I'm a retired social worker who started writing travel articles for magazines and newspapers as retirement fun. I've published a number of these along with a book of short stories about West Texas called "West Texas Classified". My latest book, "Dreaming in Italian", is a contemporary romance set in Italy. "Dreaming in Italian" is currently available through Amazon.com or via the publisher's web-site at publishamerica.com. If your local bookstore does not have it among their "trade paperbacks", they can order it for you.

After spending over thirty years as a social worker in Dallas, Carol Walt retired to a small ranch in West Texas. While launching a second career as a travel writer, she and her husband, Eddie, restored an old ranch house. They began reclaiming the ranch land, ponds, fields and streams, all of which were in need of loving attention. The stories Carol heard about the lives of the West Texans, her neighbors, were compelling ones. In this book, "West Texas Classified" she has created her own fictional ranching/farming community of Rosewood, Texas. The lives of the characters in her stories are interwoven, with some of the relationships dating back to the 1870s. Aging cowboys, feisty little girls, practical jokers and people with unrealized dreams populate these stories. An item from a local newspaper, such as an obituary, a classified ad or gossip column, completes the telling of each tale. The Coulter ranching family figures prominently in several stories.