Christy completed her B.A. in English/Writing with more than fifty publications and six produced theatrical plays to her credit. She participated in two Northwest Drama Conferences with her dark comedy, Begging Man with Woman who is Clearly Bored. She also hosted an eclectic radio show as disc jockey for six years. Despite many interests, struggling to raise a child alone made undergraduate life bitter-sweet.

Still, Christy followed her dreams of seeing the world when she (and her child) moved to New Orleans to attend graduate-level film school. Her focus was screenwriting and playwriting. Her surreal drama, Good Enough Girl was produced in New Orleans hot-spot, Le Chat Noir. In three years, she penned six feature length screenplays , and one short intended student production. With the intention to some-day move to L.A., Christy sought film industry insight and learned pitching techniques from several L.A. based screenwriting workshops including Micheal Hauge's Screenwriting for Hollywood, Screenwriter's Conference; The Hollywood Institute, Screenwriter's Crash Course; and Eva Peel's Spec Script Marketplace Pitch Sessions. She learned elements of marketing and promotion in Small Business Training in 2001, and started booking, organizing, and running small events through-out the city. Networking her events and interests generated a rich base of regional artists and professionals. Her interests in film landed her television and movie work, on a small scale.

In 2002, Christy self published her previously published works into a volume of poetry and photography called, These are the Rooms to my Mother's House. The book made its debut at the New Orleans Museum of Art. Shortly after that, she was the sole photographer for a start-up anthropological web-magazine that featured the native Queen Charlotte Island Haida Indians. She honed in her interviewing skills by sitting with the chief's, dignitaries, and native carvers. Christy wrote the outline and first draft for the massive project before it dissolved due to funding. Today, she has more than 1000 travel, event, and unconventional works of photography. She is currently working on a coffee-table book, The Saddest Party on Earth. It is a photo journal of the first Mardi Gras post-Katrina.

Christy got her music education from her mother's turn-tables and 500 albums. Throughout her elementary, junior high, high school, and college years she sang in many advanced choir groups. In New Orleans, a town known for it's music, Christy was a singer and song-writer in two bands, Orobouros and Hydraulis. At Voodoofest 2004, Christy went solo as Vinylux. Through-out her life she studied forms of dance, including elements of ethnic dance. Her interests in the marriage of sound, space, and movement gave birth to Ice Scream Theatre, a multi-media performance art piece that was accepted into the CAC Dramarama 2004. It was cancelled when Christy broke her tailbone.

In 2005, Christy finished the WW2 biography/love story Shadowboxes, He Never Left Her Side. Based on the interviews of her grandparents (married fifty years), hundreds of family photos, and research, Shadowboxes became a time capsule of an innocent era. Prior to Hurricane Katrina, Christy was photographing, interviewing, and doing layout for A New Orleans Tour Guide for Hip Parents. NOTGHP showcased a family-friendly New Orleans with activities and historical facts.

She is currently at work on a book of autobiographical travel humor, Happily Ever Aftermath. Over 300 pages, this full color book dubbed the ill-conceived travels of an unwed mother, documents adventures from Germany to Alaska to Thailand. Christy is the head of soon-to-be non-profit to provide resources, networking, opportunities and projects for artists (www.creativitycollective.com).

Christy Soto and Mike Stier operate Optilux Design, specializing in web, print, pr and marketing.

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