We are so pleased to share this featured interview with MODG Teacher and Catholic author, Cheri Blomquist! Cheri is the author of two books published through Ignatius Press: Maria von Trapp and Her Musical Family (Vision Series) and Before Austen Comes Aesop: The Children's Great Books and How to Experience Them. Stay tuned for a second Vision Book releasing soon!
How long have you been involved with MODG? When did you start teaching?
I’ve been in the education field since 1994, when my husband and I were houseparents at a New Hampshire boarding school. After that, as we raised a family, I briefly taught full-time and then worked a series of part-time jobs, such as bookselling and substitute teaching. In 2005, I began homeschooling my children, and I did that for many years in addition to my part-time work and writing projects.
I think it’s been eight years now that I’ve been teaching for MODG! In the early ‘00s, before LS classes were available, I was in Teacher Services, grading everything by postal mail and meeting with students in a monthly phone call. Then I left to teach writing and literature for homeschool groups and develop some of my own projects. In 2021, during the heaviest period of the national school shutdowns, I found my way back to MODG, this time as both a TS teacher and as a LS teacher for U.S. History & Literature. I’ve been teaching a variety of LS courses since.
What inspired your start to becoming an author? Do you have a favorite piece you have written, and why?
By the time I was in 3rd grade, I was already an avid reader. My love for books and also for pretend play combined with a love for the creative writing pieces my teachers often assigned in school. In 3rd grade, I was inspired to write a “book” of my own, which I titled The Grandfather Clock Mouse. I had so much fun writing it that a new passion was kindled, and I determined that someday I would win the Newbery Award. Being an only child, I had to amuse myself most of the time, so I spent many hours writing over the next few years. I salivated over pens and brand new notebooks, and I filled them with my scribble—poems, essays, and stories. I wrote so much that the side of my longest finger was always calloused and stained blue! I wrote at home, in the car, behind my school desk, and often even at recess.
During high school, typical teenage concerns and the pressures of academic papers dammed my flood of creativity a bit, but I still wrote some. In college, a severe writers’ block settled in, so I wrote relatively little, but I still dreamed of being an author. Back then, it was much harder to get one’s voice heard; there were no blogs, websites, or easy self-publishing options like there are now. A writing degree had little value unless it was journalism, so I went into teaching after college and taught myself the writing business over the next decade or so. I also joined the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators, and I took a creative writing course through the Institute of Children’s Literature.
With great difficulty and with the help of a self-study creativity course called The Artist’s Way, I overcame my writer’s block, found my voice again, and eventually managed to break into the market just a little bit. Over many more years, I wrote a novel, published a few more small pieces in magazines, broke into contractual educational writing, and bigger magazine markets. My progress was very, very slow, but eventually Ignatius Press took a chance on me and published two books! A third one is now waiting in the wings for its release.
As for my favorite piece that I’ve written, that would have to be my middle-grade novel, The Secret Side of Fairy Dust, which was written in the early ‘00s after I overcame my writer’s block. I intentionally self-published it on Amazon for several reasons, and I do not market it. For that reason, I will never earn much on it, but I don’t mind. I am proud of all my hard work, but this novel reflects my original “writer self” from childhood. Fairy Dust is also special to me because it brings closure to my original dream of writing as a Christian for the secular, middle-grade market. Now I am an author for the Catholic market, and I no longer care about winning the Newbery Award. I feel too blessed to be contributing something meaningful to Catholic families!
We are so grateful to Cheri for sharing her story with us and her books! Be sure to check them out on Ignatius Press.