young adult
Rachel Le Rossignol is a writer, editor, trainer, presenter and actor. Her first novel in the exciting fantasy triology, Harlequin’s Riddle, was published in June 2017 by Odyssey Books under the pen name of Rachel Nightingale.
With a passion for story telling and the theatre, it was natural that her first fantasy series would centre on both.
“My key fascination is the power that stories have in our lives, to engage, illuminate and transform.“
Rachel Nightingale was a highly imaginative child who used to pretend she was a gypsy wandering the woods on her way home from school. Once she realised creating stories gave her magical powers she decided to become a writer. Some years, and many diversions later, she is the author of Harlequin’s Riddle, published by Odyssey Books, and also, rather unexpectedly, an award winning playwright. Columbine’s Tale, the sequel to Harlequin, was recently released in September 2018. She is currently writing the final book of the Tales of Tarya trilogy – which by complete coincidence is about the power of creativity to shape the world – and desperately trying to ignore all the other stories clamouring for her attention.
Rachel lives in regional Victoria with a very bossy cat, her family, and the cutest dog in the world.
Wendy Haynes has completed a Diploma in Creative Writing at Southern Cross University. Her writing focuses on middle-grade fantasy, historical, and contemporary stories for children, picture books, junior fiction, and YA.
Her first picture book Hayden’s Bedtime, was published in March 2019 and is on the 2019 NSW Premier’s Reading Challenge list. Her new book The Door in The Woods: Book 1 Hollow Woods a middle-grade fantasy fiction series is due out in 2020.
She believes that having a regular writing practice, and understand the device at your disposal, is the key to not only completing a story but in building the skills required to produce a worthy manuscript.
She was a judge for the Port Writer’s In-house competition for the creative non-fiction category in 2018, and one of the judges of the fiction category in 2019. She was one of the judges for the CYA Competition for 2019 and a board member for Hunter Writer’s Centre.
Wendy won first prize for her short story Going Nowhere, at Port Writers In-house competition 2018, and enjoys helping and motivating writers and has developed a mentorship program to help writers tell stories. Armed with a Certificate IV in Training and Assessment, she conducts writing workshops on and offline through her business. http://writingforkeeps.com.au/
Being part of a writing community Wendy has volunteered for the roles of the President, Vice President, and Treasurer of Port Writers Inc, a not for profit local writing group bringing writing workshops and presentations, as well as writing exercises to the group.