About the Author

Barbara Alt grew up in Butte, Montana, and worked in several locations across Idaho and Montana for the U.S. Forest Service until 2003 when her career took her and her husband, Tom, to Washington, D.C! After spending two years working there and living in Northern Virginia, her job then took them to Albuquerque, New Mexico, where she has lived until the present. Barbara retired from the Forest Service in September 2018 after serving for nearly 42 years.

While she did much technical (and serious) writing during her career in the financial operations, policy, and systems arena, she never dreamed of writing a book. But, there was a creative side to her as well, when during her time in Red Lodge, Montana, she was an International Folk Dancer in the 9-day Festival of Nations, later choreographing some of the Irish and Scottish dances. So, when a balloon from her retirement party took on a bit of a life of its own in the weeks after the party, and the story idea for her first children's book, ROSE, was proposed by her sister, the door was opened for a new venture.

Barb didn't do anything about it right away; just tucked the idea away and kept the balloon as a reminder to write the story. The next year and a half was spent preparing a number of scrapbooks commemorating all kinds of themes from her life, so that creative side kicked back in. Then, after being shut down for a few months during the pandemic, the story was written and illustrated, and her first book has become a reality! Several ideas evolved during that process for two more books to follow Rose on her adventures flying across the countryside, and within the next couple months LILY and VIOLET were written. LILY is about a new friend Rose meets on a lily pad and the two friends fly around discovering all kinds of fun things, including Barbie and Tommy (characters from ROSE) searching for them. VIOLET takes Rose and Lily on yet another adventure discovering rainbows and all the different things one might find at the end (including their new friend, Violet, who they met at the end of the first rainbow. A fourth, unrelated story line, came to mind after many of her childhood memories were revived during scrapbooking as well, so we'll see where this leads!