Growing up in the Dominican Republic, Silfida DelCarmen "D.C." Gomez wasn't aware of the concept of race. Everyone their, regardless of color, was Dominican. She and her friends played in clear ocean water, and her home was surrounded by gorgeous vegetation.
At the age of 10, her family moved from that tropical paradise to the winter wonderland that was Salem, Massachusetts. There, D.C. and her younger brothers Miguel and Antonio were about to experience culture, and climate, shock.
"My first impression of arriving to the U.S. was traumatizing," D.C. said. "As the plane flew over Boston, the first thing I saw out of the window were dead trees (she came in late October), cemeteries and dirty bodies of water. To make things worse, it was freezing. As a child, I was blown away that my parents were excited to freeze to death."
After graduating high school, her parents dropped her off in New York City, at the doorstep to New York University, where she majored in film and television.
She now admits that a fear of failing motivated her to join the Army.
"It was harder to commit to be a director and possibly fail, than it was to be a soldier," D.C. said. "It was easy to join because I had nothing to lose."
On September 11, 2001, as the World Trade Center towers fell, D.C. was at basic training in Fort Benning, Georgia.
"I couldn't call my friends in the city and find out if they were OK," she "For the first time in my life I was willing to die for others."
As a young 24-year-old truck mechanic, she was deployed to Iraq with the first wave of troops sent over following the 9/11 attack.
"It was a place where good and bad came together; the best and worst of humanity. I definitely gained enough experience to have something to start writing about."
While she didn't expect to love the military, she ended up leaving as a sergeant four years later. She arrived in Wake Village in 2006 when, as a civil servant, she was transferred from Fort Riley, Kansas, to Red River Army Depot, where she still keeps her "day job" despite having enough books published and sold to put her on a USA Today bestselling list.
"I wanted to be a writer, and I wanted to be good at it," she said. "I attended workshops, seminars, classes. I really faced my demons. I had this burning desire in my soul."
The burning desire was cooled a bit in 2012 when D.C. learned she had thyroid cancer. After surgery and treatment, she re-evaluated herself.
"I would have never wished those things on myself, but I did use them to my advantage," she said. "In 2018 I made the decision that my hobby would now be a business. I started taking it seriously."
Since that decision, she has become a writing machine, churning out book after book - 13 of them in two years.
"I'm so blessed to have found my tribe here," she said. "Writing is a business that requires illustrators, cover art, editors, formatting and more."
Her brother, Antonio, and his wife, Kathleen, live locally and are a good support system for D.C. Kathleen illustrates her children's-book series and is the voice of the "Death's Intern" audiobook.
The "Intern Diaries," a series of five books, is set in Texarkana and involves witches, elves and even zombies. The titles are "Death's Intern," "Pestilence," "War," "Famine" and "Judgment Day." She describes the character of "Death" as "the UPS of the soul world." The star of the series is Isis Black, who, like D.C., is an Army veteran who just moved to town and has adventures with a cat named Constantine.
The fifth, and last, book of the series is now available on Amazon with the others.
"The series is through. I miss my babies already," she said.
In August 2019, she was named on the USA Today Bestseller list when pre-sales of her books reached the required 3,000 amount. Locals helped her with that goal by posting her Amazon links on social media pages. The effort garnered more than 5,000 orders of her combined books, surpassing the amount she needed.
All of her books are listed on her Amazon.com page (search and follow D.C. Gomez), in both paperback and Kindle editions. She has also written two short accompanying novellas that expand upon the "Intern Diaries" world, both of which are free in the Kindle editions.
Her other books - the "Cat Lady" mystery series and the "Charlie's Fables" children's series - are also receiving attention. Her "Another World Trilogy" is a fantasy series for teens in the vein of Alice in Wonderland. Over the past year, D.C. has traveled to Comic-Cons and book fairs across the south to promote her books and meet her fans.
"We stop dreaming when we get older, and I want to motivate people to keep on," the former youth minister at St. Edwards Catholic Church said. "If this little Dominican can do it, anyone can do it. You can still dream."
D.C. seems to have two speeds: Asleep and 90 mph. To keep up her energy, she has become totally vegan, and has taken up meditation.
"I embrace all these cultures," she said, then joked, "I'm just your local vegan, meditating, writing Dominican." n