About - Stories with Spine

ABOUT

VALUES

Stories with Spine stands for the deepening of knowledge about the archetypal feminine. It is a love-song for our bodies, our creative life force, and for our bigger home, this blue-green planet.

VISION

Story shapes culture; it's one of the most powerful forces on the planet, because it has such profound influence on our belief systems.

Mainstream storytelling has largely been characterised by masculine values: the hero's journey.

By taking readers on a heroine's journey into the aspects of the feminine (in all of us) that have been culturally erased over thousands of years, we can come back into balance... for a wildly beautiful future.

To change our realities, we also have to change our myths. As history amply demonstrates, myths and realities go hand in hand.” - Riane Eisler, cultural historian

MISSION

1. To support you in birthing a high calibre, culturally influential book, built upon a strong story spine.

2. To stimulate conversation about feminine archetypes, and why their resurgence is vital for our global future.

NICHE

Genres: Transformational, prescriptive or self-help non-fiction. Your book isn't memoir, but it is likely to interweave factual information with personal storytelling.

Categories include:

Women's studies
Cultural history
Mythology
Spirituality

Mind, body, spirit
Tantric studies
Depth Psychology
Deep ecology

Just as there is a relationship of mind to body, so there is a relationship of body to earth." - Carl Jung

BOOK COACHING OBJECTIVES

Book coaching is a new industry born out of radical shifts in the publishing industry over the last decade or so.

Editing is less of a priority than it used to be inside traditional publishing houses. Sales and marketing are primary these days, and in-house editors have little time. Authors are often required to submit a pre-edited manuscript and do a large part of their own marketing.

My services step in to address these changes, in five key stages of book development.

I provide you with tried-and-tested methodologies, editorial support, accountability, marketing strategies, empathy and cheer-leading, to help you bring your book project to life and increase the chances of its success.

My services will work best if you aim to be signed up with a literary agent and/or traditional publisher.

You can see my range of services here.

ABOUT AI

Because your book is interwoven with unique and personal storytelling, and is written from your embodied and intuitive intelligence, AI cannot imitate or supplant this. Nor is it likely to create a journey for your reader that's rich with psychological insight.

Perhaps you'll use AI as an occasional tool, for example in helping you research comparable titles if you're writing a book proposal; but you aren't looking to AI to do your writing for you.

Writing a truly transformational book takes more than prompting AI. It asks you to being your whole self to the work. The process will be iterative, and harder than you want it to be. At some point you'll want to run away.

However, you know in your bones that you are here to make a valuable contribution with the book that only you can write.

Doing this is one of the most rewarding experiences life has to offer.

MY COACHING STYLE

I bring warmth, integrity, humour and dedication to this work. You can safely brainstorm and discuss problems with me, but I'm also (politely) candid in my feedback.

It isn't my job to 'know it all'; but rather, to help you come up with an effective process to find your own answers.

I place equal weight on creativity and strategy. My role is to create a growth container that allows you bring your vision to life. I place a special emphasis on the reader's journey of transformation, to help you inspire cultural change, one reader at a time.

"The body is like the Earth... as vulnerable to over-building, being carved into parcels, cut off, overmined, and shorn of its power as any landscape."

- Clarissa Pinkola Estés

THE HEROINE'S JOURNEY

I use this term to refer to the arc of change you will walk your readers through, offering them a re-framing of cultural and spiritual norms and a fresh way of seeing.

For example, if your readers are cis women, your book might help them dispel culturally imposed shame and silencing around the womb and menstrual cycle. If your book is about redefining masculinity, it could embrace such 'feminine' issues as emotional vulnerability, healing the heart, asking for help, and reinstating intimacy and connection.

The heroine's journey asks for a paradigm shift and applies to all of us, irrespective of our gender identity. It is an invitation to peel away outdated patriarchal conditioning, be done with old masks, and re-imagine life. This is no small undertaking, but an essential one in these times of global crisis.

The heroine's journey embraces such themes as:

Re-awakening reverence for the divine feminine
Raising awareness of the interconnected nature of all of life
Befriending the body and its cyclical nature. Death and rebirth
Healing mother wounds and re-integrating the mother archetype into the collective psyche, including 'Mother Earth'
Surrendering to not-knowing, the great mystery, darkness, the world between worlds
Reclaiming the 'inner senses': intuitive, mystical and creative powers
Letting patriarchal beliefs fall away, along with the 'strong man' archetype; and
Replacing outdated myths with more relevant ones for the challenges we are grappling with today, and will have to face in the future.

My old great friend Joseph Campbell wrote a book about 'The Hero with a Thousand Faces.' I said, “What about the heroine?” and he would insist that story didn’t yet exist." - Dr Jean Houston, scholar, philosopher & researcher

INCLUSION

Stories with Spine stands for the feminine power and mystery in all of us, and the deep intelligence that's housed in the body, irrespective of our gender.

100% LGBTQ+ and BIPOC friendly.

I work with anyone with a compatible message, vision and goals, as laid out here.

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