Rachel Barnard is a Pacific Northwester from Florida who is always looking to work the changes in her life into a story, plot, or character.

“Back in my day,” Begins 23-year old Rachel Barnard, referring to her early age writings, “not everyone had their own personal computer. Writers wrote with a pen and paper. That’s how I got my start.” Barnard had always been a voracious reader, seeming to swallow books whole, reading lengthy novels like The Three Musketeers and the Hobbit while her peers were reading Junie B Jones and the Diary of Wimpy Kid. While in school she discovered that such a thing as grades existed and her sense of competition was ignited. She went on to become AR Queen (following in the footsteps of her sister) and surpassing the closest competitor by near twice as many points. From that moment on Rachel looked for the competition in everything. She entered the Wings of Hope Speech competition and came in third in the state, meeting one of her idols Jane Goodall. After speech writing she turned to poetry, which kept her quite occupied throughout middle school. It was not until high school that she diversified her writing portfolio once more and began to write the great american novel which was a complete failure. Her vocabulary was immensely advanced whilst her realistic sense of plot and dialogue was lacking because she was still young and inexperienced in the world. Short stories soon followed while she continued with the poetry. It was during her last two years in high school that Rachel submitted her works to various competitions and got several of her better poems published, winning a couple of bucks along the way. Unfortunately, when she arrived at college, Rachel was too busy to continue inhaling fiction, instead focussing on her textbooks, her work in a restaurant, and an active social life. Rachel was amassing life experience and soon put all this knowledge to work when she began the great american novel attempt number two after graduating. Nine months later Ataxia and the Ravine of Lost Dreams was born. Rachel had published her young adult novel of a heroine’s adventures at the Academy through Amazon, doing her own editing and using her own picture as cover art. When she turned 23, Rachel joined a writing group in the Valley and wrote a children’s picture book and started on another young adult novel. She decided to form a local writing group in her hometown and is always looking for new and different challenges as she grows and learns as an author and a dreamer.