Claire L. Pickard was born in 1987 in a seaside town in Kent. She now lives and works in Yorkshire. As a child Claire discovered a love for stories, since she is dyslexic she found no pleasure from reading. Instead through the help of her library Claire discovered a world of audiobooks, something she still enjoys to this day. From a young age Claire was always telling stories, and was fascinated by the theatre, she even starred in an amateur dramatics production of Mother Goose, (She played the goose). Whilst at school Claire wrote a play titled ‘I know what you did last summer’ with some of her classmates, which was well received. For some time, Claire considered pursuing a career in the theatre, Instead she was drawn down to earth, almost literally when she chose to study gardening at college.

Claire has always found gardening magical, some of her favourite childhood stories were Tom’s Midnight Garden by Philippa Pearce and The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett. Claire had already discovered the works of Sir Terry Pratchett at a young age, in the form of The Bromeliad Trilogy and the Johnny stories, but as she became a teenager, she fell in love with the Discworld series. With encouragement from her older brother and parents, Claire was introduced to Douglas Adams and his hitchhikers guide to the Galaxy, which began Claire’s interest in science fiction. Claire’s friends encouraged her to listen to the audio versions of many of Philip Pullman’s works principally His Dark Materials. Then later the Harry Potter series by JK Rowling. It is only more recently that Claire discovered the work of Neil Gaiman and Sarah J. Maas, these two authors push the boundaries of what is a young adult book and inspired Claire to write for this genre. It seems natural that a creative person like Claire would find pleasure in gardening, creative writing and painting. Claire was able to exercise her artistic creativity when she created the cover art for her first fantasy novel Broken Promises Book One Beginnings.

In 2007 while she was undertaking a gardening apprenticeship with the National trust of Scotland Claire started writing the first part of the Broken Promises series. Initially the story following Keyanna was going to be the second in a trilogy focused on three different women in different time periods, all set in the same fantasy world of Gear. The first story in the trilogy was going to focus on Tiana and the Arton rebels. The third story was set 300 years in the future from Keyanna’s point on the timeline, following the life of a young female Night called Alice Clearwater. These ideas change dramatically over the years, as the story of Tiana and Miguel was told alongside that of Keyanna’s during flashbacks. Her writing was strengthened in 2008 when she got her first speech to text computer program. While studying for her degree, Claire put down the framework for what would become phase one of her series.

In the summer of 2019 after almost 12 years of writing and editing, Claire self-published her first book Broken Promises Book One Beginnings on Amazon. In truth Claire turned a collection of half-finished chapters and ideas, into a finished book in the course of a year. After making the decision to self-publish, Claire chose Midsummer’s day as her release date, as it was the same day that Keyanna began her epic journey to save the world.