Explore the creative journey of Lois Buchter, a multi-genre novelist, screenwriter, and television creator who transforms imagination into stories across every medium, from bestselling novels to children's television.
Her Story
About Lois
Lois Buchter is an author and screenwriter based in Folsom, California. She founded Fern Canyon Studios about six years ago to focus on her writing projects, including novels and screenplays. In addition to writing three novels last year and one this year, she developed and distributed a children's educational television program called Drawing Magic to more than 115 independent TV stations across the United States and recently expanded it to international markets. Prior to this, she operated the largest independent art school in Texas for seven years, where she honed science-backed drawing instruction methods that later inspired her television work. In 2017, she returned to college full-time to obtain her cinematography certification, which enabled her to produce the show. She attributes her entrepreneurial drive to a strong sense of optimism, positive affirmations, and careful attention to maintaining a constructive inner dialogue without negativity. She advises young women entering creative fields to seek mentors and gain experience through part-time or volunteer work with established professionals.
Her Interview
Ten minutes with Lois
01What do you attribute your success to?
I've always had a strong level of optimism. My brother says, Lois, someday when your ship comes in, it's gonna be a big superyacht. I do have that, and I think that as an entrepreneur, you have to have that. Positive affirmations help. Keeping your mindset. I think that I am a very strong optimist, and really paying attention to my inner dialogue has kept me moving forward. I think that I don't allow any negativity in my dialogue.
02What advice would you give to young women entering your industry?
If you have an interest, find a mentor. Find somebody like your daughter, find an artist that's out there doing it, and let her work for them for free, part-time, or something, just to get in that environment. Find somebody that you really connect with. 85% of those people would say, yeah, I'll be willing to take you on.
Her Content Hub
Articles by Lois
Unleased Imagination
From Bigfoot Tracks to Vertical Scripts: One Creator's Journey Across Every Storytelling Medium
Feeding the Beast of Creativity: A Life of Stories Across Genres and Screens
I was a teenager the first time I saw those Bigfoot tracks outside Spokane. I didn't believe in monsters, exactly—but I believed in my older brother's excitement. That moment planted something in me that never really left: an obsession with the space where science ends and the unexplainable begins.
I had no idea at the time that it would eventually turn me into a novelist working across genres, a screenwriter, a children's television creator, and now, someone who helps other storytellers get their own work seen.
But that is the wonder of imagination—you don't choose where it takes you. You just have to be willing to follow it.
From Reader to Reluctant Author
I never set out to be a writer. I was a lifelong reader looking for someone else to tell a story that belonged to my family—the true, almost unbelievable account of my cousin Gerti, a 14-year-old German girl swept into the Hitler Youth and the Wehrmacht's Enigma Machine as Berlin fell around her, only to find a lost love from the war 46 years later.
I read more than 130 books trying to understand that side of a war we usually only hear about from one perspective. Eventually, I realized no one was going to write it but me.
That book, Gerti's War, is still one of the projects closest to my heart, and it taught me the lesson that now runs through everything I make:
The stories that scare you into writing them are usually the ones worth telling.
A Catalog That Won't Sit Still
Once I started writing, I couldn't stop—and I couldn't stay in one genre.
My action-adventure novel Ropen Island, about scientists in the jungles of Papua New Guinea who are hunted by creatures from the Jurassic Age, still makes me smile every time I open it. I'd love to turn it into a series following that same cryptozoology team, including a hunt for the Skunk Ape back in the Everglades.
This year, a very different kind of story came to life: Noyes Academy, a historical novel about the first racially integrated school in the country. Twenty-two white students and 14 Black students shared a classroom in 1835 for five brief months before the school was dragged off its foundation by a mob of hundreds of men and a hundred oxen.
That novel is currently in revisions, but I am determined to get it out into the world.
My romantasy novels, A Touch of Magick and Celestial Magick, were the most fun I have had writing anything, both set against the backdrop of my love of the Everglades.
Legend of Cinnamon Valley and its companion coloring books gave me proof that the same instinct for world-building could work for young readers. I recently submitted a special-needs book series to a publisher and a toy manufacturer.
From the Page to the Screen
Building characters and worlds on the page eventually made me hungry to see them move, so I went back to college to study cinematography and scriptwriting.
That led to A Sacred Place, a short script I am currently bringing to life, and a new vertical script I am developing for a production company. It is written for the fast-paced, mobile-first vertical format.
Every format teaches me something different about pacing, and I love that constant re-education.
Turning the Camera on the Next Generation
Not every project I create is about monsters.
As an art educator, I noticed how much school arts funding had quietly disappeared and how much kids need quiet, screen-free time to build focus. That realization led me to create Drawing Magic, a children's educational television show that teaches kids ages 5 to 10 to draw using what I call the Five Elements of Shape: circle, dot, straight line, curved line, and angle line.
Season one is now available Saturday mornings across the U.S. at BizTV Watch TV, and last month, the show picked up international distribution. The next goal is getting it into in-flight entertainment and securing corporate sponsors.
Helping Other Storytellers Get Seen
The longer I've worked in the craft of storytelling, the more I've realized how many talented authors and creators get stuck—not because their story isn't good, but because they can't get anyone to stop scrolling long enough to notice it.
My new endeavor involves helping authors, screenwriters, and independent creators turn their manuscripts and scripts into cinematic, vertical-format sizzle reels designed for the way publishers, agents, and audiences discover new work today.
I also still do what I've always loved doing informally in writers' circles: one-on-one story consulting, helping authors who are stuck staring at a blank page find the hook that gets their story moving again.
Pushing the Envelope
There's a thread running through all my creative endeavors: I don't believe creativity should stay in one lane, and I don't believe it should stay in one medium.
Go ahead. FEED THE BEAST OF CREATIVITY.
Every new format—a novel, a script, a sizzle reel for someone else's book—is really the same instinct, just pointed in a different direction.
Open the floodgates and let it happen.
My job, as I see it, is to keep chasing ideas that won't leave me alone, to help other storytellers do the same, to give the gift of creativity to young artists, and to share the information I have learned along the way.
There's always another world to build, another story worth the risk of putting on the page—or on screen.
I intend to keep pushing until I've told all of them.
About Lois Buchter
Lois Buchter is a writer, screenwriter, television producer, and creative entrepreneur. She is the author of several novels and the creator of the children's television series Drawing Magic, now available Saturday mornings across the U.S. at BizTV Watch TV. She is also the founder of MySizzleReel.com, where she helps authors, screenwriters, and independent creators bring their stories to the screen.
More: Lois Buchter, Drawing Magic TV, and MySizzleReel.
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