About
Truest Carter; Author
Get to Know Me
Ms. Carter (she/her) is a writer, registered nurse, and 15-year BC survivor. She is originally from Pennsylvania, has lived and worked in Suffolk, England, and now battles the beltway in Northern Virginia. She draws on extensive European and American travels to add fine details to the characters who are yearning for their stories to be told.
TC's recent credentials include articles in professional journals and presentations at national conferences. LOVE IN LEFT FIELD, a short story, will be published in the 2026 Cupid's Arrow Publishing Anthology. A MISSED CHANCE was included in the HTH Anthology. Her romance short story, BATTLEFIELDS, was selected for the Virginia Writers Club Journal, and a poem earned the 1st Place NVWC Golden Nib Award. The travel memoir, HUMBLED, was included in the MWSA Reflections Anthology*. Lately, she has been obsessing about writing historical romance novels with a women’s rights theme.
Ms. Carter has a BSN, a Master of Arts in Liberal Studies, and an Emory University Certificate in Creative Writing. She is a USAF Nurse Corps veteran. TC is also a member of local and national writers' groups, and is grateful to her critique partners and editor! When she is not writing, TC soaks in writing seminars and researches historical romance plots. Ms. Carter recharges in the gorgeous Shenandoah Mountains on hikes with her husband and their energetic rescue dog.
Request the introductory newsletter to learn more about all the fun historical novel research. Scroll down for more about the author's activities, promises to readers, and thoughts on a pen name.
Group Memberships:
Virginia Writers Club
Northern Virginia Writers Club @VirginiaWriters
Virginia Romance Writers -VP of Communications (Social Media)
Washington Romance Writers--Team Lead for Conference Communications
MWSA
Virtual Critique Partners (private)
CM Romance Author Book Study (private)
Favorite books/authors (on my mind, but they are too numerous to list):
Mitch Album, The 5 People You Meet in Heaven
Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice
Jessica Brody, Save the Cat! Writes a Novel
Anita Diamant, The Red Tent
George Elliot, Middlemarch
William Goldman, The Princess Bride
Thomas Hardy, Tess
Amy Harmon, Where the Lost Wander
Eloisa James, My American Duchess
Beverly Jenkins, Indigo
Marcy Kennedy, Deep Point of View
Stephen King, On Writing
Lisa Kleypass, Chasing Cassandra
Stephanie Laurens, Devil's Bride
Cathy Maxwell, The Bride Says Yes
Jennifer Probst, Write True
Alicia Rasley, The Power of Point of View
Rick Rubin, The Creative Act: A Way of Being
Jen Turano, Flights of Fancy
Lisa Wells, How to Add Humor to Your Novel
Eliana West, Relatable Writing
Promise of a Happily Ever After
My own promises to readers: I am sensitive to trigger warnings, but know they cannot always be published ahead of book releases. The focus is on the love story and not the politics of the time. This author will not shock you with graphic violence. Consent is sexy. You will not happen upon scenes involving rape, child abuse, or gory death. I can't stand "old-timey" humor at the expense of LGBTQ or minority communities, so that part of historical research will be left off. There will be no lightly dismissed miscarriage of a pregnancy or infertility. And, no animals will be harmed! Yes, people will behave badly. A hero must throw a well-deserved punch once in a while. A cornered heroine will give the villain a shove. Characters deep in thought will recall sad events that shaped their motivations. There is no way to know or avoid all the possible topics that could trigger a reader. But thankfully, in the romance genre, we will always travel together to the happily ever after.
What's in a name?
Selecting a pseudonym was not easy! As a pediatric nurse, I've been published professionally and wanted to keep my novel writer name separate. I thought up the tagline: Love the Truest Version of Yourself. It is now trademarked by the USPTO. The name came about as I noticed some of my favorite quotes had this recurring word. It jumped out at me from the page. Admittedly, some of my favorite literary quotes come from authors with a grumpy history.
"All you have to do is write one true sentence. Write the truest sentence that you know."--Ernest Hemingway
"A loving heart is the truest wisdom."--Charles Dickens
"The truest greatness lies in being kind, the truest wisdom in a happy mind."--Ella Wheeler Wilcox
"Our truest life is when we are in dreams awake."--Henry David Thoreau
"As I keep saying, fiction is truth. I think fiction is the truest thing there ever was."--Arundhati Roy