me, but it has been a long time. I know that because the oldest complete manuscript I have was written when I was in the eighth grade. Written and illustrated entirely in #2 pencil on three-hole punch loose leaf paper bound together with twist ties, it is a twenty-three-page, seven-chapter marvel about wild horses. I still have it, twist ties and all!

Throughout grade school and high school, I read every horse story I could get my hands on. Walter Farley was a huge favorite and I still enjoy reading the adventures of the Black Stallion and Flame and all the rest. But Marguerite Henry, C. W. Anderson, Thomas Hinkle and anyone else who wrote a story about a horse was on my to-read list. I couldn’t get enough of them.

Then I found Agatha Christie and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and discovered another world; the world of mysteries!

More recently Dick Francis has combined my love of horse stories with my love of mysteries with his series of books.

In the early part of this century, I was introduced to the world of Christian fiction and in July of 2008, I took my first ever writing workshop. The workshop covered several aspects of writing from a Christian worldview and an entirely new vista opened before me.

In December, 2008, I was further led to the point at which I realized that I needed to be giving the God given talents for writing the same respect and diligence I’ve been giving the God given talents for painting. And that has brought me to this point.

I am, as yet, unpublished, but have had one novel reach the agenting stage and another has entered the submission phase.

I write every day, maintain painting and writing blogs, painting journals, writing journals and a number of other writing endeavors. Along with other members of my church family, I’ve written devotions for Advent and Lenten devotional booklets, which I assemble and publish each year. For a time, I wrote a monthly column for the Newton Kansan newspaper. The subject? Art. What else!

Novels currently in the works include a couple of speculative fiction/suspense stories, a cozy mystery, a regular mystery and a suspense mystery.

I still enjoy a good horse story and one of the three finished manuscripts does prominently feature a horse. But I also enjoy a good mystery or cozy mystery, suspense and a little bit of action here and there, as well as literary works. I hope, Lord willing, to try my hand at each of those genres.

Carrie

Marti Chabot says:

June 30, 2012 at 10:03 am

I wish I’d read this page before sending you my email. Now I feel dumb, but whatever! I was a horse-book lover in my day, too, (back in the 50′s and 60′s), and must have read every Walter Farley book ever written and any other horse story that came out in the Scholastic book sales paper we got at school every month! I used to divide up my $.25 a week allowance into my horse-bank with $.15 or so going in to buy myself a horse. My dad never told me our neighborhood didn’t allow large animals. My 6th grade teacher had to tell me after months of book reports on horse stories that I couldn’t do them anymore and had to read something else. I was MAD! I eventually got in to Nancy Drew books (I have the first 40 in the series) and also wrote my first story at about age 12, a children’s story about a boy who goes to the North Pole to work with the elves making toys, but the elves aren’t nice to him. I also drew the couple of pictures for it which are terrible! Art is not in my body like it is yours. I also have enjoyed looking over your art webpage. Beautiful animals-you have captured them perfectly.

Marti

Carrie Lynn Lewis says:

June 30, 2012 at 12:43 pm

Marti,

Thank you for posting here AND for sending the personal email. Thank you for your complements, too.

I remember those Scholastic magazines. I bought a few books from them, but I was mostly interested in the horse posters. Do you remember those? I wish I still had them, but alas, it’s been too many years and moves. I have no idea where they all went.

I enjoyed Nancy Drew and Hardy Boys stories, too, but I didn’t find them until later. When I read something different than horse stories, it was usually horse non-fiction (there was a great book about the greatest race horses in the first half of the 20th Century in the high school library). Sometimes, I read the dog stories written by the authors who wrote the horse stories.

Thank you for the complements on artwork, too. You mentioned not having artwork in your body like I do. I don’t think it’s in my body. It’s in my spirit, my soul. I expect there to be great opportunities to paint great things in Heaven (maybe even all the great race horses in that book I mentioned).

Of course, I also expect there to be time to tell great stories, all for an Audience of One. The neat thing is that I won’t have to divide my time up between them because there will be no time constraints. Ah, bliss, there will be no time at all!

Thanks again for your very kind words and for stopping by Homeward Bound.

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