My Best Inspiration… At anchor in a favorite cove, a cup of coffee my favorite brew, pen and pad in hand. Life is good. Many of my story ideas…or ideas for plot twists, characters, and settings come while on the water. Then I need to ‘hole up’ with computer and notes — day after day, as long as it takes to write, revise, rewrite, rewrite again, and again and when ready, get proofread by someone with a fresh pair of eyes for the story.
AND THEN the magical day…a box of books arrives…publication. “The child is born,” a sister writer says.
CARMEN GOLDTHWAITE is the top-selling author of Texas’ heroic women’s stories: true adventures of Texas women across the centuries and landscape of Texas. Research and writing, 15 years in the making, resulted in Texas Dames: Sassy and Savvy Women Throughout Lone Star History and Texas Ranch Women: Three Centuries of Mettle and Moxie. Carmen’s stories of these women also have shown up in anthologies, columns, and magazines such as: Fort Worth Texas, Persimmon Hill, American Cowboy, etc.
My publisher, The History Press, launched both Texas Dames and Texas Ranch Women at Austin’s Texas Book Festival, a fun celebration of books, writers and readers!
AND SO… I’ve written. I’ll spare you the early days of obituaries and car wrecks – all part of growing up as a journalist – and turn to later works… this century’s.
Books and Anthologies
Whispering Spirits: The DeSpain Family Saga
PENDING, and I’m so excited, is a novel, finally finished, a family saga: Whispering Spirits: The DeSpain Family Saga. In this historical fiction, I’ve woven strands of old family Huguenot tales about a couple of orphans coming to Charleston with the 1817 history of Charleston, the Cherokee, and the youngsters’ survival. Life alone in a new country was no easier then than now.
TEXAS RANCH WOMEN: Three Centuries of Mettle and Moxie
True stories of women who settled Texas and settled in Texas, often forgotten in history’s lore; time to tell their stories that stretch from one end of this state to another. Stories of women holding off hostiles with cannon; or a loaf of bread. Whatever they had, whatever it took. From The History Press of Charleston. ISBN-10: 1626195986
Visit History Press at www.historypress.net (Arcadia Publishers), Amazon or where you do your book shopping.
Texas Dames: Sassy and Savvy Women Throughout Texas History
The “dames” in this book notched victories in Texas’ history from early Indian and French to a Fifties golf star. In between string the tales of women who succeeded in business and banking, science and medicine, politics and government, education and religion. These early stories range from the 17th C. through mid 1950. They were forging a country, a state, and then civilizing it.
Visit History Press at www.historypress.net, Amazon or where you do your book shopping. ISBN 978.1.60949.812.2
“Burgers ‘n Butterflies” is the personal essay I wrote (on the boat) during a healing time on the water while grieving the death of my mom. This essay in The Magic of Mothers and Daughters starts with the “this is it” message from the doctor, my mom’s strength, and ends with a symbolic visit. From CHICKEN SOUP OF THE SOUL, ISBN 13:978-1-935096-81-8.
“The Yellow Rose” is the piece I wrote for Fulcrum Publishing’s anthology, WILD WOMEN OF THE OLD WEST. In this article I got to explore the rumor, the legend, and the woman behind the saucy song of that name. ISBN 1-55591-295-8.
In “Dancing in the Eye of the Storm,” in The Way West, a WWA and Tor/Forge anthology, I wrote about one of my favorite North Texas women. I learned about her first from my Mom, handed down from her mother and noted in the family Bible. “Sophia,” a “tart” as my grandmother would have called her, became known as the Confederate Paul Revere.
In an essay, in this CHICKEN SOUP OF THE SOUL volume, Miracles Happen, tells of “Night Bull,” a life-saving character met on a late night emergency drive from Houston to Fort Worth. ISBN 13:978-1-61159-932-9
WRITERS’ GUIDES, 2010 through 2014, published annually by The Writers’ Institute of Redding, Connecticut. Articles on point of view, author’s voice, dialogue, narrative (creative nonfiction), etc.
For more information on Carmen including a full author bio and links to booksellers, please see below: