The Women Books & More’s Podcast

Tailor made Travel with Black Tomato’s Carolyn Addison

Today, we sit down with Black Tomato’s Carolyn Addison to talk about travel.

Black Tomato is one of the world’s leading luxury travel companies. Carolyn is one of the standout female leaders at Black Tomato and is the driving force behind some of Black Tomato’s most imaginative and compelling travel experiences. She’s been called an “experience architect.”

She tells us about solo travel, mother-daughter travel, generational travel, and how to travel like James Bond or follow in the footsteps of Coco Chanel or Winston Churchill.

We also discuss staying safe while traveling in what is now a much-changed world.

blacktomato.com

Becoming a Badass…From Fearful to Fierce

Margie Goldsmith is one of the most accomplished women I know.

She has traveled to more than 150 countries on seven continents and written more than 1,000 award-winning articles about her adventures. You can read them in Forbes, National Geographic, the New York Times and many other publications. She is a film maker, a former marathoner and triathlete. She plays blues harmonica and jams with some of the most celebrated jam bands in New York City. She’s recorded two blues albums. You can listen here: https://music.apple.com/us/artist/margie-goldsmith/1603713611

She lives her life on her own terms. But it was not always that way.

Her memoir: Becoming a Badass...From Fearful to Fierce chronicles her journey of resilience and adventure. She speaks to anyone looking to overcome a sense of powerlessness and to anyone who has ever felt “less than.

margiegoldsmith.com

 

A Conversation about Casting for Recovery

Casting for Recovery (a national nonprofit) delivers healing for women diagnosed with breast cancer that traditional medicine alone can’t offer — powerful, oncology-informed weekend retreats held on a river, not in a hospital room. CfR celebrates its 30^th anniversary and currently hosts 60 free fly-fishing retreats in all 50 states, serving over 800 women each year. Women at any age and any stage off breast cancer treatment or recovery, are eligible to apply.

Susan Gaetz, CfR’s Executive Director, tells us about the organization, how it started and what to expect from a weekend retreat.  castingforrecovery.org

Sisters on the Fly is a proud supporter of CfR. sistersonthefly.com

An article about CfR is featured in the September/October issue of The Saturday Evening Post and is available online after October 8, 2025.  thesaturdayeveningpost.com

A conversation with Darla Worden about Cockeyed Happy

Darla Worden is the Editor-in-Chief of Mountain Living magazine and Colorado Homes & Lifestyles magazine. She joins us to talk about Cockeyed Happy, her book about Ernest Hemingway’s summers in Wyoming with his second wife, Pauline.

This story is not well known. I mean…we can picture Hemingway in Paris. Fishing in Key West. Drinking rum at his favorite bar (The Floridita) in Havana. But…Wyoming?

From the book jacket: “In March 1928, after the phenomenal success of The Sun Also Rises, Ernest Hemingway returned to the U.S. with his second wife, Pauline Pfeiffer—the stylish Vogue editor and scorned “other woman” who would give up everything to be with him and in the end, lose it all. The couple left Paris in the wake of the gossip storm about Hemingway’s affair and abandonment of his first wife and son. Escaping to Wyoming’s Big Horn Mountains to write…he finished A Farewell to Arms and fell in love with the land around him.”

 They were “cockeyed happy”…until they weren’t. Hemingway went on to have two more wives after Pauline.

Darla has been fascinated by Hemingway since she was a teen in Sheridan, Wyoming. She saw his photo above the jukebox at The Last Chance Bar and was captivated.  

She tells us about some of his favorite haunts in Paris. And about the Left Bank Writers Retreats she organizes annually in June. Eight writers spend a week immersed in Hemingway’s Paris. She calls it: “Part writers’ workshop; part tour of Paris.”

darlaworden.com

leftbankwriters.com

Let's write a picture book---Julie Hedlund tells us how

Maybe you want to write a book. A children’s book. A children’s picture book.

Maybe about a wee hedgehog who wants to be a ballerina.

Or an alligator who dreams of becoming an astronaut.

Maybe about learning to cook in Nona’s kitchen.

Or a nonfiction book about the secret language of spiders

 

I mean…how difficult can it be to write a book for children?

 

The answer is…not as easy you might think.

 

But help is on the way.

 

Julie Hedlund, the founder of 12 x 12 Picture Book Writing Challenge, explains all things picture book. And about how to join 12 x 12 and the benefits of membership. Direct submissions to agents. Critique ninjas. Community of like-minded writers. Webinars with authors, editors and agents. Dance Parties. Yes, virtual dance parties. It is a fun, joyful and supportive group.

12x12challenge.com

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FYI: Big, Bold & Brave Picture Book Summit is a day-long virtual event held every year in October. Agents. Editors, Best-selling authors. Caldecott and Newberry Medal winners. And the opportunity to submit your manuscript to the featured agents and editors. October 5, 2025. picturebooksummit.com

The President's Vampire by Christopher Farnsworth

This one’s out of the vault and one of my favorite vampire stories. It is the second (in a series of five) President’s Vampire books by Christopher Farnsworth. It is about a vampire that works for the president of the United States. The book was published in 2011 so the president referenced could have been President Obama or it could have been West Wing’s President Bartlet. The story is paranormal but with a lot of buddy-cop action—if you can be buddies with a 140-year-old vampire. The plot is simple: the world is going to end, and it is up to the president’s vampire (Nathaniel Cade) and his human handler, Zach Barrows, to stop it. It is that simple. Even though evil supernatural forces are against the vampire and the reader knows that he must succeed (there are sequels, after all) but, until the very last page, you’re not quite sure how it will all turn out. A quick-and-easy-to-read book and a fun interview.

Christopher’s latest book is Buried Secrets (2025). "[An] entertaining tale . . . This is Farnsworth’s first entry in the series created by Robert Parker, and fans will be pleased. So, Paradise isn’t paradise, and the Parker legacy lives on." —Kirkus Reviews

chrisfarnsworth.com

Shanghai Girls by Lisa See

OK. OK. Thank you for your messages. I get it. Everyone wants more Lisa See.

So today...I dove deep into the vault and found this interview—Shanghai Girl—from 2009. It is about the complex relationship between two sisters who live a privileged life in 1930s Shanghai—full of great wealth and glamour and called The Pearl of the Orient. Twenty-one-year-old Pearl Chin and her younger sister May beautiful, modern, and having the time of their lives because their father can afford it. He’s a very rich businessman… until the day their father tells them that he has gambled away their wealth, and to repay his debts he plans to sell the girls as Chinese brides to mail-order suitors from Los Angeles. As Japanese bombs fall on their beloved city, Pearl and May set out on the journey that takes them across the Pacific to the foreign shores of America. In Los Angeles, they try to find love in their arranged marriages, to learn the American ways as they fight against discrimination and the stifling old ways and strict rules of Los Angeles’ Chinatown. Along the way there are terrible sacrifices, unimaginable choices and one devastating secret, but through it all the two sisters hold on to each other and never forget who they are – Shanghai girls.

It is such a good read.

lisasee.com

@lisasee_writer

A Conversation with author Lisa See

New York Times best-selling author Lisa See is Chinese American—although her tawny hair, freckles and pale skin belie her Asian heritage. Starting 30 years ago with family memoir, On Gold Mountain, her books always are drawn from and reflect her cultural roots.

She talks with us about some of her favorites: Snow Flower and the Secret Fan (secret writing developed by women best-friends in 19^th century China), The Island of Sea Women (a community of women—some as old as 80—who free-dive for abalone on the remote Korean island of Jeju) and Lady Tan’s Circle of Women (based on a true story of a woman physician in 15^th century China). As always, Lisa’s historically accurate novels are about women’s friendships…about blame, guilt, and forgiveness and how secrets from the past can powerfully impact the present and future.

She gives us a sneak peek at her new novel, coming out on June 2, 2026. So excited.

Lisa is an in-demand speaker who makes herself available to talk (via zoom) with book clubs and library groups. lisasee.com

Follow her on Instagram lisasee_writer