hello everybody and welcome to a new episode of the place to so i wore our motto is step out and redesign and the focus is always on you i have an incredible guest here see someone that i've actually known for quite a while but haven't had seen her in in a long time and we got together quite by accident at an art studio and she's going to tell us all about her art studio her name is prince's lewis and she loves painting and making arts and crafts  also a writer of several intriguing fictional stories and a book of poems she coauthored an anthology the ex con of goals with a short story called memory for as a wife mother and grandmother she's very creative and enjoys helping people discover their own artistic side her personal journey can be found on you tube entitled my story after the fire she earned her master's degree in education is actively involved in a case awardee and along with her husband ken if tony is a call is a koan or of art and so paint studio in ewing new jersey it's a family owned business dedicated to bringing the artists out and everyone some going to stop at that point and just let me just jump right in and tell us who you are ok so my name is princess and i've always like to write and been writing since i was a little girl have so many stories in my head the studio fell in my lap a couple of years ago when my oldest  my husband we all have different talents and we all contribute in different ways but it's fun so tell us about it arkansas like what do you do there where is it ok well it's located in  b and the painters do step by step instructions well we i provide step by step instructions and it's really a place to socialize it's not necessarily an art school but if you happen to learn a thing or two then that's that's a plus so yeah i had the opportunity to come to one of the parties there i remember i walked in and i'm looking i'm like i know i notice lady from somewhere and then we kind of put it together and remember what the connection was and all of that so i'm tell me a little bit more about your writing though i want to hear about that ok so i've i've been writing for many years but i've never had the opportunity to finish a story so for example to give you just the idea what i'm talking about my email address this is writing eleven books at your mail dot com and big but now up to about twenty one but the interesting thing is they're in my head and so one there i think well one one  magination you know the way my mind works you know i just think of what if and so it's no none of my stories are really based on anything that i've you know i wan publishing they were asking for short stories for nine dollars ga were working or and i felt that that was a perfect opportunity to finish something oh ok so i had all these books in my head that i started some of them i was into  two hundred pages but then that was it the ending is in my head so when i came across that opportunity i said this is a disease of chance for me to start something have a middle and ha over five hundred people submitted stories and they were picking twenty and so i was one of the twelve that i selected so the authors are across the country so we don't we didn't know each other and so in the book was published and it's a book about relationships so it's called x chronicles and it's about all different type of relationship that you could think of i like to just  really interesting book come about your story though i want to hear your thoughts so my story is called memory full and it's about a young lady who had gotten to a point in her life where she had done everything she wanted to do she had the perfect has this at the perfect job at the everything was perfect in her life and then there was a part of her life that she had barry away to never think of again and one day that pass came back and she had to be she was faced with a decision and of course it was a man so now she has this one man that she loves in she has her security or she has everything you want and then she has this other man that went away and when she was in her early twenty's because of circumstances and so they never really had a chance to say goodbye even though this is about maybe fifty years later so you have to read this story to find that  give me a little hint of what the title mean well the title thank you for asking because a friend of mine who we have been friends for thirty five years we met in college she recently passed away and she was one of my biggest supporters and i would buy bass ideas off of her all the time and one time i caught a she never answer her phone that was the one thing about her you just knew that if you called do you had to leave a message o so i will call her and her the machine will come or and it was say memory full and all of that i said that's my title because one of the pivotal moments in the book is when she comes to a point where she says my memories of you are full i have no more homes for i have no more room for new memories ok and while so my memories of you are  great moment for me because i was able to how did you feel when you i got so first of all how did you feel when you got picked oh my god i was just ecstatic i was so happy because i knew so many people and had had submitted stories these are people that were considered writers i didn't really consider myself a writer because i had never really i have a group of friends that i was so that when you were a closet writer i was a closet writer yes and a lot of people out there are closet right yes yes and i have stories i have so many stories in my head act cannot have a conversation without turning into a story and so god bless my husband because he just sits and he knows me so well he just sits and let me tell my story you know but a lot of people stop me to get to the short version  yeah i have one girl for the my back it tell her anything because she wants to hear distort the short story but when i talk i want you to see what i see yeah i want you to feel what i feel so i can't just which is the whole point of writing  a writer yes you are definitely a writer and i have actually because i'm a writer too and i was a closet writer for a long time as well and working on my book i think as surely as it is with you one of the things that i discovered is that i am actually a creative nonfiction writer like that's the john writing a but i didn't really know that that was that that's what it was until i saw the turn creative nonfiction for the first time with that i was like oh wait a minute and then i started reading and just understanding yeah more and more about what is that look like and everything and then as thought it going back and i'm like wow that's exactly how i am so i started taking like some workshops and things like that so i could understand the genre a little bit more and that helps to improve my writing as i'm going along and stuff like that so when you do stuff like that you're definitely really a writer i think and i think i like that  actually he wrote a play you wrote a play he didn't do anything with it but apple it was fabulous my other son is an artist he's studying at k and he's a graphic designer but he's also he also paints and then my youngest very lucky they just support us so what we do ok so when i started with telling my story it happened about twenty three years ago but for twenty three years i've talked about it and because i wanted people to learn from what i had gone through and it wasn't to two years ago that my son the one that's the performer the rapper he did for me an i used i liked at that time people were doing videos using cards oh yes so i thought that was so nice because i thought it helped people to tell a story without telling the exactly it's so i wanted to do that and when i found studio and my husband i we spent the first thirty days fixing it up so we were there to four o'clock in the morning of the place and you a with hammer nails in the sides and you know he i would explain my vision and he would just see my vision through ok so once we did our all that part you know their permits you have to get in certain licenses so farman came to the studio to do in the spec and he was so nice and he was saying things that you would think someone would say if you if you knew the person so he was giving me short cuts like you have to do this but if you go here you can get it you know quicker or you know more affordable and i thought that was really nice of him and so i said to him that i have this thing for farm and because a fireman say my life over twenty years ago and he said you know he's asked me what happened i was told them he says where does happen you know i gave him my address and he had been a fireman about thirty years or so and he said that's my area and as we began to talk you know like with grease cooking grease and when it happened the farmer who showed up he was talking to me on my front porch and i remember it so vividly because he kept asking me the same questions what day is it how old are you when we should birthday you know what day is it how old are you wasted birthday and i remember thinking wow he was asked what it is but later i found out that he was saving my life because he was keeping me from going into shock he knew the extent of my injuries before i did so and he also was the person who was in charge of making a call or whether i will go to a local hospital or have a helicopter take me to delaware where close to delaware that story the next day he contacted me he found a list he found he pulled the records from that day and it was him he was and where he was the one year oh wow and he was so touched that he invited me and my family to the fire department is the prospect heights fire department ewing and they they put together a little like program for me and they and they watched the video they all said and i and these were grown men and they were crying and they said to me that they put their lives on the line every day firemen do in general for people they don't know and it was a really incredible feeling so the story is on you tube and if you search for my story after the fall you know this is actually a video oh yeah oh ok so it called my story after the fire ok and and i like to share that you know sometimes when people come to the studio my studio is like no other and i take pride in their because i'm very hands on more and i want i want to give people the opportunity to leave all the stress out i want them to come in i always tell them take a deep breath every class someone says to me i can't draw a circle they'll put me to decide like it's a i had a marvelous time first of all because of the people i was a wild about people that i know you know it was resell it was a birthday celebration and all of that and just the whole process because i came here like i'm thinking like ok i used to dabble a little bit when i had other but yeah as you know definitely that a but then just the way everything flowed and we were all on my tip because we were all painting the same thing yes but all of our paintings were completely differently different hair i thought that was really a whole different colors different the hair every end and that's the part that people like to be creative when you go to a studio to pay and everybody be proud of it and people go face and it was memorable yes i know you remember like oh yeah this is when we when celebrated so and so birthday and yeah yeah all of that and i try to make right now i basically do private parties hopefully soon i'll start to open classes but for right now people contact me when they want to have a girls night out how i have couples night i have a sorority sister sunday where different women from different sororities will come and paint the same picture but they are their own colors and they do their own style and they create whatever they want i have kids once a month i have a kid's pain free  night and the first four or five months i sponsored it myself from ten to twelve but it became so successful that what i started doing was promoting it within my classes that if anyone was and and you'll provide like you know juice and will chips and so each month whoever sponsored it weathers that individual person or an organization is called that person's day and they're welcome to come and how did you come up with a name r and so  interesting because also as a writer you know names are very very important to me absolutely one story i was writing and i was on a roll and it was so good this is one of my favorite stories books that i'm writing i got stuck on a name this little boy and i could not pick that book up for year because within the whole year i was looking for a name and i couldn't go further and so i found his name and i finally found his name and i was able to  continue on ok but so with the studios may i have my sister ruby we call our b b my daughter jennifer my daughter jade and my niece cottle so we had a all of us were group oh yeah and we were going back and forth and we were just throwing names out and somebody was saying name and then somebody else will say right not have doesn't that doesn't capture every day we wanted a name that captured dance art poetry and a place where people can go because i also will people could use the studio for their own personal events such as parties so where do you see yourself going back to you as a writer because you have all of these stories so is in your intention to get them all public yes ok that's my goal ok i want to get the studio up and want to write i recently retired so therefore i have you know the time i had the freedom the freedom yes because in the last two months i think i have done more in the last two months that i have done all my life working nine to five so once i get a system them point to turn to writing and i'm get these books out because they're good they're so good sometimes i read my books and i and i just said and i enjoy that yeah i enjoy the element of surprise so all of my books are like that oh no they have a purpose like all of my stories i should say they have a purpose they have a lesson and and i have you you know rooting for certain characters and i love my characters and i get to meet them you know i could be at the grocery store or occupy one time i was at church and one of my characters walk past and i don't know about doing some writing workshops in the shop that would be awesome i am that would be awesome but i want to dance when i was in i've been in pittsburgh and i started going to these works ps because there's something really cool about being around other writers it is it really is you use you it opens up your mind it opens up your voice and you know all of that and it just kind of pushes you you know a lot of ways you know just in the last two weekends been just to different last week and this is the weekend before that i went to these two creative nonfiction workshops and i was really really cool people and you know and then i go to this other thing i discovered this other thing is called shut up and write and what you do is is this a group we meet at a coffee shop and we have a room in the back and basically what we do is like everybody's working on whatever their specific writing project is some people are doing science fiction i'm doing my creative nonfiction other people are doing more like historical biography types of things some people write for journals and all and so it's a very good mixture and we get there and we have like about thirty minutes we're just kind of talking to each other this is what i've been into blah blah and then we stop talking and write for a solid hour all my gosh just write five hour love is amazing i love it i love listeners and i yeah yeah i went to a writing workshop this weekend in baltimore so i love going and you're right it was about thirty people there and they were all you could just filled in it is a different kind of and it's different so i want to make sure that you say the name of your studio where it's located the name of your book and the name of the video because i want to make sure that our audience walks away with that information so that they can follow up ok ok so the studio is art and soul art and so place to we're located i saying art and so the studio at g mail dot com the name of the book is x chronicles and my story is memory full and my video that captures my personal journey is my story after the fire ok do you ever think you ever write a book yeah  i started i started writing it and it's call of the i love titles  thing really nice kid excellent so thank you thank you princes for coming here i'm glad you made it here and we were able to kind of get through the interview and everything so you all heard it all here art and so go check it out go online on you tube look at say the titles or more it's nice story after after the fire just check her out and we'll see you next time at the place so sore thank bye you bye