Kathie del Hierro is a creative woman.

The accomplished artist and musician has earned a certificate of merit for her piano skills from the British School of Music and her oil paintings have been featured in galleries and a one-woman show.

But that kind of creativity can’t be contained to just two outlets.

Del Hierro, an art teacher at Hill Country Middle School, recently published her first full-length novel, “Day of the 15th Party.”

The first book in her “Psycho Psychic” series is a coming of age story. As a middle school teacher, she knows a little bit about coming of age as she’s watched hundreds of students do it over the years.

“It’s a joy to be in the classroom with them and they inspire me,” del Hierro said. “They inspire my creativity as much as I inspire them. Through the process of watching [me] writing this book, they have been excited and some of my biggest supporters.”

Del Hierro uses the world around her and her own experiences to create her stories. Her very first student, a young man named Frank, was the inspiration for her main character, Alonso.

“I saw a very bright boy,” del Hierro said of Frank, a teen immigrant whom she tutored in English. “I looked at him and saw that his teachers were failing him. After tutoring him for the entire summer, his score came up to 98 in English. We read together. That’s how I taught him English.”

Her fictional Alonso is a composite of many of her students from her days teaching in inner city schools, but she took a lot of the things she learned from Frank about growing up Latino in a rough neighborhood.

“It’s a book about, more than anything, the main character coming of age in today’s world, coming of age as an English-as-a-second-language student, as a psychic, an unrecognized gifted and talented student. It gives you a glimpse inside inner city schools, things that don’t get talked about a lot.”

The book deals with gangs, drugs, the supernatural, growing up as an illegal resident and street violence. For all those weighty topics, humor is an important element to del Hierro.

“There is so much drama and humor in youth,” Hierro said. “My students make me laugh every day.”

Del Hierro has been writing, painting and creating music since she was small. The daughter of a telecommunications spy, she moved 18 times in 17 years. Her creative outlets were also her escapes.

“You learn to adjust to change in the blink of an eye,” she said of her experience living all over the world. “You learn that life is all about change.”

She has learned about other cultures and made friends all over the world. Even her darkest moments have had their influence on her work.

“Our family has been touched by street violence,” she said, recounting the loss of her husband’s younger brother after he was shot during a carjacking in South Dallas.

“I don’t think you can be an effective writer unless you’ve had a multitude of really intense experiences,” del Hierro said.

“ ‘Day of the 15th Party,’ ” was hammered out during summer breaks and weekends over a two-year period. Del Hierro would snatch any spare moment she could find in her teacher’s schedule to write, even going so far as to strap her laptop to a treadmill so she could get some exercise too.

“I’m always trying to find innovative ways to multitask,” she said. “Some of my best thinking is done when I’m exercising – all that oxygen rich blood going to my brain makes me a better writer. Someone needs to place laptops on treadmills and stationary bikes in gyms instead of TVs – there would be a battle to get on them. Using bungee cords to strap a laptop to a treadmill is not a proud moment for me, but it got the job done.”

Kathie del Hierro’s “Day of the 15^th Party” is available on Amazon in hard copy. A Kindle edition is expected out later this year. She’ll be doing a book signing at Trianon on Bee Cave Road 4-6 p.m. on March 3 and 4-5 p.m. on March 5. Copies can be ordered from Amazon or direct from her at kdelhierro@gmail.com .

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