Who Is The Illustrious Rachel...

1 - I can do better 2 - Jury's out 3 - Pretty darn good 4 - Splendiferous 5 - Awesometastic (by 36 people)   Your rating: 1 - I can do better 2 - Jury's out 3 - Pretty darn good 4 - Splendiferous 5 - Awesometastic

Who is this Rachel you speak of? Does she have superpowers? And what's with all the purple?

Welcome to the lens about Rachel Schwarz, writer-artist, eclectic human, dress-up maven and Squidoo Lensmastress.

Photo of Rachel by Mark I. Chester

Everything You Want To Know About Rachel 

Or maybe just what she feels like saying at the moment....

Q: So, Rachel is...who?
A: Rachel is an writer, student of belly dance and movie fan seeking a living wage & like-minded aliens for spiritual growth, resource sharing and spontaneous fun. Once that's accomplished, she'd like to move to communal land and propagate bliss while moss farming.

She's lived the first 20 years of her life on the East Coast and has lived the second 20 on the West Coast. Shown here, the lovely Rachel (age 3) multi-tasking while working on her world domination plan.

Q: Does she have superpowers?
A: She has a B.A. in Theater Arts from UCSC and an M.F.A. in Fashion Textiles from the Academy of Art College, SF. She applied for, was accepted to and attended the 1989 Clarion SF/Fantasy Writer's Workshop in Michigan where her teachers were Thomas Disch, Karen Joy Fowler, Octavia Butler, Spider and Jeanne Robinson, Kate Wilhelm and Damon Knight. In 2002 she took the sex educator training program from San Francisco Sex Information and volunteered with them through the end of 2005, staffing a weekly shift on their switchboard. She's also been a Certified First Responder, not a bad plan in earthquake country.

As you can imagine, she knows a lot of stuff. Weird stuff. Some people who've lived their whole lives in front of a TV set mistake this knowledge for superpowers, but Rachel tends to think they just mistake some of her entirely purple outfits for some sort of superhero uniform.

Q: What's with the purple?
A: Yes, Rachel has a thing for purple. There were years of trauma in her youth, when every admission of liking that color was met with "oh, like Donny Osmond..." and she kept her purple to herself, but not anymore.

Q: Is Rachel some sort of SEO/marketer person?
A: Nope. She's just a person who took Seth Godin's statement about hoping that Squidoo would let 100,000 people quit their day jobs really to heart, as she didn't have a day job when she first found Squidoo. She enjoys being able to write at home in her favorite fleecy pants and slippers every day, and thinks it's really cool how Squidoo is slowly but surely paying her rent and living expenses. Read her profile in SquidU to learn more about her general attitude towards what she does here.

Q: And the "illustrious" part?
A: That's how anything sent snail-mail to Rachel from her parents is addressed.

Can I Build A Lens For You? 

Lensmaster For Hire

Several people have contacted me asking if I am available to build lenses for other lensmasters, and the answer is "Yes!"

Five percent of my lenses have spent 300 days or more on Squidoo's top 100 list, and another ten percent have logged 100 or more days (so far!)

In April 2007, my lens on Updos for the Prom, Weddings or Just Everyday hit the #1 overall slot and How to Make Your Own Fairy Wings earned that lensrank on Oct 31, 2007!

With the March 2007 payment, Squidoo reported the top three most-profitable lensmasters for January 07, and I was #2. With the December 2007 payments, it was announced that I was the highest-earning cash lensmaster.

In September 2007, I was selected as a "Giant Squid" in the first-ever group of lensmasters to be honored with this designation that indicates a large body of high-quality lenses.

I offer graphics creation, title and tagging optimization, relevant retail product selection, advice on joining and using groups, content editing and recommendations for content development. If you operate multiple web properties, I can optimize your lens so as to compliment your sites and offer advice on maximizing your cross-traffic. I don't build for a quick fix, I build for the long-tail and believe in "evergreen" content.

Lens basics assembled by someone else: $100
Time saved and topical focus achieved: priceless.


(note that's a little less than half of what some other lensmasters are charging)

Contact me

My Squidmercial Bit 

Squidoo invited lensmasters to submit little video snippets in a contest to get into the first ever 'squidmercial.' I stuck rather closely to the description of what they wanted. It's for my mask-making lens.

maskmaking squidmercial

here's my bit to see if I can get in the new squidmercial for squidoo

Runtime: 0:11
1259 views
2 Comments:

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Long-Tail Lenses 

topics which entertain, inform and endure

Here are my best performers, with each lens having achieved 400 or more days on Squidoo's Top 100 list. One has even logged 500 days!

Lens Of The Day Picks 

I've had a few lenses get selected for the Lens Of The Day honor, and I'm proud that the Squids-That-Be like my work. I have a lot of fun on this site.

In August of 2006, there was the Travel Challenge and my lens Battle Born: Nevada Travel Guide tied for runner-up in that one and got co-featured as Lens of the Day.

In September 2006, my lens on how to Make Your Own Fairy Wings made LotD too! Ok, so I had something to do with it, but apparently, sometimes it's hard to choose just one.

The Current Book Pile 

The avalanche that threatens to fall over next to my bed....

Having had to make two reductive moves in a row, I got rid of a lot of extraneous possessions and sadly some books had to go too..... :-(

However, you can't keep a true book fetishist from getting new books so there's always something in the "to be read" pile. Here's what I'm either reading or about to read.

Challenge Winning Lenses 

From time to time Squidoo has Lensmaster Challenges, where they pick a theme or topic and then have a contest for building a lens on that topic. I've had several lenses that have won or placed for their challenges.

The BoingBoing Lensmaster Challenge was in May of 2006, and my lens BoingBoing Goes BodyArt took first runner-up in that one. I won a book called Mad Professor.

My lens about Aldous Huxley's book BRAVE NEW WORLD outperformed other banned book lenses to win me ownership of the Banned Books Group.

In Sept '06, my blintzes lens won the new Food group September '06 challenge. Later, I adopted that group and it became known as "Chez*Squid."

My lens on author Nick Bantock was the Book Club's Nov '06 Pick.

If you've never tried building for a Challenge, I recommend it! It's fun, interesting and it can really let you explore just what you can do with a lens.

The Many Looks Of Rae 

Having a BA in Costume, I do tend to dress up or attend costume events more than the average human.

corsetlaces and backtattoos by ReLaCHE

photo by Mark I Chester

purple_butterfly by ReLaCHE

Bondage-A-Go-Go, Hell-O-Ween event, SF

ladyrae_forest2003 by ReLaCHE

At the Forest Faire in Marin, CA

wedding_sept2 by ReLaCHE

from Shelly and David's wedding

The Lady in Purple by ReLaCHE

Dore Alley 2005 portrait by Mark I. Chester

Symphony in Purple by ReLaCHE

Going to the Seattle Symphony, fall 2007

the Grab Bag 

just some of my fun lenses

One of the things I love most about Squidoo is that no matter what I want to write about, you can make a lens on it.

Rachel Goes To Rachel, Nevada 

My adventures in Area 51

In May of 2005, I got to go to one of the few namesake towns I have in the US: Rachel, Nevada. The town of Rachel didn't have a name until 1971, and then it was named after the first baby born in the area. Maybe 100 people live in the area, mostly employed on local clover farms.

It's also known as the famous and/or infamous Area 51. There is one small hub of UFO/alien-related business in the area, the Little A'Le'Inn Cafe.

We purposely went there to eat Alien Burgers and get some sort of merchandise. We got a couple of fantastic characters in the locals, both the staff and patrons who were there. Our waitress was what my mom would call "a pip." If you go, be sure to ask how they make the Alien Burger Special Sauce. The story is totally worth it. Oh, and the 25-35 mph gusts of wind weren't too shabby either.

This is a picture I took of a mural on the front of the Little A'Le'Inn.

Check Out My Latest HubPages 

In addition to my page building here at Squidoo, I'm also doing some over at HubPages. How that site functions is a bit different from Squidoo, but I've gotten good traffic exchanges between the two site and it's returning good earnings!

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Here's my favorite link:

relache.com

...Are you talkin' to me?! 

comments, feedback and questions for Rachel

You know you want to ask....

spirituality

great style you got here :)

Posted March 30, 2008

relache

Thanks, Helen!

Posted March 17, 2008

Helensmrt

Wow!You are great! I'm your fan!

Posted March 17, 2008