[1][2][3] As a youth, Carpenter worked as an apprentice to a printer, and later as a newspaper reporter for the San Francisco Examiner.
[3] He was the author of two plays, The Dragon's Claws and The Concubine,[2] several film scenarios,[2] and two novels, Long Sweetening: A Romance of the Red Woods (New York: Robert M. McBride & Company, 1921, 306 pp.)
[2][5] He died on April 30, 1936, in Hollywood, Los Angeles County, California,[5] and is interred in the Russian River Cemetery in Ukiah, Mendocino County, California, alongside his twin sister, artist Grace Carpenter Hudson.
[5] There is a documented friendship between Carpenter and fellow writer Rose Wilder Lane.
Lane's letters to Carpenter focused on politics of the time, her personal life, their mutual friends in the arts, farming, reminiscences of their early friendship, and also mentions medical problems Carpenter referred to in his letters to Lane.