About Rachel

I write books. 

For five or six hours a day. Most days. Unless it’s the weekend. Or my birthday. Or one of my kids’ birthdays (and there are a lot of them). 

(Here’s a secret, though: Sometimes I still write on those days. You can’t predict inspiration. It can be demanding and terribly inconvenient.)

Writing for five or six hours a day, most days, might sound like torture to some people. To lots of the students I visit at schools. To my own kids, certainly. They’d rather read the books I write. (Maybe they’re just saying that because they think it will earn them a bigger slice of the treat I bake them every Thursday.)

But to me, writing hours a day, most days, is a dream come true. If you discovered a time machine and used it to visit the 1980s little-girl Rachel, she would tell you exactly what she wants to be: an author. There would be no hesitation in her voice. She believed she would be. 

And she never stopped believing. And she never stopped trying. And so she became one. (There’s a lesson in that, I think.)

My author career began in small-town Texas. In a home surrounded by cornfields. In the endless hours with nothing to do except run through cornrows, plants whipping my face; build forts out of blackberry bushes and the shed skin of snakes; and slide under electric fences to escape a bull that clearly did not want a gaggle of barefooted, loud-mouthed, giggling children running wild through his domain.

And tell stories.

My siblings and I told so many to our mother, to each other, to the kids at school. My kindergarten teacher informed my mother, early on in the year, that I had “quite the imagination,” and my mother should think about supplying some writing utensils so I could write them down. It was probably her way of saying, nicely, that I talked a little too much, at all the wrong times.

I carried my writing utensils (always-sharpened pencils and stapled pads of blank paper) everywhere. I recorded when a classmate stepped on a horrific-looking spider and millions of babies exploded onto the sidewalk, looking like a rolling wave of eight legs and tiny little eyes; when another classmate soared down the gigantic metal slide but failed to catch herself at the bottom and knocked out her two front teeth; and when another school friend braved the monkey bars and lost his courage halfway across and consequently fell to his near death and broke his arm (they don’t make playgrounds like they used to, do they?). 

I became a documentarian. I took my job seriously.

My first fiction stories sounded regrettably similar to Laura Ingall Wilder’s Little House stories, excepting the bits about Native American people, since I have Native American blood and I didn’t like or appreciate her references to them. I was a forgiving child, though, and I loved Laura Ingalls Wilder in spite of her failures. I wanted to be like Laura Ingalls Wilder. And so I wrote all about the adventures of my brother, my sister, and me, imagining the ways we would have squirmed out of danger and trouble had we lived back during the time of Laura, Mary, and Carrie.

My mother still has these stories in a box somewhere. They’re not as good as I thought they were at the time. (But writers are never all that great in the beginning; it’s the practice that develops their craft.)

I told everybody who would listen that I would be a writer someday.

My first job was a cashier at McDonald’s, where I served up orders with a smile. My second job was a Subway sandwich artist. My third job was a cashier at the local convenience store. (Did I mention I lived in small-town Texas? There aren’t a whole lot of job options in small-town Texas—at least there weren’t in the late-90s, when you were competing with every other 15-year-old who needed a job.)

And then: college.

College may not be for everyone, but it was definitely for me. I discovered myself and my potential in the English and print journalism departments at Texas State University. I found people who loved words as much as I did. I met people who challenged my small-town southern worldview and opened my mind in ways I will never forget. I found my voice, first as a sports and news reporter for the university newspaper, then as a news editor, then as the editor-in-chief. 

Always, I wrote my fiction and poetry and essays on the side. I never stopped writing. Writing was how I worked out new ideas and grappled with difficult-to-understand issues.

I spent the first decade of my career after college writing news and features articles for the San Antonio Express-News and the Houston Chronicle. I spent another decade as the managing editor of a newspaper produced by The United Methodist Church.

Always writing. Always reaching toward my dream of becoming a published novelist.

That dream was finally realized in 2018, when my first middle grade book, The Colors of the Rain, a novel in verse, launched into the world. 

Since then, I’ve written many more books—fiction, nonfiction, poetry, books for kids, books for teens, books for adults, realistic ones, fantastical ones, scary ones, funny ones, true ones, very, very false ones.

Which brings us back to today.

You may think writing five or six hours a day every day is the most boring job in the world. Or weird. Or unfathomable. And it’s okay to have an opinion.

My opinion is that it’s the absolute best job in the world. And I can be a little boring at times. Weird, for sure. Unfathomable? Absolutely. So it suits me just fine.

I have the wonderful fortune of being represented by the ridiculously talented Rena Rossner of the Deborah Harris Literary Agency. She gives great story advice, never gives up on a book she believes in (just like me), and keeps me believing in myself and my ability. Everyone should be so lucky to have someone like her in their corner. 

And no bio of mine is complete without mentioning my spectacular, good-looking husband; my six remarkable super-cute children (who tell wild tales of their own, which my mother says is payback for my childhood behavior); and our two cats, River and Harris, who do absolutely nothing to support my career but believe they deserve a mention anyway.

I call San Antonio, Texas, my home. And also one of the best cities in the United States.

Interviews and articles:

‘Kids deserve the truth’: San Antonio author writes of love, divorce and menstruation
https://www.expressnews.com/lifestyle/article/ya-author-rachel-toalson-17862110.php

Author Up Close: Rachel Toalson–Tackling the Hard Stuff, and Highlighting the Good Stuff
https://writerunboxed.com/2023/02/02/author-up-close-rachel-toalson-tackling-the-hard-stuff-and-highlighting-the-good-stuff/

Cover reveal, The First Magnificent Summer
https://fromthemixedupfiles.com/cover-reveal-and-interview-the-first-magnificent-summer/?fbclid=IwAR3oxWOiz5OY_weEtUHqINe4Nf6puRtzBSmzOC7oiJ7-wcqyTgu8cdnTGNk

Interview with The Winged Pen
https://thewingedpen.com/2018/09/19/interview-with-r-l-toalson-author-of-the-colors-of-the-rain/

10 Poetry Books from 2018 that You Should Read
https://thenerddaily.com/10-poetry-books-2018/

New YA book by San Antonio writer deals with grief
https://www.expressnews.com/entertainment/article/New-YA-book-by-San-Antonio-writer-deals-with-grief-13300436.php

Videos