Meet the Author: Carma Gagne Chan
About the Author
Carma describes herself as a "born-again California Girl". She was born in Los Angeles County in 1958, and says she was "unfortunately schooled" in Utah, where her parents moved the family when she started Kindergarten.
As a teenager, Carma joined a commune, picked apples in Washington, got married and had a child, moved to Boston, returned briefly to Utah, where she performed as lead vocalist in a hard rock band; foolishly fell for a drummer, moved with him to Los Angeles, went skydiving to celebrate her 25th birthday, quit music and left the drummer, got married, moved to Houston, got divorced and moved to Colorado, where she gave birth to her second child, and finally in 2004, she returned to what "felt like home"...Los Angeles. What a long strange trip indeed for this daring young adventure seeker.
In 1984 she began writing a science fiction story that exploded into the Saardu trilogy and later evolved into a whole new myth about the eleventh dimension, which she calls Zenya. She had, until Saardu "fell into her head", written only poetry and short stories, none of which she bothered with seeking fame through literary managers and publishers, though she notes, "I would not object to fortune. It's only the horrors of fame that I avoid like the plague." Instead, she preferre the creative process and wrote for her own enjoyment, sharing it only with a few friends who encouraged her to keep expanding the stories of Saardu and Zenya.
In 1991 Carma decided to craft Saardu as a movie script and sought guidance from Professor Richard Walter, who taught the subject for decades and in 2007 mentored when she enrolled in his course at UCLA film school. Her Saardu script won several awareds for best script in international screenwriting competitions. She fell in love with the art of screenwriting and drafted several more scripts, available upon request (Movie Scripts for Mature Audiences).
Carma married Oliver Simonsen in 2014, and continues to use her pen name, Carma Gagne Chan, to carry the legacy of her Grandpa Gagne and extraordinary parents, Ruth Carrol Gagne and John Wang Leong Chan. She has written biographical love stories about her Chinese stepdad (Sweet Like John) and her Gagne grandparents (Albert Loved Sylvia). With regard to her French heritage, she discovered during ancestry research that all Gagnes in North America descended from two brothers who were part of the founding families of Quebec in the mid 17th century. Carma is a descendant of Louis Gagne and has 28 great-grandmothers who are celebrated in Quebec history as "Filles du roi" (King's Daughters).
Carma married Oliver Simonsen in 2014, and continues to use her pen name, Carma Gagne Chan, to carry the legacy of her Grandpa Gagne and extraordinary parents, Ruth Carrol Gagne and John Wang Leong Chan. She has written biographical love stories about her Chinese stepdad (Sweet Like John) and her Gagne grandparents (Albert Loved Sylvia). With regard to her French heritage, she discovered during ancestry research that all Gagnes in North America descended from two brothers who were part of the founding families of Quebec in the mid 17th century. Carma is a descendant of Louis Gagne and has 28 great-grandmothers who are celebrated in Quebec history as "Filles du roi" (King's Daughters).
For those wondering how to pronounce Gagne, it is simply GAWN-yay. There have been many French variations through generations, but Gagne has remained since Louis migrated to this continent. The surname translates to "gain, earn or win".
Carma began self-publishing her poems and short stories online in 2003 at AuthorsDen and caught the interest of an artist named Alexandre Nodopaka, who lived in Forest Lake, California. After she returned to southern California, she and "Alex" became good friends and he mentored her natural gift for photography.
In 2009 Carma began publishing as an" indie author" first at Smashwords and later Amazon, using the online tools at those sites to create digital and print editions (Smashwords migrated to Draft2Digital publishing tools, but still operates as an ebook store. Carma has author pages at Smashwords and Amazon today, but prefers the universal links to find her books everywhere via her author page at Books2Read.com/Carma-Gagne-Chan.
In 2021 Carma collaborated with Nodopaka to create his authorized biography, painstakingly gathering an impressive sampling of his life's work as a visual artist and poet, and integrating intimate interviews with him. She published, with Nodopaka's permission, naming it 42 Shades of Blush (because the cheeky artist and his boundary-pushing artwork often made her blush).
In addition to the above, Carma crafted the Gramma Carmels Picture Book series and collections of her poetry and photography.
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