About Rachel
How She Got Started
Rachel Carrera has always been a story-weaver, and she’s been writing short stories for as long for as she can remember. But she never had a desire to turn her tales into books until mid-2013 when she dreamed her first manuscript, The Prison (unpublished), three nights in a row.
Each night, she dreamed more and more details of the same plot. When she woke after the first night, she thought, Wow, what a cool movie, but then she realized it wasn’t a movie she’d ever seen. After the second dream, she was impressed by the magnitude of details that returned. Following the third dream, she knew Divine Intervention was tapping her on the shoulder, urging her to write a full-length novel.
Since then, she's written several full-length novels (many of which are still unpublished) as well as numerous poems, short stories, and essays. She's entered a few of her shorter works into Writer's Digest competitions and has won three honorable mentions to date.
What She Reads
Rachel enjoys reading multiple genres, especially thrillers, but she favors psychological and historical thrillers that make people think and don’t insult their intelligence by being predictable. Her favorite authors range from Edgar Allan Poe to Stephen King, William Golding, Patricia Cornwell, John Boyne, Sue Grafton, V.C. Andrews, and Dennis Lehane. When she needs a break from the twists and turns of thrillers, she indulges in her affinity for Amish fiction by Wanda Brunstetter and especially Beverly Lewis. She also loves most of the original Grimm’s Fairy Tales, Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass and What Alice Found There. She appreciates many of the classics such as Charles Dickens and some Shakespeare, as well as most of C.S. Lewis and Mark Twain. And she’s adored Beverly Cleary, Judy Blume, Johanna Spyri, Jonathan Swift, Daniel Defoe, and Laura Ingalls Wilder from the time she could read. Another of her favorite books is The Diary of Anne Frank. She also generally enjoys reading anything about Medieval times, American life in the nineteenth century, the Industrial Revolution, and classic television actors’ autobiographies and memoirs. Because Rachel is an empath, she often reads and studies what she can about the Holocaust, slavery, the Salem witch trials, and the sinking of The Titanic, all of which make her heart hurt for the victims of these atrocities.
What She Does
Rachel is a mom to a beautiful daughter, Stefani, and a handsome son, Jeremy. She currently lives in Florida, but she’s also lived in New York and spent a great deal of time in Canada as well as Mississippi and Pennsylvania.
Rachel was a litigation and trial paralegal for fourteen years and managed three different law firms during that time. As a paralegal, she did an abundance of medical research for trials, a skill that comes in handy when she researches neurological conditions for the neurosurgeon protagonist in her Changeling series. When she decided to get out of law, she trained and then opened her own wedding photography studio with her sister, Michelle. They did professional photography full-time for seven years until the industry took a nosedive. Rachel then became the Director of Marketing at a law firm, a job which allows her to utilize her writing skills as well as her photography and Photoshop expertise.
Last But Not Least
When she's not writing, reading, or working the day job, you can generally find Rachel restoring old photos in Photoshop, oil painting landscapes, decorating cakes, restoring or reupholstering old furniture, adding to her vintage typewriter collection, researching her family's lineage, or watching classic TV. Also, Rachel love-love-loves cats! (Isn’t owning a cat a prerequisite to being a writer?) As of 2025, she has four indoor cats (Sophie [a demanding Oriental Shorthair], Nova [a very spoiled Devon Rex], Zahara [a sweet-natured American Shorthair], and Dakota a/k/a Stewie [a social and lovable but extremely dorky Tabby]). In 2023, Rachel lost her beloved Devon Rex feline twin named Cleo who frequently helped her write . In remembrance of Cleo, Rachel’s books are published by Cleo’s Room Publishing.
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