Syd Goldsmith

Syd Goldsmith never dreamed of becoming a novelist until the widow of his best friend in Taiwan stole his wife’s credit cards. That incident led to “Jade Phoenix,” a finalist for the Lupton New Voices in Literature Award. Rights to publish this book in Taiwan were purchased by Bookman Books shortly after US publication in 2006. You can read excerpts featuring all the main characters on www.jadephoenix.us

In all my work, I discover what to write as I write a first draft. It was about 200 pages into a sloppy first draft before I realized that Jade Phoenix, a young Chinese woman, was the real main character of my first published novel. As with all of my books, there were many more drafts before publication.

“Two Musicians and The Wife Who Isn’t” is a two women and a man story, told in the first person by the three principal protagonists. I was inspired to write it this way by Barbara Kingsolvesr’s masterpiece, “The Poisonwood Bible.” Other than a single minor character who appears in both of my novels, there is no relationship between the two, except that both are love triangles. I can claim that the sexes get equal treatment in my work, since Jade Phoenix is a two man and a woman story.

“Hong Kong on the Brink.” (Blacksmith Books, 2017) is my memoir, published on the 50th anniversary of Hong Kong’s 1967 Emergency, when Cultural Revolution inspired mobs marauded for months and threatened to make further British governance of the colony untenable. Many feared that China would march in and kick the British out, thirty years before Hong Kong was handed over to Beijing’s control. Good fortune brought me a role during those riots that was worth writing about a half century later. I gave my all to making this book read like a novel while sticking scrupulously to the truth.

I’ve had the enormous good fortune of enjoying multiple other careers as a diplomat, entrepreneur, musician, columnist and university professor. Highlights of my thirty years career in government service include bit parts in the monumental changes leading to the first ever Chinese democracy, as the unofficial American Consul General in Kaohsiung, Taiwan and earlier as the Taiwanese Political Officer in the Taipei Embassy. During a tour in the Pentagon as military basing agreements negotiator, I was the senior Defense Department representative to the Philippine base negotiations, and also participated in negotiations in Turkey, Canada, and for Seychelles independence. Later the State Department assigned me as point man for a futile effort to stem coca production in Bolivia and Peru.

Syd’s entrepreneurial escapades included two failed start-ups. Direct Access would have competed with Dell in the earliest days of notebook computers, but failed for lack of sufficient funding. AdCast was an internet advertising company that choked on a too hasty acquisition. His venture in distressed real estate in Texas survives. Among his other adventures was a temporary stint as the chief operating officer of a Taiwanese multinational athletic shoe manufacturer with 8000 employees in Taiwan, China, and Thailand.

My passion for music and the flute is the most constant thread running throughout my life. I have taken it to every continent except Antarctica, and performed in twenty countries worldwide with guitarist Lisa Hurlong, Our Five Hundred Years of Romance and my Flute Flight series of recordings can be found on Amazon and elsewhere, along with my books.

While a stack of hand-written complimentary notes testifies to my disappointment as a short story writer, I have been comforted by some forty published op-ed columns. Most appeared in the China Post, but a few appeared in the Wall Street Journal, the Christian Science Monitor and the Los Angeles Times.

Harking back to my career as a diplomat, I’m an adjunct associate professor teaching very smart juniors and seniors in the Foreign Affairs Department of the Central Police University in Taiwan.

My wife Hsiu-chen Chang and I live in Taipei with our two children. During summers at the Chautauqua Institution in upstate New York, I’m active in the Literary Arts Center and served as vice chairman of the Writers’ Center.