I had no intention of ever writing a book. I also had no intention of ever becoming a computer programmer. But being a single mother existing in near abject poverty, it was my only choice at the time, so I stumbled into IBM mainframe programming with the same audacity I did years later when I decided to write a book. Sure enough, when my government employer learned I was a lousy programmer, they did what management often does: they promoted me. Two dozen years later I had put my daughter through college and started a small computer company—which netted big results. It was then I decided to tackle something else I knew nothing about. Writing. It happened when I encountered an Apollo 14 astronaut with a story to be told and an inexplicable faith that I could do it. Five years later I released "The Apostles of Apollo: The Journey of the Bible to the Moon." Other less challenging books followed, at which point I flipped from the audacious lives of Apollo astronauts who the world enshrined and adored to the maligned and underprivileged lives of low-income people and minorities, a segment of life that the world in most instances would rather forget. It’s one thing to view these stories from a distance. It’s another to be thrown into the midst of the ugly reality that I wandered into. "Guilty When Black"is a microcosm of the world they live in—and have lived in—for centuries. You don’t know what it’s like until you creep up to the edge and peer down into its fetid core.
AUTHOR FULL BIO
Carol Mersch is an Oklahoma author and journalist specializing in creative non-fiction. She has published ten books and numerous articles which she authored and co-authored with others in areas of space exploration, law enforcement, and spirituality.
Her close friendship with Apollo 14 astronaut Edgar Mitchell led her to develop The Apostles of Apollo: The Journey of the Bible to the Moon (Pen-L Publishing, 2010), for which she was accepted into the Mayborn Literary Guild, and The Space Less Traveled (Pen-L Publishing, 2013), a book of quotations gleaned from her years of companionship with Mitchell. In 2013, her literary document Religion, Space Exploration and Secular Society was accepted by Taylor & Frances, a national consortium in the UK offering document subscription services used by museums, libraries, and universities, including the Smithsonian Air & Space Museum.
Prior to this, Mersch was instrumental in publishing and co-publishing a number of books, including The Seamless Bible (Destiny Image, 2004), a chronological presentation of the King James Bible and The Seamless Gospels (Destiny Image, 2005), A Year of Promise (iUniverse Publishing, 2011), a 365-day devotional/journal, and The Heart of a Cop: Stories of Personal Faith from the Line of Duty (Clovercroft Publishing, 2016), The Incredible Reverend Stout: Presidents, Astronauts, and the Woman he Loved (Pen-L Publishing, 2019), chronicling the life of NASA Chaplain Reverend John Stout, and We Are One: The Power of the conscious Mind and Our Interconnection to All Things (Pen-L Publishing, 2020), the personal account of Apollo 14 Lunar Module Pilot Edgar Mitchell’s transformative experience on his way back from the moon in his own words.
In 2016, she authored an online long-form article "Trial by Fire" published in The Big Round Table, a platform supported by staff of the Columbia School of Journalism. The essay was later expanded into her latest book, Guilty When Black: One girl’s journey down the twisted road of injustice & the atrocities of female incarceration (Yorkshire Publishing, 2020, 2022), a true-crime non-fiction book which follows the 2nd-degree murder case of an innocent 23-year old Black girl through the Oklahoma criminal justice system in the family’s unrelenting battle for justice in the accidental death of her two small nieces who died a fiery death due to a faulty oven in a low-rent Section 8 housing project. The griping story earned rave reviews from book critics Kirkus Reviews and OnLineBookClub as “a crackerjack legal narrative. . . of justice that is anything but colorblind.”
Before launching her writing career, she served at the executive level of several Fortune 1000 companies as Director of Information Technology (IT) and at the helm of three privately held companies where she received local and national recognition for her contributions to community and civic endeavors.
In 1999 her firm, Mersch-Bacher Associates, was awarded the Blue Star Award for entrepreneurship featured on a nationally televised PBS special, and in August 2000 was by the New York Times for her work in community and civic endeavors.
During this time, she served as Chairman of the City of Tulsa Information Technology Advisory Board charged with overseeing migration of the city’s information systems into an integrated network to meet 21st century information requirements. In 1998, her company was honored with the IBM International Award in Community Service for development of an internet-based community website dedicated to animal welfare and rescue by a committee of IBM world leaders, including China, Australia, Europe, and the U.S.
During her corporate service, Mersch authored numerous articles for national IT trade publications and developed a systems methodology development strategy utilized by government and commercial organizations, including CitiCorp.
On a personal level, Mersch was awarded the 1999 Oklahoma Family & Children Services Award for “Special Parenting” as a single parent who achieved success under conditions of extreme adversity and financial hardship, and Women’s Businessperson of the Year by the Tulsa Mayor’s Commission on the Status of Women.
After sale of her companies in 2000, she left the corporate world to pursue development of non-fiction books “that make a difference.”
In 2011-2018 she was featured on Houston Fox26, Tulsa ABC News, BBC World Radio, Dallas CBS Radio KRLD, MSNBC, CNN Faith, Ireland’s NewsTalk, and two magazines in Europe, Spaceflight Magazine and Sorted, for her research into the first “Lunar Bible” covered in her book The Apostles of Apollo. The historic Bibles carried to the moon and their heirship have been featured by the Associated Press, the Houston Chronicle, USA today,
In 2022, she was named “Who’s Who in America” by Marquis Who's Who, the world's leading biographical publisher.
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