Travel and writing
Carole’s professional life involved international travel which helped provide inspiration for her writing. More recently she has been able to spend more time in the UK where she lives with her husband in the Forest of Dean in Gloucestershire.
The former civil servant has always enjoyed writing and has been a keen reader from an early age. Said Carole: “I have always enjoyed all types of books – novels, biographies and non-fiction – and a wide range of writers. When I was at school, I used to visit the library every week in my home town of Berkhamsted and the librarian kindly allowed me to borrow eight books at a time."
“Sometimes even that wasn’t enough for me! I used to play a game (I was an only child so I was used to inventing games for myself) where I would try to read every author beginning with the same letter of the alphabet. The ‘W’s were fun, also the 'F's. I remember my mum asking once whether I was enjoying the works of Sigmund Freud; she thought they were novels.”
It was an incredibly varied career that provided Carole with a life of travel. She said: “Initially I was an English teacher in London. That was followed by a number of different jobs in health and social care before becoming an international management consultant working in a variety of industry sectors including oil exploration, insurance and engineering.
“Later, I joined the Senior Civil Service specialising in developing Board level NHS staff, along with introducing new remuneration systems across the country and subsequently concentrating on equality of opportunity in employment. These varied roles gave me the opportunity to do many unusual things and to work in other countries including Siberia, the Palestinian Occupied Territories, the Far East, across Europe as well as in the UK and provided the source for my three light-hearted memoirs. The inspiration for my novels has been solely an overactive imagination!”
You can contact Carole directly by emailing here:
carolesusansmith@pnwriter.org