Caro Soles

Caro Soles wrote an opera when she was 10. It was short. In the 1960’s she wrote two musicals and a few other stage pieces. She took part in protest marches and gave up Paarl sherry and California grapes. With several degrees under her belt, she taught French and Spanish in universities, community colleges, a few private schools and colleges. Her only regret is that she didn’t have much time for free love.

In the 1970’s, she went all domestic, got married, had two kids, acquired two dogs and threw great dinner parties. In the 1980’s, she organized fundraising events, did media relations work and sat on the Board of Directors of the AIDS Committee of Toronto. She also marched in the early Gay Pride Day Parades, and had her first novel accepted for publication.

In the 1990s, she wrote a serialized soap opera under another name. She gave up trying to write Harlequins and turned out a gay S&M adventure instead, thus becoming a hot item in gay male erotica circles.

Five novels, four anthologies and a short story collection later, along came the dreaded writers’ block. So Caro organized The Bloody Words Mystery Conference, Canada’s first national crime writers conference. Thus energized, she wrote her first mystery– The Tangled Boy. Her next book, Drag Queen in the Court of Death was short listed for a Lambda Literary Award.

In 1989, Caro switched from teaching languages to teaching creative writing. Now that her students could understand her jokes, the classroom was much more jolly. She taught courses at Seneca College, George Brown College and Berkeley University, and gave workshops at such varied places as the OutWrite Conference in Boston and the Tool Box Leather Bar in Toronto.

Caro has gone on to write several literary novels, including Dancing with the Chairs in the Music House and A Friend of Mr. Nijinsky. She created the speculative fiction Merculean series and together with the late Nancy Kilpatrick, edited the anthology Nevermore, a modern take on the tales of Edgar A. Poe, which was short-listed for the Stoker Award.

Retired from teaching, Caro devotes herself to reading, writing and dachshunds.

 Visit Caro at:
Her website: carosoles.wordpress.com
Tweet with @carosoles