Fascinating Authors

FASCINATING AUTHORS: What excites you most about your book’s topic? Why did you choose it?

Author: I have felt a spiritual connection with trees since I was a little girl. Their physical beauty and their expressive physical shapes drew me in, and I eventually began to experience a stronger, more spiritual connection. In that sense, the topic chose me. What is really thrilling is the number of people who are coming forward to say they share the connection and the sense that trees are spiritual beings with stories to tell.

FASCINATING AUTHORS: How long did the book take you from start to finish?

Author: Almost 10 years from when the seed of the idea germinated. Even though I wasn’t sure why I was doing it at first, I was compelled to take hundreds of tree pictures. I started to see things in them. Life experiences in the process gave profundity and meaning to the project. The book’s evolution was deeply integrated with events such as the death of my sister from breast cancer and my own survival of the disease. These events were cathartic, and the ongoing process of the book gained meaning from them. The relevance of all this in terms of how long the book took to complete is that the book could not possibly have happened sooner than it did. These life events, and many others, are part of the PersonaliTrees process, and they affect how and what I see. When I felt it was the time for the project to bring joy to people and make a spiritual contribution to the world, I contacted the one publisher I felt would be the best fit (Findhorn Press). They loved it. Clearly, it was the book’s time to become a reality and I never doubted it would happen in its own time, which just happened to be around 10 years.

FASCINATING AUTHORS: What aspect of writing the book did you find particularly challenging?

Author:  Communicating the concept during the initial stages. People probably thought, “There she goes taking pictures of trees again.” Actually, I know they thought it because they said it. I had the idea in my head; I knew what I wanted to convey, but the format and presentation had to evolve to the point where I could get it across. Fortunately, people trusted my intuition. My husband would stop the car on a busy highway while I went tromping off through a field to see a tree. He’d yell through the open passenger door, “You know we are going to be killed doing this someday, right?!”And then, there was the Findhorn vision. Once they decided this was a book they were going to take on—their famous vision and connection to the universe came shining through in the layout, design and promotion of the book!

FASCINATING AUTHORS: What surprised you the most about the book writing process?

Author: How enthusiastically people embraced it and helped shape it once they ‘got’ what needed to be done. The designer, the editor, the publisher, my friends, people I didn’t even know…people everywhere really do have strong feelings about trees. People are intrigued about trees on many levels — from their outward beauty, to their role in the ecosystem, to the spirits that inhabit them.

FASCINATING AUTHORS: Did you have any favorite experiences when writing your book?

Author: My three grown children and their spouses/girlfriend, many members of my immediate family and our friends did “focus groups” while we went through the process of adding the captions for each picture. It was delightful to stand back; watch and listen to these groups discuss and debate what each picture should be named. It was even more fun to listen to the various things each one of them saw in the pictures. As a previous junior high, high school, and university teacher, I’ve been intrigued by what is the best way to teach abstract concepts. I hope this book serves as a tool in schools to teach abstract concepts — using trees as the vehicle.

FASCINATING AUTHORS: What do you hope your readers will gain from reading your book?

Author: That they share in the joy of seeing. PersonaliTrees is really about seeing. I found that as I spent more time in the woods, the more present I was, and the more I could see. The more I saw, the more I heard. The more sensory awareness I gained, the more I understood and appreciated the life cycle.  Each physical step brings a new perspective, and I could see more as a result of taking one step than I could capture in photographs if I stood there forever. The nuance of changed perspective in a natural setting is almost overwhelming because it expands the longer you look at it. By taking a mindful, meditative approach to this experience, I gained a sense of endless possibilities. I realized I can do anything. In fact I was put here to do the very things I am now doing. I have no idea what other people might find, but it will be unique to their individual purpose and talents, and I suspect it will be at least as joyous. I want to share access to this joy with my granddaughters. Who wouldn’t want to do that?

FASCINATING AUTHORS: What projects are you currently working on?

Author: In addition to working on the second book in this series to be released in 2011, I’ve got some really good people helping me develop the PersonaliTreesbook.com web site, which is really fun. The web site features a PersonaliTrees Gallery where people (kids, too!) can submit their own amazing tree pictures and tell the stories of those trees. My husband and I are also partners in BOSS LLC, an acronym for Being of Sound Spirit, a community website for people whose talents, hobbies and/or professions are “dedicated to the health and well-being of the human spirit.” I am also working on a large volume of poetry titled “Rendezvous with a Sleepwalker.”

FASCINATING AUTHORS: Is writing your sole career? If not, what else do you do?

Author: I have hundreds of things to do in life, and hundreds more things to learn.

I am president of my own training and development company, Ketels Contract Training, which helps businesses and organizations with optimum training options and custom database solutions. It’s gratifying to help achieve efficiencies that make organizations more effective and thus more enjoyable for the people who are invested in their success and the well-being of their employees.

FASCINATING AUTHORS: Did you do any research for your books, or did you write from experience?

Author: I took my camera out on my walks and began taking pictures of what I saw. It was really, that simple. And I trusted my vision to guide the process. I never read the manual or took a class. I just tried to capture in photographs what I saw in my heart. Over time, I learned it had a lot to do with lighting and time of day—and lot of other things that didn’t really have anything to do with knowing the technical parts of operating my camera. If I had gotten scared of understanding all of the technical nuances of taking pictures, I might never have snapped a single shot of any one of these trees.

Good thing Canon has a camera that is basically “point and shoot,” or I would have missed a lot of great tree pictures over the years. I used a Canon Powershot A630 for most of these pictures.

FASCINATING AUTHORS: How did you come up with your title?

Author: My daughter, Rachel, came up with it one day.  She is a clinical pharmacist and Mom of my 3–year-old granddaughter, Sophia. We were talking about how parents could use the book with their children on nature walks and to instill interest and curiosity in nature. Rachel was thinking out loud and the word PersonaliTrees just popped out!  She said she thought it would be a fun title and everybody who had seen the project agreed.

FASCINATING AUTHORS: What books have influenced you the most?

Author: The writings of John O’Donohue have had a most profound effect on me.  He was my guide to Findhorn Press.  Other authors I love:  Fred Hageneder, Eileen Caddy, Anne Lamott and Kent Meyers.

FASCINATING AUTHORS: Who was your publisher and why did you choose them?

Author: Findhorn Press, in Scotland. I did a great amount of research, but in all honesty I was connected to them by powers greater than myself. I was familiar with their work and their writers. All of my expectations have been exceeded. They are wonderful people whose knowledge and professionalism are exceeded only by their patience. Again, powers greater than either of us guided us toward each other as the project matured.

They were the only publisher to whom I submitted my book. Their submission guidelines said:

No Coffee Table books, no Photography books and no Poetry books. PersonaliTrees is a combination of all three. Go figure. You just never know, right?

FASCINATING AUTHORS: Tell us a little bit about your book.

Author: PersonaliTrees is part inspiration, part spiritual connectedness, and part imagination. Trees are spiritual beings who will tell us the story of life if we are fearless about listening to them. I’ve brought to this first book many of my favorite pictures of trees that depict human conditions and emotions. It is something I have always wanted to do. Until now, I just wasn’t sure how to do it, or if people would embrace the idea. I’ve found that there are tree lovers all over the world, and that people have a very deep connection with trees on a spiritual level.

FASCINATING AUTHORS: What can we look forward to in your next book?

Author: As the PersonaliTrees community has grown, people have started to send me incredible tree pictures from everywhere. That’s a big reason why we set up the PersonaliTreesbook.com web site – to encourage and accommodate those submissions. I hope to include some of the best of those in the next book.

FASCINATING AUTHORS: Is there anything we haven’t covered that you would like to include?

Author: ONLY THIS…

Over the years it has become very clear to me that people — in general — are very connected to trees. For whatever reason—there seems to be some sort of lifeline there. I think eventually we will all understand this connection better than we do now. Whatever the invisible current that runs between us, our tree spirit friends remain steady and ever present.

FASCINATING AUTHORS: Thank you for taking the time to be part of this interview!

To learn more about the book and Author, please visit – http://www.personalitrees.com/