O.J. Barré resides in beautiful, windswept Cheyenne, WY, US, where the constantly changing 360-degree view of the sky never ceases to amaze. Her writing partner, Rambo the Rambunctious, is a twenty-four-pound black Maine Coon mix. After choosing O.J. at the shelter in 2019, Rambo reminds her daily to write, play, and sit in silence. You can find O.J. and Rambo on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, X, Alignable, or at her website (ojbarre) or her blog, That Rebel with a Blog.
O.J. hails from the lushly forested, red-clay hills near Atlanta, Georgia. From birth, O.J. was a force of nature. Barefoot and freckled, headstrong and gifted; she was, and is, sensitive to a fault. Books became her refuge as a young child, allowing O.J. to escape the confines of her turbulent alcoholic home on adventures to untold places and times. Her daddy's mother was a Willoughby, making O.J. a direct descendant of William the Conqueror. Her Awen series is a love letter to that distant past.
In the early 2000s, Terry Brooks' MAGIC KINGDOM FOR SALE/SOLD leapt off the rack of O.J.'s local Barnes & Noble and into her hands. It would change her life forever. With its quirky dog-scribe Abernathy and the other talking animal and earth characters, this series quickly became one of O.J.'s favorites. Brooks' juxtaposition of a fantastical world within our day-to-day one directly influenced the creation of The Awen Trilogy. O.J.'s love of animals, nature, meditation, natural healing, and cinema can also be found in the pages of her novels, as well as the recurring theme of home. As a neurodivergent with ADHD and HSP propensities, O.J.'s neurospicy characters deal with mental issues like anxiety and panic disorder, depression, addiction, obsessive-compulsive disorder, and other -isms—as they try to save the world.
A child of the '60s and '70s, O.J. cut her teeth on the classics, reading every book her local library had to offer, including Animal Farm at the tender age of eight. A tomboy, she rode horses, climbed trees, waded in creeks, and cheered, all while excelling in school. O.J. majored in business in college, then later went on to earn her Doctor of Chiropractic degree, seeing patients for 23 years before retiring to move to Cheyenne in 2022.
In 1991, O.J. put away the alcohol and drugs and took up daily journalling and meditation as part of her recovery. Then, in the early 2000s, her lifelong affair with words and reading propelled O.J. to begin writing. She poured out her heart in a memoir and lost it to a crashed hard drive, then an idea for a children's book seized her. Frank and Ernie Find Home was born in the blink of an eye and resides on a treasured thumb drive. But someday, Frank and Ernie WILL find a home.
O.J.'s next writing adventure was a chick lit/women's fiction novel, written after the title came in a flash of inspiration while driving to Dahlonega, Georgia. But when ideas for the Awen Trilogy began bombarding O.J. without relenting, she sidelined that project and dove into the fantastical Awen Universe. At present, this consists of Awen Rising, Awen Storm, and Awen Tide, plus two short-read Awen prequels, The Druids of Marduk, Parts I and II. Part III will be released soon to complete the prequel.
What is on the horizon for O.J. Barré? She is planning a spin-off series with some of the older female characters from the Awen Trilogy—a crossover between fantasy and paranormal women's fiction. You can expect it to be fun, funky, tender, savage, and anything but bland, as these characters deal with cronehood in an ageist society while kicking ass and setting the world on its ear. O.J. is also noodling a sequel to the Awen Trilogy, set further into the future.
Her hope is that in reading her work, you, too, will find and release your own Inner Awen. To follow O.J.'s writing adventures, subscribe to her newsletter via a link at her website, or find her on Facebook, Instagram, X, or TikTok.
