The photo this month shows Sheryl working on her computer in the barn. Paul took the picture. The light source is a battery powered lantern and her laptop computer only.Hello Everyone,
Our biggest news this month is that Sheryl has finished a new book with additions by Paul and we're looking for a publisher and/or a great literary agent that can get it to a great publisher. It is said that there are just a few degrees of separation between someone you want to connect with and yourself. In other words, it occurs to us that one of the 400 or so people on this list has to know somebody who knows somebody who would be thrilled to read our proposal and give us a call.
We are both published authors. But neither one of us has worked with an agent before, and the industry has changed so much since Sheryl worked for a publishing company that a literary agent is pretty much a requirement. So we're including a brief proposal (query letter), and the first 10 pages below (at the end of the newsletter).
We KNOW this is NOT how things are typically done—we are doing the more conventional things authors and potential authors do as well. However, our book is about the importance of community—global community and the ones we share with family and friends. And in the new world of book publishing sometimes the connections you make pave the way far more than even the most well-crafted query letter could ever do. The book is about triumphing over adversity, following your heart, and reaching beyond perceived differences to heal the wounds that bind us not only individually but in the world as a whole. It's a serious subject but, as in all we do, we use the experience of our counseling practice and of our lives as illustration, add lots of spiritual insights and a fair bit of humor, too. We think it will be of help and, perhaps, inspiration to anyone going through a crisis as a result of the global recession happening today and will be of special interest to anyone who wishes to apply spiritual principles and higher purpose to the things that they do.
Please forward our newsletter or the proposal alone to anyone on your lists who might know someone in the publishing industry with the connections to see this through. We appreciate you all so much.
Thank you and God bless,
Sheryl and Paul
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NEWS FROM MAMA LOVE
Sheryl is now offering all her perfumes in a more economical 2 oz. size for use as an after bath body oil, massage or bath oil. Same flower essence/aromatherapy formulations in a 100% organic jojoba oil base, still infused with Reiki—just more applicable for more liberal use. She is also now offering quantity discounts and wholesale pricing for anyone who buys in sufficient quantity online. Check out her site at http://www.mamaloveproducts.com .
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PAUL HAS BEEN UPDATING HIS PHOTO GALLERIES
He has lots of new photos available as both framed and unframed fine art prints for sale on Imagekind. Check out his new Southwest Gallery! New items in his other galleries, too. Check out his Imagekind site at http://paulhood.imagekind.com and his updated photographer's website at http://www.paulhood.com .
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NEED SPIRITUAL GUIDANCE ON YOUR PERSONAL TRAIL?
We do telephone sessions with people all over the world. Visit our "Make an Appointment" page to make your appointment now. Be sure to tell us what time zone you are in and several good times you might be available for an appointment. Thanks!
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MORE WRITING AND PHOTOGRAPHY
Paul's Blog... http://paulhood.blogspot.com/
Sheryl's Blog... http://healingcommunication.blogspot.com/
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THANKS FOR ALL YOUR REFERRALS!
Simplest way to tell people about us? Forward this email with a note saying you like us. It's easy!
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BOOK PROPOSAL:
WAKING UP IN THE GREAT RECESSION MORMON DESERT
A Memoir with Words of Guidance and Inspiration
by Sheryl Karas M.A. (with Paul Hood)
Enclosed you will find 10 sample pages of a new book by spiritual counseling and healing team Sheryl Karas and Paul Hood. Paul and Sheryl combine spiritual insights with compassion and humor in all the work that they do. Their clients know them to be quite forthright about sharing their own life experiences when appropriate as well. In this book the team takes this approach further—using the devastating experiences of losing their home and watching their business and financial well-being shaken as a result of market forces beyond their control—to apply spiritual principles to living their lives with integrity despite what has occurred.
Their journey has taken them from the Oz-like environment of Santa Cruz, CA— a progressive New Age haven like none other on the beautiful central coast—to the barren unspeakably plain eastern Arizona desert. Their trials begin immediately after the passage of Proposition 8 (the ban on gay marriage in California which was heavily backed by the Mormon Church) and they, ironically and inadvertently, wind up in a Mormon pioneer town. That's a little odd, interesting and sometimes amusing in itself but the story becomes much more than that. It's about spiritual awakening, in the sense of learning more about one's calling, and the importance of reaching beyond perceived differences to heal the wounds that bind us not only individually but in the world as a whole.
The book describes experiences millions of Americans currently face during the global economic crisis we're in today. But it is ultimately a book about triumphing over adversity, following your heart, and reclaiming one’s voice in a world which begs for an end to injustice, polarity and hate.
This 93,425 word nonfiction book, titled "Waking Up in the Great Recession Mormon Desert", is written as a memoir in the form of blog posts interspersed with articles and connecting threads. It's funny and poignant and full of moments of inspiration, too. The authors intend it to be of service to those going through a recession-related crisis of their own. It will be of special interest to anyone who wishes to apply spiritual principles and higher purpose to the things that they do.
Sheryl Karas has a B.A in Communications from Simmons College in Boston, MA and an M.A. in Transpersonal Psychology from the Institute of Transpersonal Psychology in Palo Alto, CA. She has written three nonfiction books in the past. Her first book, The Solstice Evergreen, was published by Aslan Publishing and has been continuously in print since 1991. Her other books are Changing the World One Relationship at a Time (Crossing Press) and The Spiritual Journey of Family Caregiving. This last book is currently available for representation as well.
Paul Hood has degrees in Religious Studies, Behavioral Science, and Creative Writing. His short stories and articles have been published in several literary magazines and newspapers.
The team can be reached through their website. They thank you for your consideration.
FIRST 10 PAGES:
WAKING UP IN THE GREAT RECESSION MORMON DESERT
A Memoir with Words of Guidance and Inspiration
by Sheryl Karas M.A. (with Paul Hood)
How to Stop Worrying
by Paul Hood
How to stop worrying.
Dale Carnegie had some good ideas, but the story isn’t over yet.
It’s not as if there aren’t thousands, maybe millions of positive examples out there. So many mentors, so many shining examples of how to live life more joyously in the present moment. No, all you have to do is ask—and even sometimes when you don’t ask, somebody you know will send a truly inspiring video directly to you via the magic of email.
But all those uncountable resources, they don’t always get through, they don’t work on the truly tough cases. I recently figured out why. The brilliant, shining examples are all speaking the wrong language. For people who worry, Deepak Chopra, Wayne Dyer and other motivational speakers may as well be speaking Martian. You have to know your audience.
So let’s make a fresh start.
If you worry, it’s because you’re bad, wrong, and in all likelihood, stupid. Now, it’s not as if anything I say will change the fact that you fill your life with useless worry. No, you will continue on, day in and day out, running through your same, tired old internal rhetoric. You always do that. I’m so sick of it I could scream. I knew you would turn out this way. Why can’t you be more like your sister? You’re supposed to be the smart one. Go clean your room.
Now I’m getting through, aren’t I? If you worry obsessively it’s because you were taught to do so, either by example or by drilling into your brain that a certain world view is, in fact, reality. Of course that world view isn’t true. It’s a vicious lie. The world is filled with lies and deception. And you fell for it. God, you are so gullible. I can’t even believe it. Who raised you? Trust me, you can’t trust anyone. Look at me when I’m talking to you.
So, obsessive worry is caused by a faulty thought process, and that process is fueled by having been immersed in a world view skewed by excessive concern for safety, security and familiarity. That world view is ruled by fear, an emotion. Emotions aren’t bad or good, they just are. But it’s a useful thing to be aware of which emotions you’d be better off making a habit of feeling. Even more useful if you’re aware that your thoughts have a very direct effect on your emotions, and you can certainly learn to think useful thoughts which result in a more pleasant emotional state. Interestingly enough, more pleasant emotions tend to spawn more useful thoughts, encouraging a more positive and productive world view and that becomes a cycle which is self supporting. I’m losing you, aren’t I? Like pearls before swine. I might as well be talking to a brick wall. Look, if you don’t pay attention you’re going to miss all this good stuff and then where will you be? Screwed, that’s where. I should have known. I could have predicted this. When will you ever learn? What’s so funny, damn it? Use your indoor voice.
Worry is, in fact, oppression. It was probably taught to you by people who meant well, as it was taught to them and so on. Don’t blame yourself for that, and there’s no need to blame your teachers either. Engender forgiveness in your heart —for the fact that everything in this world is meant to change and grow. You learned one world view which has useful facets, but it was unbalanced and now you’re going to learn a new one. It’s not hard, but it might be scary. The whole reason for that fear to appear is because the new world view contradicts the old one which was based on. . . right, you guessed it, Fear with a capital “F.” Fear in this case does not indicate danger. Fear in this case indicates change, and your previous world view was constructed to sound the alarm whenever change appeared imminent. Again, be forgiving. Your friends, relatives, and neighbors may have experienced very unpleasant changes. Those changes became associated with fear, and then equated with fear, and finally any change gets viewed as bad, wrong, or even “evil.” Whoops, that’s a stretch. Only an idiot would believe something like that. An idiot like you. You and the horse you rode in on. Mercy me. Stay with me now, remember; a stitch in time saves nine. I want you to turn over a new leaf. I’m just trying to help, and there you go again, flying off the handle like always. Now don’t go off half cocked. You could put an eye out. All I’m saying is, be careful.
So worry is a habit whose emotional basis is fear. When someone is afraid, the first instinctual thing we do is tell them “everything is all right,” “you’re safe now,” “you’re home”, essentially that they are in a quiet, protected, PREDICTABLE environment. Worry, interestingly enough, is the mind trying to predict the future, and all possible variations of it. It’s an attempt to achieve readiness now, for what might occur later. That’s impossible, if you look at the sheer number of things which might happen in the future and that you can’t mathematically prepare for all of them. On the other hand, nearly every creature on this earth is a living example of being prepared for everything. You are too, I’m telling you, you’re prepared, you’re worthy, you’re a high functioning individual—the product of millions of years of evolution and a perfect child of God. And yet you think otherwise. I could slap you. I swear, right now. Oh la -dee-dah, you think you’re so special, don’t you? That you have to stay up nights running scripts in your head because you’re the one individual in history who can mentally catalog every possible future event—not just for you but for everyone and every thing in your life. Wow. Get over yourself.
Worry is oppression that is taught, and learned, based upon the idea that fear equals readiness—that feeling bad is a good idea. Maybe it’s even a responsibility. Worry embraces the concept that the one constant in the universe, change, is something to be avoided at all costs. Worry can’t exist very well in an individual unless they are living in a state of constant fear. Interestingly enough, fear can’t be upheld in an environment of faith. Oh, ye of little faith. Oppression means that you were taught that you aren’t ready for anything, that you’re inferior. That really cracks me up. I’m laughing at you right now. Pointing and laughing, and doing a little dance which is rather uncoordinated but is reminiscent of the Bossa Nova. It looks totally silly and I don’t care. You have no faith at all, you sorry bastard. Even a little child knows that he can walk around in the world and be totally joyous. Hell, baby goats know that, puppies and kittens know that. Even flowers bloom, grass grows automatically, the sun rises and sets without writing a business plan every night. Point of fact, if you worry you are dumber than dirt.
Even though change is constant in the universe, on a day to day basis a lot of things do stay the same. Our civilization is built upon a certain degree of predictability. When we want to direct specific changes, we theorize based upon past observances, we try new things and observe the results. We innovate, and innovation is faith based. We have faith in our abilities to bring positive change, and we generally know that when we try new things we aren’t usually risking much. There’s a certain amount of inertia to reality, we can’t help but be aware of that. Little mistakes do not cause the fabric of the universe to unravel. That’s another reason not to worry. Most change is incremental, not revolutionary, or to put a negative spin on it, disastrous. This is what you should forgive your oppressors for: for knowing that much of life is about balancing inertia (tradition) with incremental risks to bring about positive change. They weren’t wrong to teach you this, maybe just a little out of balance. And because they loved you so much, they may have taught you to worry, thinking they were helping you to be ready for anything. So forgive them now and know that you are ready. Peace be with you.
Ok, I hope I was speaking your language and that this helped.
If it didn’t, don’t worry about it.
I know I won’t.
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My partner, lover and best friend Paul wrote this for our joint spiritual counseling and healing newsletter. We take turns writing it every month and it was a good thing it was his turn this time. You see, Paul didn’t write that article for our clients and friends. He wrote it for me. Despite my best intentions and highest ideals I slip into a fearful mode of existence far too often. He has a knack of being able to hit my issues square on the head. He makes me laugh and pops me out of it. But at the time this story begins neither one of us were laughing. All my greatest fears were coming true and there was nothing I could do to hold them back.
Chapter 1
When Life Comes Crashing Down
It was early December 2008 and I kept turning my head away from Paul. He was driving a U-Haul truck with all our worldly possessions inside, and our car on a trailer hooked to the back, and I didn’t want him to see my face. The road from Holbrook to Snowflake, Arizona, on the final leg of our journey away from Santa Cruz, California, had me in tears. Nothing but dirt and low clumps of dried out yellow grass on both sides of the highway for as far as the eye could see. It felt like we were moving to the surface of the moon—almost as stark and just as forbidding.
Why did Paul’s parents choose to live out here? What could they possibly have seen in a place like this? There was a hollow feeling in the pit of my stomach and I silently prayed, “Oh please, God, let there at least be some trees on their property.”
Paul assured me that there were some but he had not been out to visit in many years. From the tone of his voice I could tell: he wasn’t quite certain that the piece of desert they lived on was very much better.
Paul and I had a fledgling spiritual counseling and healing practice before the onset of the Great Recession of 2008/2009. But living in Santa Cruz kept us from being overly aware of the impending crisis coming down the road—paying rent in the Bay area has always been hard. Just before the economy crashed, however, local housing prices truly spiraled out of control. A one bedroom apartment in a 400 square foot converted garage cost one of our good friends almost two thirds of her salary. She said she felt “lucky” to have it—typical rents were even higher.
We knew our time in Santa Cruz was limited. We had been given the gift of free rent while our friend John got his plans for how to live in Santa Cruz worked out. He was doing fine and wanted to support us in our work but his vision for his retirement was quite different. He intended to fix up his house, rent it out, and live in his own converted garage. Market rate rent for his three bedroom, two-bath house was more than we could imagine affording, he had other plans for it besides, so we knew we were going to have to make other choices. We believed we would probably leave town. What we didn’t know is that all our attempts to find another situation would fall through and that we would wind up taking refuge with Paul’s parents in the desert.
As we drew close to the tiny town of Snowflake the landscape improved somewhat. We could see a small river with skeletons of trees and family-sized ranches or farms around it. It had a hint of rural country charm but at this time of year it could hardly be called an oasis. There wasn’t a speck of green.
Paul has written a couple of short stories that use “The Wizard of Oz” as a theme. If I had a sense of humor just then I might have teased him: “Puppy (that’s his nickname), I have a feeling we’re not in Oz anymore.” By contrast Santa Cruz is like the Emerald City: lush and green, sparkling and brilliant, with a vast array of exotic flowers all year round. If you’re lucky enough to come across a circle of drummers on the beach with the typical bevy of surfers riding the waves behind them it isn’t hard to imagine “Ha - ha - ha, Ho - ho - ho - And a couple of tra - la - las” playing in the background. I always wondered why in the movie Dorothy was so desperate to get back to black and white Kansas. In the books she returns to Oz over and over again.
When we arrived in Snowflake we were still about a 30 minute drive away from where Paul’s parents chose to live. We turned left onto Snowflake Boulevard and followed the Concho Highway into what Paul’s mom affectionately calls the Arizona outback.
Af first the terrain reverted to the same barren desert landscape we had seen before but as we proceeded down the highway it became dotted with bushy green juniper trees. Again, the view stretched for as far as the eye could see. As Paul had suggested, it wasn’t much of an improvement, but I found myself breathing easier despite myself.
The road seemed to stretch to eternity. We drove on and on, searching in vain for the mile markers that were supposed to signal where to turn. Finally we saw the only landmarks we had been told to watch out for—a bright yellow diamond shaped sign with a picture of a black cow on it next to a long row of mailboxes on the right hand side and a tiny, completely unreadable metal sign indicating the turn into their neighborhood on the left. Paul’s parents were waiting at the corner to help us find the way to their house.
They greeted us with some warm hugs, “we’re so glad you’re here” and “don’t you worry about a thing.” Then we got back into our truck while they led us the rest of the way. The last five miles to the family homestead is in a confusing district of winding unmapped country lanes. Directions would have been difficult to follow. There are very few houses that can be seen from the road, even fewer landmarks, and the route consists entirely of washboard-rutted gravel and soft dirt roads.
I found myself thinking of the wonderful photographs of rabbits my online handcraft community had sent me in the month before this move. I was truly hoping for a miracle to keep this choice from happening and rabbits have always been a symbol of good luck and prosperity for me. Whenever my first husband and I got into a financial bind, by some miracle exactly what we needed would appear at the last minute. I used to joke that he pulled a rabbit out of his hat. One time an actual rabbit hopped into our yard along with the two job offers that pulled us through. Rabbits didn’t naturally occur in that neighborhood. This was a large domestic lop-ear.
When we turned into the driveway leading up to Paul’s family’s house several tiny cottontails and a huge jackrabbit scurried out of our way. His mom puts food out every day for the wildlife in the area. It turns out that Sugarfoot Ranch is a bird and rabbit sanctuary. Now there’s a cosmic joke. Despite my grief and concern I couldn’t help but recognize the significance.
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The roots of our adventure began long before we had met. Paul and I both had had spiritual awakenings at earlier times in our lives. We shared an interest in spiritual growth and development as it relates to living in the physical world and had a common desire to help other people through our work. We didn’t know how to do it but we both had made valiant attempts to move in that direction nonetheless. I marked the occasion in my own life by starting a blog, an online journal meant to be shared with others.
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Blog Post: Saturday, June 04, 2005, Santa Cruz, CA
Social Entrepreneurism and Starting a New Life
For my entire adult life I have always wanted to do work that followed the dictates of my heart. I'm sure most people of the baby boom generation have felt the same way but we all know how it is to follow a dream. Sometimes our belief systems and lack of knowledge about how to succeed get in the way.
My first dreams seemed completely unattainable: Pitcher for the Boston Red Sox? Oops, wrong gender. Musical comedy star? Well, that would require getting up on stage without getting sick to my stomach. Ballerina, Olympic gymnast, ice skating champ? It's funny how the dreams of a decidedly nonathletic person all center around feats of physicality. I think I'll keep the day job. Oops, I don't have a day job (more on that below).
Anyway, despite getting to the point where I no longer want to fight uphill battles when all indications say I should give up, I still have dreams for my life and if that means going up another damn hill, (sigh) I hope the universe makes it an easy climb. . .
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Contact Sheryl through our website if you are a literary agent or publisher interested in this project. Please tell me what agency or publishing company you are with and include appropriate contact information (a website, etc.). Thank you!
