Meet Ria Bulthuis | Novelist, freelance editor, and the specter haunting your local coffee shop

We had the good fortune of connecting with Ria Bulthuis and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Ria, why did you pursue a creative career?
I don’t know if I ever had a choice, really.

No, that’s an exaggeration; I could have done something else, but one of my favourite ways to describe my background with this stuff is to say that I’ve been reading and writing stories since before I learned how to read and write. My imagination is the most visual of anyone I’ve talked to, and I’ve always needed to bring those images out into the real world (I do some artistic photography too–that’s a hobby rather than a career, but it pushes me to see things from a different angle and helps put things into words sometimes).

The short story “Sam the Dragon,” about a lonely dragon and his human friend, was saved on our brick of a family computer right around when my memories begin, and I only kept going from there.

By the time I entered college, I of course knew what area I was going to study (English and Communication Arts) because storytelling and literature and culture and language all fascinate me. I’m not sure that I can choose when I started thinking of writing as a career, though. It might have been in high school, when I got to know some of my few close friends through a small casual creative writing club; or it might have been when I really started writing The Peregrine in the beginning of 2021, after I’d finished school, and it became the first full-length novel I managed to finish. Or it might have been anywhere in between.

My childhood was a lot of getting excited about things, trying them, and then losing interest pretty quickly (ask my parents; they had to spend a lot of time convincing me to follow through on my commitment to play soccer for the whole season rather than quit a couple of months in). Writing was the one thing that never fell into that category, so it probably makes sense that I learned more about it than anything else and it became a bigger and bigger part of my life.

Can you open up a bit about your work and career? We’re big fans and we’d love for our community to learn more about your work.
I’m still early in my career. At the moment I’m doing editing, proofreading, and web design while I send my novels out to everyone and anyone, but even that’s only been going on for a few years. Before that, when I was in school, I’ve done everything from working register at the dollar store and helping run a fireworks tent for two weeks every summer to front desk and admin work and working as a barista. Some of that stuff I hated, I’ll be honest (I’m not cut out for a corporate retail register job).

The thing about writing and freelancing, though, is that the more well-rounded you are and the more you’re able to get out of the shadows, the better. I used to be extremely shy, and training myself out of that mindset while learning a vast array of random factoids has done wonders for my career. (Did you know that it takes so long to repaint the Golden Gate Bridge that when they finish they have to go back to the other end and start over?)

Now I’m working on getting my first novel published and writing my second, which is much longer and more complex because I have a habit of forcing myself out of my comfort zone via overcommitment.

If you had a friend visiting you, what are some of the local spots you’d want to take them around to?
This may not surprise you at this point, but my favourite spots trend heavily toward coffee shops and bookstores. I don’t get out of Longmont much. I like to find a place I like and stick with it, so you can find me hanging out with people or, more often, working quietly on my computer at one of a couple of local cafes: almost always Red Frog Coffee or Javastop

There’s the library, which… well, Longmont’s library is an incredibly nostalgic place for me. I remember going in as a kid and coming out with a stack of books that I could hardly carry without dropping some. .

And, of course, the bookstores. I don’t visit bookstores nearly as often because if I go in, I’ll inevitably come out with at least two books. I worked at the Used Book Emporium for a while so I know where everything is, and it’s extra cool because it’s built in an old hardware shop and you can disappear into the stacks for hours if you let yourself.

Shoutout is all about shouting out others who you feel deserve additional recognition and exposure. Who would you like to shoutout?
Shoutout to my college D&D group, who I’m still playing with every week 5 years later and who helped make me self-assured and confident enough to talk about myself like this, but really the biggest shoutout has to go to my mom. She’s spent twenty-five years trying to wrangle my depressed, ADHD brain on track and into some semblance of responsibility and accountability. I absolutely did not appreciate it at the time but that woman has been my biggest facilitator, supporter, and my go-to editor for my stories in their earliest drafts, before they actually became good.

Website: shethedistance.com

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/shethedistance/

Linkedin: www.linkedin.com/in/ria-bulthuis-shethedistance

Image Credits
Ria Bulthuis