The Story Behind My New E Books

"We only understand the world through language,
and the writer is at the centre of our understanding of the world,
and our ability to change the world."
Fatima Bhutto

Over the years I’ve found it interesting to ask authors why they write and more often than not the response is “I just had to get it out of me, put it down on paper, give it life.”

I’ve heard it said that we all have at least one book inside of us and I don’t disagree. For me, I’ve found over the years that the more I write the more I need to write. It’s kind of a portal that’s been opened up in the top of my head and now that it is open it has no intention of closing.

About 10 years ago I wrote the book ‘BE’ because I’d spent months sitting in the Drakensberg mountains watching sunsets and talking about life with a great friend Dorle. When Dorle left to go back to Germany she asked me to ‘write it all down’ and so several months later, finding myself in far north Queensland, I did just that.

The journey since has been interesting to say the least. BE was originally published in a small run with a friend of mine and when we sold all the copies I approached Penguin who published BE and the follow up book DO together. Penguin then went on to sell the international rights and when the third book in the series FAITH was published in 2006, Marlowe & Co. in New York took over the publishing duties.

Since 2006 I’ve written a book about my experiences in South Africa pursuing my dream of creating a retreat space and what it was like to live amongst the Zulu people. The book explores African Shamanism and is called ‘A Place Where You May Find Peace’.

From that experience I had a dose of how to deal with FEAR and hence as art follows life I wrote a book called ‘FEAR’ which explores the darker side of life.

In the last three years I have had the opportunity to revisit all of my experiences over the last 20 years or so and to reflect on the philosophy in the books. In working with people one on one I recognised that there was a need to put together a program and a resource book that would support people to actually live what they had learnt. Yes – Walk the Talk!

The book that came out of that is called ‘The Self Mastery Toolbox’.

For the last few months I’ve been wondering what to do with these three books as I recognised that the whole platform for publishing was shifting and to my mind will inevitably move to an electronic format.

Then, as is often the way, a friend of mine brought Smashwords to my attention. It’s a site that allows you to upload E books and have them distributed in a multitude of formats.

And about the same time another person pointed out that the 3 books also formed a Trilogy – an Experiential Trilogy - that very logically followed on from the Foundation Trilogy of BE, DO and FAITH.

So, I invite you to visit my Smashwords page http://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/acping

And to download the new books as they become available. At the time of writing the first two have been converted and ‘The Self Mastery Toolbox’ will be available soon.

And to all the people who have supported my work over the years I thank you from the bottom of my heart as I feel incredibly blessed to be able to follow my passions and write and share the gifts that come to me.