Clare Bell

Clare Bell (born 1952) is a British author in the United States best known for her Ratha series of young adult fantasy novels about prehistoric big cats. These books, also called the Named series, are about intelligent self-aware large cats who have puma, cheetah and lion characteristics, and are based on fossil creatures who are ancestors of the saber-tooth cat.

The first book in the series, Ratha's Creature appeared in 1983. Bell's love for big cats is also expressed in Tomorrow's Sphinx (about cheetahs in past and future Egypt) and The Jaguar Princess (a werecat (jaguar) woman in Aztec Mexico). Bell is also fascinated with flight, writing People of the Sky about Pueblo Indians who migrate from Earth to another planet and learn to ride winged aliens. Bell's short stories have appeared in the Witch World and CatFantastic (cats and magic) anthologies, both edited by science fiction and fantasy writer, Andre Norton.

Recently Bell composed Ratha's Island, an experimental novelette written specifically for the Twitter microblogging service, which intentionally limits posts to 140 characters or less so that they can be read on cellphones and other portable wireless devices. Ratha's Island is an early entry into the area of Y/A Twitter fiction and has been well received. It is similar to the phenomenon of cellphone novels which are popular in Japan. The piece ran on Twitter beginning on March 14, 2009 and ending on May 9, with blocks of 5-10 Tweets, appearing twice daily during that time. Ratha's Island also explored the possibilities of alternative evolution in hexapodal (six-legged) as opposed to quadrupedal (four-legged) prehistoric mammals that evolved on an isolated island.

Biography Clare Bell was born in 1952 in Hitchin, Hertfordshire, England and moved with her family to the United States in 1957. While growing up in Palo Alto, California, she became fascinated by prehistoric mammals and pored over Charles R. Knight's paintings in books on paleontology. After attending the University of California, Santa Cruz and the PEN United States Literary Award

Bell and her husband live in the hills west of Patterson, California, where they have built their own solar, wind and hydroelectric systems.

List of works

Series novels Ratha, or The Books of the Named Ratha's Creature (1983) Clan Ground (1984) Ratha and Thistle-chaser (1990) Ratha's Challenge (1991) Ratha's Courage (Imaginator Press, 2008) Ancient Tahiti, by Bell and M. Coleman Easton, under joint pseudonym Clare Coleman Daughter of the Reef (1992) Sister of the Sky (1993) Child of the Dawn (1994)

Other novels Tomorrow's Sphinx (1986) People of the Sky (1989) The Jaguar Princess (1993)

Short stories "The Hunting of Lord Etsalian's Daughter" in anthology series Tales of the Witch World, edited by Witch World creator Andre Norton "The Damcat" in anthology series Catfantastic, eds. Norton and Martin H. Greenberg "Bomber and the Bismarck" in the Catfantastic series "A Tangled Tahitian Tale" in the Catfantastic series "Bonechewer's Legacy" (2009) in speculative fiction anthology Firebirds Soaring, ed. Sharyn November – Ratha series "Ratha's Island" (2009), electronically published on Twitter (archived December 2009) – Ratha series

Television adaptations "Ratha's Creature" (1985), episode of CBS Storybreak