Caroline Goode

I also want to thank Jennifer for setting this up. I've never blogged before. As a writer, blogging always seemed like a busman's holiday, doing more writing when you had a stack of work. But my belated New Year's Resolution is to improve my web presence, so this fits right in.

I love the topics so far: Spain and music. I lived in Spain for three years, mostly in the Canary Islands, working in tourism and the movie business. I still speak passable Spanish, although at one time I was really fluent. (I ran my dreams and internal monologue in Spanish, and that's when you know you've got.) Anyway, I highly recommend a trip to Spain, and the Canary Islands are a place that few Americans visit. Lots of Brits, Germans, Dutch, French, Swedes, and so on. There's good evidence that the Canary Island are the remains of Atlantis, considering the history of their natives, the Guanches, who fought the Spaniards for two hundreds years before they were all killed. The Guanches were six feet tall and fair, unlike anyone else for thousands of miles, and they mummified their dead.

Music is heavy on my mind now, because I found a tape a friend made me of a radio broadcast a day after the Rodney King LA riots in 1992. The DJ is a husky voiced black woman named The Raven, who normally oozed sex appeal, but that night she was into playing music that explained/suited the riot. Just incredible mix of blues, rap, jazz, folk, and soul. During the riot, our favorite grocery store was burned and looted, and smoke enveloped our house for three days. Two months later, I grabbed spouse and kids and moved to Tucson, Arizona, where we remain. So this was a turning point in our lives. I'm listening to the tape now while I rip it to MP3s, and several of the songs still reduce me to tears.

Caroline Goode is a pen-name. I'm not even the right sex to really be a Caroline. A male writing romance novels is like a short guy trying to play pro basketball. It can be done, but it's not easy. I'll tell you about it sometime.

CG