Rosemary Carstens grew up in southern California in a small farming community, leaving it behind at the age of seventeen to search for work, education, and adventure. She has found all three in abundance. Through it all, three passions have remained strong: the need to see and experience the world and its people, to try new things, and to record it all in essay and journal.

Ms. Carstens has traveled most of the remote areas of the globe, including the Arctic, the Antarctic, Borneo, New Guinea, much of Africa, and Central and South America. She traveled extensively in China soon after it opened up to the West in the early 1980s, and spent a month in Laos, Cambodia, and Vietnam before the embargo was lifted. Her modes of transportation have included plane, train, ship, canoe, zodiac, jeep, skidoo, dog, horse, foot, and camel.

Although not an active pilot now, she has flown a variety of aircraft, including fixed wing, helicopter, sail plane, hang glider, ultralite, and hot air balloon. As a certified scuba diver, Carstens has explored underwater areas in the Caribbean, the Hawaiian Islands, Micronesia, and offshore at more isolated locations. Physical fitness and athletic ability are not natural attributes for Carstens. More natural to her is her voracious appetite for books, her love and appreciation of art and dance, her pursuit of educational goals and business acumen. Where others jump into new sports with grace and agility, take on new adventures without a backward glance, Rosemary’s accomplishments were hard won—but her persistence and determination moved her along a baby step at a time, toward her goals.

Throughout her travel adventures, Carstens kept journals, wrote freelance articles and commercial video scripts, and continued to read everything she could get her hands on. With the founding of Carstens Communications in 1999, her dream of owning her own comma factory became a reality. Her academic background includes a BA in Third World Studies from the University of California at San Diego, with a masters in Latin American Studies from the University of New Mexico still underway. Having had such diverse cultural and academic experiences helps her to work successfully with writers, scholars, publishers, and corporate personnel not only locally and nationally, but also internationally.

Carstens’ first book, DREAM RIDER: Roadmap to an Adventurous Life, came out in 2003, and her second, co-authored with Leslie Shipman, and titled SUSTAINING THOUGHT, came out in spring of 2007. She has published articles on books, art, food, travel, and health in local and national magazines and loves to help others develop their own writing skills.

Rosemary resides in Longmont, Colorado, and, in her free time, hits the road on her latest ride, a 1995 Yamaha Virago 1100, better known as The Road Goddess.