THE ASTROLOGER: Jodie has maintained a busy local and national practice as an astrological counselor, teacher and writer since 1983, when she joined forces with her husband, fellow astrologer Steven Forrest. They travel widely to lecture on astrological topics, and co-authored the book Skymates: Love, Sex and Evolutionary Astrology (Seven Paws Press, 2002). Jodie has written for magazines and newspapers, published poetry, and her articles have appeared in all the major astrological journals. She writes the astrology column for South magazine. With Steven, she wrote the text for a pair of relationship reports, The Sky We Share and The Single Sky, a joint project with Alphee Lavoie's AIR Software. Jodie also manages the Forrests' website. She has begun offering a series of workshops on the ascendant and published her latest book, THE ASCENDANT, in 2007.

THE NOVELIST: Jodie is also a historical fantasy novelist (The Rhymer and the Ravens: The Book of Fate, Seven Paws Press, 1995; The Elves' Prophecy: The Book of Being, Seven Paws Press, Nov. 1996; and The Bridge: The Book of Necessity, Seven Paws Press, Nov. 1998). She has a deep interest in medieval history, cross-cultural mythology (see her lecture "Green Men and Women: The Archetype of the Elves"), archetypal psychology, magic, divination and other occult arts. Her M.A. with highest honors in French and a minor in Spanish, from UNC-Chapel Hill, has proved invaluable to her research. While striving for as much historical accuracy as possible, her first aim is to enthrall readers with a crackling good tale. Fantasy can do just that, while subtly addressing archetypal human themes.

THE PUBLISHER: Jodie founded Seven Paws Press in 1995. She's proud to be the editor and publisher of Measuring the Night: Evolutionary Astrology and The Keys to the Soul, by Steven Forrest & Jeffrey Wolf Green. The first volume of the series was published in Feb., 2000, and the second volume in early 2001. Seven Paws Press published a new, expanded and revised version of Steven and Jodie Forrest's synastry classic, Skymates, in Feb. 2002, and in Oct. 2002, published Steven Forrest's debut mystery novel, Stalking Anubis, starring astrologer Plato Mims. In 2004, Seven Paws Press published Rafael Nasser's Under One Sky, and in 2005 published Skymates, volume 2.

Jodie and Steven have formed a band, Dragonship, which performs Steven's music around Jodie's narration from her novels of the Norse and Celtic peoples, and their corresponding higher universes of Elves and Norse deities. Steve and Jodie sometimes wonder if this is a new art form.

Yet Jodie's Rhymer trilogy was originally inspired by a very old story: the fourteenth-century Scots legend of Thomas the Rhymer. Jodie's own late ninth-century Tomas, a bard who gradually learns to become a Mage, is half Norse and half Welsh. Both Thomases were seduced by the Queen of Elfland and returned to our world with the ambiguous gift of psychic powers and a total inability to lie. But Jodie's character also has a mission. He's compelled to steal Thought and Memory, the raven-familiars of the chief Norse god, Odin, who fly through the nine Norse worlds each day and tell Odin what they see. The Elf Queen wants the ravens as a bargaining chip at a time--the Viking Age invasions of Celtic and Christian Europe--when the balance of power and belief among those worlds was shifting. In that sense, it was a time not unlike our own....

Of Scandinavian descent, Jodie lives in southern California with her husband Steven, three spoiled cats, an uppity cast of her fictional characters, and painted bone creatures.