Colleen Doran is a passionate artist. She’s passionate about illustrating and writing, working so hard her legs fall asleep and she has to drag herself away from her desk. Passionate about ensuring the fans of her own “Distant Soil” series as well as series she illustrates, such as The Sandman, receive the best she has to offer. Passionate about ensuring her rights are respected. She’s successful and accomplished, and a hoot.

Colleen owns and operates a large farm outside of Charlottesville. There are a lot of farms that meet that description, and despite my GPS I got lost finding her. She talks on video about working the land “look at all the farminess!” and how that labor doesn’t compare to the labor of creating. She also talks about the pros and cons of solitude.

This was the first interview my daughter Marisa joined me on. Marisa is 15 and an aspiring artist. She wasn’t scared away by the talk of how many hours Colleen works, or how hard she works. Marisa saw that if you love your work, you embrace the work. Marisa did want to make sure I included in my edits, however, that despite the fact that Colleen is giving away for free “A Distant Soil” on her blog, people are getting it through pirate sites, denying Colleen even a dime from an advertising view. Marisa owns the Distant Soil books and prefers reading them in that form, but couldn’t believe someone wouldn’t at least if they wanted it free give the author the courtesy of reading it on the author’s site.

Watch Colleen’s video here. Also be sure to follow along our road trip across the country here!

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This entry was posted on Friday, August 27th, 2010 at 9:55 am by Patrick Ross and is filed under creators across america. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.