About
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An award-winning author of speculative fiction works noted for their dark tones, Christina Barber loves to create dark fantasy worlds for readers. Christina Barber’s works have won acclaim for capturing the reader’s imagination, taking them into other worlds where anything can happen.
With a focus on the paranormal and dark forces of evil, Christina’s books give the readers a taste of what happens when real life collides head on with characters from dark, demonic worlds.
Encouraged by her fourth grade teacher, Christina has always been captivated by the craft of writing. She now writes full-time.
Christina's had several books published and her short stories appear in magazines and anthologies across the writing spectrum.
While Christina spent most of her life growing up in the suburbs of New Jersey, she currently resides in Georgia, with her husband and daughter. She happily shares her home with three dogs, and two cats.
The Whole Story (Are you sure you want to hear this?)
Christina Barber was born in the summer of love, on July 13th, in a small New Jersey town. Christina was an odd child. At the age of four she no longer wanted to have someone read to her, she instead wanted to ready by herself. Her grandmother took the time to teach Christina and by kindergarten, Christina was reading fluently. That caused some difficulty and Christina was shipped to the first grade whenever reading time occured for her kindergarten class. And again this repeated in first grade as well. By the time second grade rolled around, Christina's family had moved, but the school still didn't know what to do with regard to her reading level. This time when the class was reading, Christina was allowed to read whatever she wanted. Of course this led to friction among her classmates, and she opted to read the dictionary since it would seem boring to the other students.
After several moves, her family relocated to an even smaller locale, Mountainside. Christina, as faculty members of the New Jersey learning intuitions will recall, was termed a dreamer, much to her Mother’s (and several guidance councilors’) dismay. Christina’s overactive imagination and enjoyment of writing prompted her fourth grade teacher to tell Christina’s mother that she believed Christina would one day be a writer.
Christina loved reading Edgar Allen Poe and loved all things dark and creey, only solidifying the fact that Christina was odd.
Christina’s clothing tastes ran along the darker side. During college her mother commented that, unlike Christina, most normal people have more than black, red, and grey in their closet.
After several stints in local colleges and still not finding anything that suited her creative and eclectic nature, Christina took jobs both waitressing and coaching figure skating to create an income. During this time she fell back on a ‘love’ introduced to her during grammar school time, a game called Dungeons and Dragons. She became a creative director for a live-action (or as the troupe called it – an interactive theatre) game in New Jersey.
At this New Jersey based game is where she met her future husband through mutual friends. From there her fiancé whisked her away to Georgia. Honestly, she welcomed the opportunity – a new place, a new start, and Christina’s always up for adventure!
After moving, getting married and having a baby, her creative side suffered. Christina hadn’t done anything creative in years.
She didn’t go long without her creative side rebelling, and this was again an example. While her newborn daughter and husband slept, Christina wrote. She wrote in a journal that to this day no one has seen (thankfully!). But this reminded her how much she needed to write, a call from her soul – for those that know, it isn’t something you can ignore for long. After long nights, with characters talking to her, demanding their time, Christina decided it was time to find a working writers group to learn the craft.
Her first experience was, shall we say, enlightening. It was a local, face to face group, that she brought the first chapter of her budding new novel. When the group reconvened the following month, Christina was shocked. To her, it looked like her submitted chapter had been through a battle and was bleeding! It was marred with red marks everywhere. The odd thing is that Christina didn’t give up. She will be forever grateful that this critique group did what they did – TEACH!
From there, Christina started another novel, this one using her newly learned skills. Greystone, the new novel, became a best-seller by her publisher eTreasures, and an award-winning novel.
Since then Christina has had several novels and short stories published with many more coming into creation daily.
Awards:
5/2007 - Greystone awarded 'Best Seller' status by eTreasures Publishing.
8/2007 - Greystone won Dream Realm Award for 'Best Speculative Romance.'
