Biography
Gayle Bartos-Pool
(When I was 25, it was a very good year...)
| Write what you know. |
A graduate of Rhodes College in Memphis,
Gayle took a year off between her Sophomore
and Junior years and worked first as a newspaper
reporter for a small Mid-South weekly. She
wrote the local articles, laid out the front
page, and took the pictures with an old Polaroid
camera. About the only thing she didn't do
was deliver the stupid thing every Thursday.This was in the pre-computer, pre-digital
camera, pre-Internet era.
Gayle followed that job with a stint as a
private detective working for Mark Lipman
Service Incorporated out of Memphis. She
traveled to various locations around the
country like Atlanta, Chicago, and Little
Rock. She worked undercover on an assembly
line, in a clothing factory, and in a printing
company. As her female protagonist, Ginger
Caulfield, says in the book, "It's amazing
how much people will tell you when they don't
know they're being questioned."
The first two installments in the Ginger
Caulfield Mysteries got their start in real
life events. For Media Justice, it started with a jury summons. Gayle got
one. She was summoned to downtown L.A. "Oh,
explitive deleated," she said. She got
the idea for her mysterious ponytailed hero
from that event, but she didn't get on a
case and that ended the initial story idea.
Then her husband got a jury summons. This
one had him going downtown on the opening
day of the O.J. Simpson trial. Richard came
home that first day and related the story
about the media circus that ensued. That
was the impetus she needed. She wrote the
initial story about the media mayhem. But
one little story about media madness wasn't
enough for a book. It went back on the shelf
and she worked on her spy novels. The years
went by, but so did the uncovering of more
and more incidents of the media "embellishing"
the news. She pulled the manuscript off the
shelf and finished it.
The idea for the next book came with the
arrival of two free tickets to the horse
races. She and her husband went. The murder
scene was set. Secondly, her husband, Richard,
works for an investment firm and Gayle had
worked in the trust department of a bank
(think stocks and bonds), so that aspect
of the story was woven into the mix. The
second book is written in first person now
that Gin Caulfield has gotten back into the
detecting business full time.
Upcoming books in the "Ginger Caulfield
Mystery Series" will also take those
real-life situations and wrap a mystery around
them. That's where good stories come from.
Gayle's spy novels are dear to her heart.
Her dad was an officer and pilot in the United
States Air Force. He served during WWII,
Korea, and through part of the Vietnam War
and the Cold War. He flew C-47s and C-130s.
Attached to the 66th Tactical Reconnaissance
Wing when the family lived in France, his
planes took aerial reconnaissance photos
(read: spy photos). Gayle used both her father's
as well as her own background to write the
spy novels which are still in the editing
phase. Was her father a spy? You know real
spies never tell. Gayle does have a letter
from J. Edgar Hoover accepting her as a GS2
in the FBI, but she already had the P.I.
gig at the time, so she said she turned him
down.
The historical facts in the spy stories are
from books, magazines, and newspaper articles.
Many of the locations are places she actually
lived when her father was in the service.
They lived on Okinawa, in France, and toured
Europe and parts of the Far East. Her parents
traveled to Russia, China, South America,
Greece, through the Panama Canal, and into
Canada. Many of those travels are in the
books. Actual events are interwoven with
the fictional stories. Sometimes you can't
tell where truth ends and fiction begins.
Gayle graduated from a boarding school in
France (Dreux American High School) and received
a Bachelor of Arts degree from Rhodes College
in Memphis, majoring in Fine Arts. She also
worked as a draftsman and in the Trust Department
of a bank.
She paints, builds miniature doll houses, and makes hand-made Santas and other crafts. Her Christmas stories are filled with photographs of things she made just to illustrate the books. See Bearnard's Christmas for an example of her work.
Gayle's husband, Richard J. Pool, is the
basis for Gin's husband, Fred, in "The
Ginger Caulfield Mysteries." He's a
Texan and proud of it. They have shared their
home with various dogs and cats, all strays,
and each one special. Four of them make guest
appearances in her first holiday story, Bearnard's Christmas.
She collects Santas (over 3000), Christmas
ornaments, Halloween decorations, Easter
items, Fourth of July decorations, roosters,
and just about everything else, space permitting
and husband willing.
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