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The Money Mistake Creatives Keep Making (and What Sheila Slick Wants You to Know)
If you’ve ever tried to turn your art into income, you’ve probably had this moment: You’re staring at your bank account, wondering how you can be this talented and still this broke… while some 19-year-old on TikTok is selling crocheted frog hats and somehow clearing six figures. Welcome to the creative economy — where talent
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Escaping the “Struggling Artist” Trap: What Authors (and Creatives) Can Learn from 25 Years in Publishing
Every creative has a version of the same fantasy. You write the book.Or finish the screenplay.Or record the album. And then—like magic—the world discovers it. Readers fall in love. Audiences show up. The work spreads organically. Success arrives because the art is good enough. It’s a comforting myth. It’s also one of the fastest ways
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How Russell Van Brocklen Turned Dyslexia Into a Creative Superpower: Tactical Lessons for Creatives
Russell Van Brocklen didn’t overcome dyslexia—he weaponized it. In our latest Light-Minded Arts interview, he shared how a first-grade reading level didn’t stop him from thriving, and launching a multi-year educational study funded by the New York State Senate. For creatives trying to escape the struggling artist trap, Russell’s story is more than inspiring—it’s tactical.
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If Life Has Felt a Little Too Weird Lately… You Might Need This Book
If you’ve been walking around feeling like the world stopped making sense a while ago — like you’re doing your best to stay afloat in a place that keeps changing the rules — then Hard Boiled Cabbage might be exactly the story you’ve been craving. It’s not just a hard-boiled mystery.It’s not just absurd humor.It’s
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What a Cop-Turned-Author Taught Me About Not Being a Struggling Artist
I sat down with Rodney Carpentier (R.L. Carpenter to his readers) and picked his brain for an hour. He’s an 18-year law enforcement professional, a lieutenant counting down the days to retirement, and somehow, in the middle of all that, he’s written and published two crime novels with a third on the way. But the
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From Hammer to Hollywood: What Max Shippee Taught Me About Story, Survival, and the Creative Life
Every once in a while, I sit down with someone whose creative journey feels like a mirror held up to my own—only with a few more plot twists, a couple more passport stamps, and significantly better hair. That was my conversation with actor-turned-author Max Shippee, a man who has lived in more states than I’ve
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From Hammer to Human Connection: What I Learned Talking with Wes Towers
Today, I interview a man who works with people in both the world I came from (Construction) and the world I’m entering (Creative). Wes Towers, founder of Uplift 360 and author of The Simple Manifesto. On paper, he builds websites for construction companies. In reality, he’s spent twenty years learning the hard lessons most of
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When Hollywood Hammers Back: What Richard Moon Taught Me About Surviving the Creative Life
I wanted all day, rather than just one hour to pick this man’s brain. Richard Moon is one of those people. If you don’t know Richard yet, you will. He’s an award-winning screenwriter, indie film producer, novelist, physics tutor, SF nerd, history obsessive, musician, hiker, curler, kitten foster, and all-around storyteller. His debut historical fantasy
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Bend, Don’t Break: What I Learned from Talking with “Santa for Nerds” Paul Pape
Every once in a while, I meet someone whose story doesn’t just inspire me — it re-calibrates something in my brain. Not because they’ve lived some glamorous Hollywood life or because they’ve “made it” in the traditional sense, but because they’ve carved out a life that looks suspiciously like freedom. That was my conversation with
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Second Chances, and Fixing Your Old Work
Every once in a while, you do something sneaky. Not illegal-sneaky, not “hide the body” sneaky — more like the creative version of quietly rearranging the living room and hoping nobody notices until they sit down and go, “Huh… this actually works better.” That’s basically what I just did with one of my old book.
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