About

Hello, I’m Rachel Kelly and I like to write. A LOT. This is the part where I’m supposed to tell you stuff like how I was born and raised in North Carolina, married an amazing man, became the mother of 4 kids, and currently live in Williston, North Dakota, but let’s face it: that’s boring. Let’s talk about something more interesting. Allow me to introduce the two halves of myself:

What if- This is the whimsical me who has always preferred fiction to non-fiction. Fantasy to reality. I grew up watching every episode of Star Trek: Next Generation with my Dad. My favorite cartoon as a kid was Spider-Man. And as a teenager, I religiously watched each episode of Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman. When I went to college I fully-embraced my inner-geek and did all sorts of the nerdy things, including majoring in Computer Science, playing Magic the Gathering and Starcraft, and reading comic books. I have a certain nerdy pride in my geek knowledge and experience and you’ll see that come out in my writing. This half of me is about whimsy. I love stories that ask the question: “What if…?” The stories that tweak reality just a little bit are the stories I fall in love with. These are the stories I write.

Real Life- I like to keep it real. I don’t just write brain candy, ya’ll. And real life, to me, consists of three things: science, philosophy, and human relationships.

Science is the universal language and I am continually fascinated by it because of how it crosses boundaries and can speak to anyone no matter their background. Knowledge of our natural world is the foundation for how we perceive and experience life not to mention it’s just super cool to learn about. Science inspired a great deal of my series because I want readers to feel like the story is something that actually could happen. I don’t want the fantasy to be so far out there that you can’t properly relate to what the characters are going through.

Philosophy is the love of my life. Right behind my husband who was the one who instilled that love in me. I don’t think I can say enough about it and if I tried, it would take a memoir. So just know that I am well-read in philosophy, mysticism, theology, and religious lore. No book of mine will ever be published without major philosophical influence. Philosophy has been my muse for this entire series. For me, writer’s block always begins and ends because of some philosophical hang-up that needs ironing out.

The Human relationship. I’m not so much concerned with falling in love. It’s fun to write, and it gets our hearts all aflutter. But that’s easy. I’m concerned with staying in love. Because that is the part we screw up more than anything else. Writing a real, gritty, and flawed relationship is what I have fought for and continue to fight for with each edit of each book. When all is said and done in this series, I want my characters to go somewhere as people. There is no better vehicle than the human relationship.

Why is Colorworld surrounded by so much art these days? Below is an excerpt from an email that Brad (my husband) sent to someone who asked about all the art we display at shows. I like his answer and I think it’s a neat way to sum up the short version of Colorworld and how we got to where we are today:

The short answer to the question is that we have never shifted focus from the books. The Colorworld Books Series has been the reason behind everything we do at Colorworld. It’s what the company is named after because it engenders an inclusive philosophy behind our company culture and reflects our future goals.

Art has been a part of our company from the very beginning. The first KickStarter we ever did back in 2014 was to raise money to pay a team of artists to illustrate the book series. With the exception of one person (who was someone who stepped in last minute when the original Book 2 artist couldn’t meet the deadline), no one who has ever worked on the Colorworld Series itself has left.

I started working with Mike Richardson on a working man’s blue collar brand of clothing during the time when we used to live and work in the oilfield of North Dakota. Mike then rolled into being the very first Illustrator of Colorworld.

I met Garrett next at the only Convention I ever attended as a patron before we started doing it ourselves. It was a scouting mission to see if I could figure out what Conventions were all about, what a table should look like, and whether one could make a living selling at them. Garrett is the Lumaworld artist and does all the art for the Colorworld Comics. Garrett’s almost-Archie Bunker style is highly unique and his color is spectacular. Garrett can put nearly any character in any pose. He is king of mashUPS and often combines his love for Nintendo’s Super Smash franchise with all SORTS of other universes.

Chelsea Mann came on board in year one after Wizard World New Orleans. She has a gift for color and has a unique style that is especially terrific with anthropomorphic characters. Chelsea is the Shadoworld artist and will be doing comics based on the character Kaylen with Rachel in 2019.

We met Erik at Wizard World Madison in February of 2015, only our 4th show on Tour and maybe the 7th show we’d ever done. He became a fan of ours at only our 2nd month on Tour, back when we all lived in an RV (Rachel, myself, and our 4 kids). In 2015 he recognized before we did that we were literally going to starve if we didn’t have some help along the way. He literally donated his entire art portfolio to us and told us to sell prints until we didn’t need the help anymore. He saved our dream. We were barely making it from month to month and we needed a way to make it from city to city. We were living off of donated food from people we’d meet at Church each week. Erik painted a Totoro bus stop mash up with Wendy, our main character, as the girl under the umbrella next to Totoro. He told us Totoro would save our life, and that he did. Erik is the Dreamworld Illustrator and will be working with Rachel in 2018 on a comic that will tie into the Colorworld Universe as well as a comic featuring Shiah from Rachel’s series in 2019 (the same way Chelsea will be working on Kaylen). We’ll be publishing a comic for Erik as the first non-Colorworld story in 2018 as part of our push into comics and publishing to prepare for 2019 when we hope to launch at least 5 more titles.

It became clear that artists wanted a story to tell, and we wanted to work with people who wanted to work with us.

We struck up all sorts of friendships along the way. From California to Ontario, Canada we met artists who loved what we were doing with our family to accomplish our dreams and the stories we were telling. We did all sorts of mashUP art with them. Rob Thibodeau was another artist who donated his entire portfolio to us in the same way Erik did, just so we could get by from show to show. We were next to him at Hamilton Comic Con in October of 2015. We have always been artist supported. We would not be here, still on tour, without them.

So how did we get into metal? One of the artists we had developed a friendship with was Jerry Pesce. It was at Salt Lake in September of 2015, after seeing him week after week for nearly a year, that Jerry suggested that we look into doing metal bookmarks. He said fans loved them and it obviously fit well with selling books. Jerry has Faerie Metal print all of his art on aluminum. We had originally wanted to team up with Jerry like we had with Erik, Chelsea, Michelle, Ren, Mike, and so many more…but he said it wouldn’t be lucrative from a business standpoint to have him produce and provide his own artwork on metal. The markup would make the actual profit far too low. So he gave me the contact for Faerie Metal and told me to just use the art we already had and go directly with them. We took the art we already had and cropped it to fit a 2″ x 6″ bookmark. We took Jerry’s advice, ordered 25 of 3 different metal bookmarks. And that began a success with metal bookmarks that we never expected. We sold completely out the next week. We rushed to go to 12 designs. We sold completely out of them as well the very next next week. We started looking at all the art we had and turned it into 25 designs and sold out of half of our inventory.

Jerry was on to something, although he didn’t really see the power of the bookmark, because, well, he wasn’t an author. We knew about selling books, and we realized after a fairly short time that it wasn’t going to work as our sole source of income for the long term. Part of the problem was we were having to PUSH to sell the books to people when what we really wanted were long-term fans–not sales. People would buy the first book to support us and not because they wanted to read it. This fact hit home for me when I actually befriended someone at Church in Wisconsin who, after hearing of our RV adventures, wanted to buy Rachel’s book. Then and there, he went onto his electronic library and realized he already had it–he had had downloaded Rachel’s first book a year before during an Amazon free weekend giveaway that we had done. At that time we had over 6,000 downloads and reached #1 in the superhero category, but we hadn’t CONVERTED people to the series, because none of them actually read it. No one sees value in a book that is free. They literally downloaded it because it cost them nothing but storage space. That’s when we knew that we couldn’t gain a loyal readership if we had to SELL the books to people. They had to want to buy them. That meant less book sales but more genuine fans, which is what we needed if we were going to be able to one day support ourselves on our own stories.

So we arranged our table with bookmarks on each side of the books and our “No Sales” policy was created. We would never again “sell” something to someone. Our goal became to be cool, fun, and interesting–essentially to have a good time with people at conventions. We would never deliver a sales pitch, and we would interact genuinely, which included watching and reading the things that people who came to conventions were watching and reading. The bookmarks would naturally attract people who liked to read, and those who wanted to read the book could pick it up, read the back, or ask us to tell them. It worked. The bookmarks were a huge hit and we went from 3 designs to nearly 600 in under 2 years. We now have 10 feet of metal bookmarks and a huge section of books that sit right in the middle on the bottom row, top row, and at the end of the bookmarks. The table banner declares proudly that we are Colorworld BOOKS.

People actually come back and brag that they are still using their metal bookmarks from 2015. It solved a problem we didn’t even know readers had – where to get a bookmark that will last for 100 books. Serious readers destroy and lose all sorts of bookmarks. But people have been coming to us each year to see what new art we have. Even more important, they are coming back each year for the next book. Our reader base has grown tremendously. The best part is that we don’t “sell” anything to anyone at our booth, and that allows us to not get burned out from doing conventions week after week. It keeps the fire burning for the next Colorworld Series project. We are constantly focused on customer experience, believing that a comic or anime con is not a shopping mall. It’s an experience for patrons that they can’t get anywhere else, and we want to preserve that. We meet people. We make friends. And anyone who sticks around our table long enough quickly learns that our story has been and always will be about what’s coming next in the Colorworld Series.

Rachel has 6 Volumes that are part of Waterworld, the 6th book in the series. Volume 1 should be available for purchase Dec. 31st. Michelle Simpson will be illustrating Volume 1. Ed Middleton should be stepping in as the new Teleworld Illustrator in 2018 as well. Everyone that produces work for us regularly has become involved in the book series. The comic will be pitched to publishers next year, which will further our reader base, making the story available to more than book readers.

That’s the short version of how our team came together, and our story. We want to keep telling the Colorworld Story every way the fans want to watch, see, hear, or read it until it’s told every way we can possibly tell it. Our team of artists has been instrumental in how we tell the story. They produce the art that makes people stop and ask us 100s of times a show: “Are these…are these shiny metal bookmarks??” And that’s how nearly all of our friendships have begun.

We couldn’t do it without them. And no matter how big the Colorworld story gets, our team will always be a part of the success for as long as they want to be. Some may use it as a springboard to go and do things they dream about, or to fund their own independent stories. But we hope they stay and tell their stories with us as well. Erik, Chelsea, Garrett, Mike, Ed, and Michelle all have stories of their own. We hope they stick around to tell them with us for many years to come.

Let me know if you have follow-up questions.

Brad Kelly

SUBSCRIBE TO OUR NEWSLETTER