ABOUT JUNE

I'm an author and artist living in Santa Cruz CA. with my husband, along with our dogs, cats, chickens, ducks and hopefully some sheep on the horizon, (possibly a goose or two as well).  Our three adult children (and mates) live respectively in LA, San Francisco and Santa Cruz.
I work my small farm, that besides the robust tomato concentration and tea garden, includes an orchard, dahlias, roses and latest addition of a massive bearded iris garden.  
My life has always been about painting, I can't imagine not doing this.  The art of black and white is so unique to itself, it constantly blows my mind that I can create dimension using just two colors.  I created my Rock Series years ago and it still keeps going strong. I'll always paint, it's in my blood.it's something that is deeply a part of me.

However, writing, now this is my passion…it feeds my soul like nothing I've ever done before.  At present I am immersed in a series of YA Fantasy novels called The Benjamin McTish Series. 

I began this journey when I created some storybook illustrations…I gave them names and before I knew it…there was my story.  The illustrations were simply the inspiration for this series, the story itself is a lot more grown up than the paintings would imply.  The first book is garnering some terrific reviews thus far.  The second book is receiving even better acclaim..which is a good thingit means my characters and my writing are growing, which makes for a better story.  And after a long delay, (with personal family health issues), I have finally finished book three.   I feel it's adventurous trajectory is in keeping with the last book, so hopefully I can continue with this movement forward onto book four.
This is an amazing world I have surrounded myself in lately…YA Fantasy.  It's become something bigger for me which is why I put together the Annual Global Blog Event/Hop to celebrate this genre'. It will take some time and work, but I hope to have this event be something of true merit.

Once I began this process of blogging about writing,  I realized how much I enjoyed connecting with other authors, so I opened up my blog to include my own personal interviews of other YA Fantasy authors and working with Virtual Blog Tours.  
Focusing strictly on MG and YA Fantasy.  I've added MG because I'm finding that some 10/11 yr olds are interested in what I'm doing, I had no idea they could be so on top of things.  They write and think about some interesting topics when it comes to stories and magic, so we'll be hearing from them as they come into my little world here.  And I'm always on the hunt to find unique and exciting authors, illustrators and industry experts to interview as well.  So changes aboundstay tuned and in the mean time, enjoy your visit.












Blogs and Website for Art
http://thebenjaminmctishseries.blogspot.com
http://therockseriesbyjune.blogspot.com
http://theartofjune.blogspot.com
http://benjaminmctish.wordpress.com


Contacts:
831-227-1016
thorntonberryshire@icloud.com

My Etsy Shoppe for Art...what's left of it!  Had a tremendous success this past Dec/Jan and sold most of my work...gotta start some new ones!
https://www.etsy.com/shop/theartofjuneutm_source=CraftCult&utm_medium=api&utm_campaign=api

3 comments:

  1. Thanks for hosting my book, Return of the White Deer. I'm glad you enjoyed it. Or, at least, most of it.

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  2. Regarding your concern about the 'rape' scene. I agree with you. I would not recommend this story for middle school children. However, I do think most high school students would be able to handle the scene. I thought Young Adult meant, upper teens and above. The scene was included not in a gratuitous way, but because it was important for the reader to understand Mary's anger. Regarding your criticism about the origin of the White Deer, I agree. In retrospect, I should have discussed the white deer a bit more. Thank-you for your well considered thoughts and honest review.

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    1. Hey Robert..I just happened upon this page by mere accident...you left your message on my "about" page as opposed to your post...so I wanted to say that I do believe upper teens can 'handle' this sort of thing..and I definitely understood it's place in the back story of Mary...however, just for clarification, ya is 12-18...so a lot of younger, upper middle grade kids are in this category...like I said, when I was reading I was just so surprised when that came into play, it totally took me off guard and I thought it took away from the magic of the story for a minute..that's all. It just surprised me, a raped nun in a fantasy for young adults..but it's your story and it was well written and I did enjoy it...thx for commenting...good luck!

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