Who is The Illustrious Rachel Schwarz

Q: So, Rachel is...who?
A: Rachel (aka Rae) 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.

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.

On January 17, 2008 the movie "Cloverfield" opened, and my lens about it was given LOTD honors.

On August 24, 2008, my lens about the City by the Bay, aka San Francisco, shared Lens of the Day honors with two others.

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.

Thanks to some tentacled luck, I've twice had lenses reach the #1 lens-ranking spot on Squidoo.

The first was my lens on Updos for Weddings, the Prom or Just Everyday which went ballistic in the spring of 2007. I sure hope I helped a lot of women avoid hair hell with that one.

Later that fall, while I spent the month of October on the road traveling and didn't hardly touch my lenses, my lens on how to Make Your Own Fairy Wings had a little holiday of its own, and hit #1 on October 31, the day I came home.

In 2009, when Squidoo's Purple Star award was launched, both of these lenses were granted that honor! (yay, more purple!!!!)

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!)

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" one of the first-ever group of lensmasters to be honored with this designation that indicates a large body of high-quality lenses, and I earned it at the 100 lens level.

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: starts at $75
Time saved and topical focus achieved: priceless.

Contact me

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.