Dr. Michael S Scheeringa on A Parent's Guide to PTSD in Youth

In this interview, Dr. Michael Scheeringa talks to Alexander “The Engineer” Lim, host of AuthorStory by alvinwriter.com, about his book, They’ll Never Be the Same: A Parent’s Guide to PTSD in Youth.



“Parents, it’s up to you.” ~Dr. Michael Scheeringa

As a young, newly-trained doctor, Michael was interested in preventing child abuse, but found that field to be too ambitious to tackle, so he went into research into the effect of trauma on children - post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), in other words. He accumulated a lot of information from his research and clinical work had been spending time speaking about the matter to his colleagues as well as leading training workshops on the matter, but he felt that the word wasn’t going out as quickly as he felt it should. He thus wrote They’ll Never Be the Same in an attempt to let parents and the ordinary person know the symptoms and effects of PTSD on children.

Michael notes that PTSD springs from experiences which children consider to be life-threatening, rather than experiences which are stressful but don’t get up to the intensity of being life-threatening. The events are sudden, unexpected, sheer moments of panic, which can take place during such events as natural disasters, attacks by dogs (for young children), witnessing domestic violence and the like. That said, he agreed that not everybody reacts the same way to the same situation, due to the difference in the way children perceive things, with one child being in a car accident and getting traumatized and another child in the same accident not being traumatized, and he infers the possibility that this could be due to the way each individual’s brain is wired. Michael notes that, where the issue of being separated from parents is concerned, such an event isn’t necessarily life-threatening, although it is stressful, unless it’s done in a very frightening way.

Some of the myths that Michael points out about childhood PTSD are:

• “Young children don’t remember what happened to them.” This is not true. Children as young as three can suffer from PTSD, and they will remember the traumatic event as they grow older.
• “Kids grow out of it.” This doesn’t happen, so it is best to get help for the child as soon as possible - immediately, as much as possible, within a month at most.
• “The parent - particularly the mother - is to blame.” This isn’t the case, and Michael points out that parents - particularly mothers - were blamed for autism in the 1950s, as they were blamed for schizophrenia in the 1960s. Granted, some parents might be using their children to get doctors to doing something which might not be proper or legitimate, and Michael does admit that therapists and clinicians are exposed, during their training, to populations which skew towards such behavior, but he also says that, in his experience, parents don’t lie where their children’s welfare is concerned.

Michael remarks that parents can tell if a child suffers PTSD by seeing a sudden change in a child’s behavior. PTSD is the only psychological disorder which manifests itself immediately, so something like a child being happy and expressive one day and literally withdrawn the next day is a symptom of PTSD. He also notes that there are twenty different diagnostic indicators for PTSD, which fall into three types:

1. Re-experiencing - nightmares, thoughts that barge in.
2. Avoidance and numbing - losing interest in things they previously liked.
3. Increased arousal - difficulty sleeping and concentration, exaggerated startle responses (“jumpy”).

Therapies for PTSD will never enable the child to totally heal. The best that can be done is to enable the child to live with the event, similar to how people would live with diabetes or chronic back pain, for the rest of their life. That said, such therapies will enable those who are successfully treated to live out their live productively.

Michael remarks that psychotherapy is the first line of treatment for PTSD, as it has the best long-lasting effect. There are different types of psychotherapy for PTSD, and one of these, which Michael recommends and uses, is Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT). This is a form of evidence-based treatment, which means that the therapy has been tested in randomized clinical trials and has been shown to work, unlike other therapies which have not been clinically tested at all. CBT consists of twelve to fifteen weekly sessions, with the patient learning new coping strategies at the start of the process, after which they need to start talking about their trauma in a gentle, guided way to enable them to gain mastery of the negative feelings they have about the event. Michael notes that up to 75% of his patients have had success with CBT, and the other 25% need help in addition to CBT, such as through medication.

Michael estimates that 90% of all children with PTSD aren’t so diagnosed, as most clinicians nowadays aren’t trained to recognize PTSD in children. For the moment, it is now up to the parents to seek help for their children by finding their own assessments, such as those on Michael’s website, and then looking around for therapists who can help them out. Some of the questions Michael recommends parents to ask, to find the right kind of therapist, are:

• Do you use evidence-based therapy?
• Have you seen a child like mine, with PTSD, before?
• How many cases have you treated?
• Have you treated children who are my child’s age?
• What kind of psychotherapy do you plan to use?

He also says that parents should switch therapists if the therapist they are working with doesn’t seem to be effective.

On the subject of studies conducted on brains of people who suffered PTSD, Michael remarks that the present conventional wisdom is that those peoples’ brains have suffered changes due to PTSD but notes that most of this wisdom is based on studies which didn’t have a reference image of the brain prior to PTSD and those images after the event which triggered PTSD took place. He notes that some newer studies, which do use “before and after” imaging, indicate that the brain structure didn’t change before and after the event took place, and that it is likely that some people are more vulnerable to PTSD than others because of the way their brain is structured.

Purchase from Amazon: They’ll Never Be the Same: A Parent’s Guide to PTSD in Youth by Dr. Michael Scheeringa

Pardeep Singh Kaleka and Arno Michaelis on Forgiveness after Hate

In this interview, Arno Michaelis and Pardeep Singh Kaleka talks to Alexander “The Engineer” Lim, host of AuthorStory by alvinwriter.com, about their book, The Gift of Our Wounds: A Sikh and a Former White Supremacist Find Forgiveness After Hate.


PLAY THE VIDEO AND LISTEN TO THE THE INTERVIEW ON YouTube.

“Hurt people hurt people.” ~Pardeep Singh Kaleka and Arno Michaelis

Pardeep is a first-generation immigrant, having come from Punjabi, India at the age of six, when his parents wanted a better life and opportunities for themselves and their family. They settled in Milwaukee, Wisconsin and essentially followed the American dream, and thanks to their parents’ hard work Pardeep and his family were able to go to college, with his brother becoming a teacher and Pardeep, a police officer. He is a Sikh, which is a religion which is concerned with seeing the humanity in others, and Sikhs are expected to be learners.

Arno grew up in Milwaukee, in a good neighborhood, but in an alcoholic household, with his parents struggling. The conflicts led him to lash out at others, and as he grew older, he got stimulated by antisocial, violent acts. He began drinking at the age of sixteen and first got involved with white supremacists while listening to music geared towards that audience. He spent seven years in neo-Nazi hate groups as a leader and street fighter, but he felt an increasing sense of exhaustion and isolation in that time, particularly since the people he was supposed to hate treated him with kindness when he least deserved it. Arno remarked that everything that he did was designed to provoke hostility, hate and fights, but when he was treated with kindness he didn’t know how to react. He eventually decided to leave when he became a single father to a baby girl and one of his friends was killed in a street fight, which made him present to the fact that a lot of his friends were incarcerated, and that if he himself didn’t change, he would wind up like them. He then spent the next seven years healing, then stopped drinking, began writing and founded an online magazine, Life After Hate and now works as a counter-violent extremist consultant.

On August 5, 2012, one of Arno’s former colleagues shot and killed six people in a Sikh temple, one of whom was Pradeep’s father, before being killed himself in a shootout with responding policemen. Pardeep then reached out to connect with Arno a few months after the shooting, and since then, the pair have been working together to break the cycle of hate which breeds more hate and racism.

While Arno doesn’t believe there is an excuse for hate and violence, he remarks that there is always a reason. Whatever the ideology under which the hate and violence blossoms, the common thread is a background of suffering and pain within an individual. Pardeep seconds this, saying that there are a lot of issues related to vulnerability amongst individuals who lean towards extremism and violence.

Irresponsibility is the main source of racism, according to Arno and Pardeep, where it is easier to blame someone else, or another group, as being the source of one’s perceived poor status in life, rather than confront oneself about one’s own behaviors and actions that had brought one to that state. Such blame enables one to disconnect from the reality of one’s life, and Arno notes that white supremacist groups prey upon this mix of frustration, discontent and blame to recruit people, which only accelerates the person’s downfall, rather than enabling them to find ways out of their situation.

Pardeep notes that, in the United States, a lot of judging goes on about people involved in white supremacist groups, which keeps people from recognizing the pain and historical trauma of such ideologies. A more mindful culture, according to him, is necessary to solve the concern, rather than demonizing the people, as there is no way out for the person once that is done. Rejection, real or perceived, is the trigger for violence in a lot of mass shootings, according to Pardeep, and Arno remarks that violence is also an attempt to find control something in their life when everything else isn’t in control. He then adds that he and Pardeep, as part of their work, help people to see that controlling the lens through which they view the world, be it for evil or for good, is a powerful thing. Arno also notes that responding to antisocial behavior with compassion, rather than aggression and vengeance, breaks the cycle of violence, without accepting such behavior as normal.

Pardeep notes that the interplay of factors in racism is complex, as it exists in history and society as well as individuals. Resolving the concern, he says, requires that society become a solution-focused one, rather than the judgemental, blaming one that it presently is. Arno remarks that one thing people can do is to see oneself in others, particularly when those other people do harm.

To those who are deeply involved in racist ideologies, Arno would ask them if they know someone of their race who could make better decisions in their life and if they know someone of another race who is hard-working and likeable. To those who are on the receiving end of a hate crime, Pardeep would like them to know that pain, however painful, has a purpose with regard to one’s life journey.

Arno notes that, as human beings, it’s in our nature that we find what we seek, so those who find reasons to be hateful and outraged will find such, while those who seek inspiration will find it. This is something which Pardeep calls a “choice bias,” and whatever one chooses to invest in gives greater weight to one’s own beliefs.

Purchase from Amazon: The Gift of Our Wounds: A Sikh and a Former White Supremacist Find Forgiveness After Hate by Pardeep Singh Kaleka and Arno Michaelis

Danny Kofke: How to Be Wealthy on a Teacher's Salary (Even if You're Not a Teacher)

In this interview, Danny Kofke talks to Alexander “The Engineer” Lim, host of AuthorStory by alvinwriter.com, about his book, The Wealthy Teacher: Lessons For Prospering On A School Teacher’s Salary.



“It’s really easy to spend money without thinking about it.” ~Danny Kofke

The Wealthy Teacher is actually Danny’s fourth book, all of which deal with creating financial freedom for oneself based on his own experiences of doing so on a teacher’s salary. His methods have resulted in his presently being debt-free and have enabled his wife to be a stay-at-home mom for nine years, with the family living on his salary alone. The Wealthy Teacher is intended to make the reader look at one’s overall financial picture and take the exact steps needed to create financial success - the kind which, Danny explains, would enable someone to leave one’s employment if one dislikes the situation there.

Danny’s childhood environment was a happy one, despite his family not being well-to-do, and it was then that he noticed that those among his friends who had a lot materially weren’t happy - something he continued to notice amongst adults as he got older. When he married, he agreed with his wife that she should be a stay-at-home mom and look after the children for a few years, which meant that they needed to get their financial plan straight for the next several years, one which would keep them out of debt.

Where a teacher’s salary is concerned, Danny notes that, over time, a teacher’s salary is a decent amount, but salaries are low for beginning teachers, which presents a challenge at a time when one is establishing one’s life and career. Danny notes that the low pay is particularly challenging to today’s teachers, as they also have to deal with the home life issues of students and that, even before they start working, teachers already have to deal with student loans.

Where the average American is concerned, Danny recalls a survey recently conducted which showed that around 70% of all Americans would need to borrow money to cover a $400 emergency. For his part, Danny has a one-year emergency fund and a retirement account as well as having no debt, and more importantly he and his family live wealthy lives.

Debt is “90% behavior,” according to Danny, pointing out that income and outflow is 8th-grade math. It’s easy for people to spend money to make themselves feel good when they feel unhappy, and Danny points out that that the feeling of “good” doesn’t last long while having an impact on their future financial standing. He also points out that people get into trouble when they spend more than they earn, citing a survey done by a sports magazine which noted that several NBA players file for bankruptcy five years after retirement.

Danny notes that people not only need to have short-term and long-term goals financially, but also need to know the why behind those goals. The example he gives is of wanting to have enough in retirement to enjoy outings with his grandchildren, which keeps him from buying a brand new car and placing what would have been his monthly payment money for the car into his retirement fund.

The Wealthy Teacher includes things to do to get people on the path to financial freedom, starting with setting goals and knowing why, after which he goes over such things as having proper insurance and getting a will. He also goes into saving an amount for expenses and having an emergency fund, then about getting out of debt, which he notes is essentially money one owes before one even gets a job. Danny points out that life and consequent expenses happen, and that having a financial margin available turns a catastrophe into a mere inconvenience. He also then notes about investing for retirement and then paying off one’s mortgage, finishing off with being financially free.

Danny notes that the concept of “wealth” is subjective, as being wealthy is what one makes of it, and his definition of wealth is having the freedom to pursue what one is passionate about. He gave the example of being able to travel around Europe during his two-year stay in Poland with his wife while still being able to save up money for the inevitable return to the United States, which meant that neither of them felt deprived of the experience of living overseas. Danny noted that they were able to save because they paid themselves first by putting aside, as soon as they got their paychecks, a fixed amount of money for their future needs, which gave them some $20,000 to start off their life in the United States. This practice is the reverse of how most people operate, in that the latter pay off their expenses first and then enjoy what’s left.

Danny’s basic advice to people, particularly those starting out in life, is to keep track of their expenses, to know where, exactly, their money goes. He and his wife did just that for a month, shortly after they got married, and the figures they came up with helped them set up their monthly budget. Danny notes that most people have an outflow problem, rather than an income problem. He also points out that a lot of people don’t take advantages of the opportunities offered them because they literally can’t afford to, and gave the example of his becoming an author because he could afford to take advantage of that particular opportunity, which has consequently enriched his life in many ways.

Purchase from Amazon: The Wealthy Teacher: Lessons For Prospering On A School Teacher’s Salary by Danny Kofke

Gretchen Steidle on Leading from Within & Conscious Social Change and Mindfulness for Social Innovation

In this interview, Gretchen Steidle talks to Alexander “The Engineer” Lim, host of AuthorStory by alvinwriter.com about her book, Leading From Within: Conscious Social Change and Mindfulness for Social Innovation.



“The most important thing you can do before you decide to establish your own work in the world is to listen deeply to those who are affected by the issue.” ~Gretchen Steidle

Gretchen has been working in the international non-profit sector as a social entrepreneur as well as in the mindfulness sector for the past fifteen years. Even when she started out, it was obvious to Gretchen that investing in one’s well-being and personal wellness were important to do the work necessary to create sustainable, positive change. She realizes that, in the present environment of division and burned out activists, mindfulness is a tool not only for oneself but also influences how relationships are built and problems solved - which is vital for leaders.

Gretchen had started working on different components of Leading From Within for around three years before she was asked if she wanted to write a book, and her answer was “yes,” which has resulted in the book being so published.

Gretchen believes that those organizations and individuals which seek to advance the world in some way use methods to influence or force others to effect the change desired. She notes that we, as individuals, look to someone outside of ourselves to make changes, and when that other person doesn’t change permanently, we get frustrated and fall into the blame game, which runs counter to our need to understand each other at a deep, human level. Gretchen remarks that knowing what drives change, what it is within us that resists it, and the dynamics at the root level of an issue are necessary, and using mindfulness enables one to become an expert in both internal and external change and, thus, lasting, long-term transformation.

Gretchen gives, as an example, the tax on smoking, which is intended to limit the number of people who smoke. She points out that this only affects those who aren’t serious smokers, and if the tax is removed, those non-serious smokers will be more likely to take up smoking again. Serious smokers won’t stop smoking, even if the tax were levied, because of the addiction underlying their smoking habit. Gretchen’s method would take into account how smoking begins, how to treat addiction, and the challenges facing people who are in this situation.

Mindfulness is at the basis of Gretchen’s methodology and philosophy, and her definition is that stated by John Kabat-Zinn: “Paying attention on purpose in this present moment.” This means being aware, in the present moment, of all that is happening within and around oneself, such as one’s mood, mental activity and physical state as well as what is ongoing around oneself. She also notes that mindfulness is “practiced with a quality of curiosity and non-judgement,” which means that we notice all this without judging oneself or the world around.

Gretchen notes that there are many different ways to cultivate mindfulness, which she notes is a form of training one’s brain, as one exercises one’s brain by being mindful. She also notes that science is presently showing that the structure and function of one’s brain changes when one does so, and that, while meditation can be used to become mindful, one can also use cues throughout the day to become mindful.

There are five aspects to Gretchen’s movement of Conscious Social Change, and these are:

1. Cultivating presence, which is about practicing to become more mindful. This enables one to figure out how to change, as well as how difficult change actually is.
2. Becoming whole, which is when one begins to change the way one interacts with the world. This is critical to allowing one to deal with others as allies, rather than as opponents.
3. Ensuring balance, which is when one becomes aware when one needs to restore oneself, which is necessary to not being burned out.
4. Engaging mindfully, which is when one uses the skills one has developed and apply these to dealing with others. This enables one to put aside one’s ego and bias to understand others and the common ground between oneself and others, which creates a deeper understanding of issues and collaborative solutions which create long-term transformation.
5. Leading from within, which is when one is driven by one’s own passions rather than personal gain and when one is oriented to benefiting others as well as inspiring others to meaningfully function in deference to a common cause.

Where results are concerned, the biggest example of a success that Gretchen spoke of was when, some ten years back, Global Grassroots dealt with a village that wanted clean, drinking water. A normal non-profit would have just dug a well and turned it over to the village, but Gretchen and her people spoke to the women in the village to get the context of the situation, as the women had more information than they had. The present situation was that women needed to travel several miles and up and down a steep slope to get water from a questionable source, and that, along the way, they were vulnerable, while carrying such heavy water, to being physically and sexually attacked. Some of the village girls could help out with this, but because the trip took literally hours the girls would come to school late, fall behind in their lessons and eventually drop out. This also led to a practice within the village of women, particularly the disabled, exchanging sexual favors with men so that the latter would be the ones to draw water; and this was the main issue that the women wanted to work on.

The solution Gretchen’s group provided gave the village a good source of clean water, and the village could sell the water to those who could afford it and give it to the sexually exploited women for free. This led to a shift in the relationships between the men and the women in the village, particularly when the men saw how valuable the project was, with the men volunteering to take shifts with elderly women so that the latter’s water wouldn’t be stolen. With the money they got from selling the water, they were able to buy women’s health insurance and pay for orphans’ school fees, as well as provide loans to start small businesses.

It didn’t stop there, for the villagers shared their solution with other villages, and other villages adopted their model. The village started off by serving a hundred households and, ten years later, some 9,000 people have benefited from the solution Gretchen’s group provided - a solution which was borne by the collaborative, mindful and patient methods Gretchen espouses.

Purchase from Amazon: Leading From Within: Conscious Social Change and Mindfulness for Social Innovation by Gretchen Steidle

Eliza Factor on Caring for a Child with Periventricular Leukomalacia (PVL)

In this interview, Eliza Factor talks to Alexander “The Engineer” Lim, host of AuthorStory by alvinwriter.com about her book, Strange Beauty: A Portrait of My Son.


“We work better by working with other people and helping other people.” ~Eliza Factor

Although Eliza didn’t have a typical middle class life until she settled down with her husband, she describes herself as a “typical person” leading a normal life before her son, Felix, entered her life. She contracted chickenpox while she was pregnant with Felix, and this impacted Felix. He was born early and his being “floppy” after he was born was initially racked up to his being a premature baby. Eliza and her husband then began going to doctors and getting Felix tested before he was finally diagnosed with having periventricular leukomalacia, which is essentially when the brain’s white matter is damaged during fetal development. This has led to Felix’s combination of cerebral palsy and autism as the two major conditions which he has to this day.

At the time that he was diagnosed, at the age of one, nobody could tell Eliza if Felix would even walk or talk, and it was then that Eliza realized that her son wouldn’t grow up the way other children did. Eliza notes that diagnoses are the labels presently used today to access the services one needs, as even a diagnosis like “autism” is a basket terms to describe various conditions. She remarks that Felix’s conditions mean that he can’t do things for himself, although he can do such things as standing up, if he is helped. Eliza also notes that, despite the violent behavior that Felix exhibited, and despite having some limitations with communicating, such as describing things in the past tense, he is very communicative, with an ability to strongly connect with others and share with them an “infectious” sense of humor. Despite this, Felix apparently has a far more tenuous connection with his body than others, with Eliza hazarding that Felix can most likely feel pain but doesn’t know where exactly it comes from.

Felix lived at home until the age of ten, and Eliza describes life with him as “rich, full and exhausting,” as it was also during that time when Felix displayed cyclical, violent behavior, during which times he would hit himself for periods of up to three days straight. She wrote Strange Beauty after placing Felix in a residential school, where he could live in an environment where his needs could be met, and with her home now feeling empty, she had the time to reflect on her experiences with Felix. Eliza attempts to explain the process of her journey within its pages, to the point of embracing and accepting the disabilities within Felix and recognizing the disabilities in herself and in others, which was liberating for her. She also wants to use the book as a way to open up conversations about what it’s like to live with a disabled child, particularly those who can become as violent as Felix could, and points out that what is needed is more specialized education programs in public schools as well as training amongst public servants on how violence can escalate and how to de-escalate it.

Eliza also learned how to read other people’s body language after years of observing Felix. She also realized that she needed help from others, not only when dealing with Felix’s outbursts but also with other aspects of her life. She notes that public support for parents and families with children who have conditions similar to Felix’s is lacking at present. Eliza remarks that there are people who may look and act normal but who have conditions similar to Felix’s (which cause outbursts of violence and behavior) who are punished, rather than helped.

Eliza notes that there were people out in the street who would walk up to her and Felix and interact with them, with some offering to help and most just saying “hi,” which were positive experiences for her. She started a community center for families with children who had disabilities, an art and play center which runs on a volunteer basis (and which is intended to be an indoor place which was open to everyone), as well as to use disability as a way to bring people together. Eliza notes that meeting within the confines of the community center, is energizing and fun for members of families whose common thread is having a disabled child, as it brings out the best in her as well as with everyone else involved.

Eliza also notes that Felix’s younger sisters had a good relationship with him when they were younger, but were jealous of such things as needing to be able to put on their clothes by themselves while Felix was given help. Their view of disability is different from most people, which is highlighted by the story that Eliza gave - about telling her daughter about a game she played as a child, when she and other kids would ask each other about what disability they would rather have. Eliza’s daughter was confused by the story, as her daughter had never considered blindness or deafness as being a disability.

To those who would find themselves in a position similar to Eliza’s, her advice is to love the child as they are, to seek help when needed, and to follow the child’s lead, as the child will give clues to how they want to be handled, as such children shouldn’t be forced to be something they aren’t. She also believes that all of us are disabled in some way, and that there is a lot of fear about this, but that that is the way humans are and that is okay, which opens up freedom for oneself and others.

Purchase from Amazon: Strange Beauty: A Portrait of My Son by Eliza Factor

Tim Miller on Writing Fifty Shades of Hell and Fifty Plus Other Extreme Horror Books

In this interview, Tim Miller talks to Alexander “The Engineer” Lim, host of AuthorStory by alvinwriter.com about his book, Fifty Shades of Hell, a novel where Hellraiser meets Fifty Shades of Grey, as well as his body of work.


“Sometimes, you have to write the crap to get to the good stuff.” ~Tim Miller

Tim had been writing ever since he was a child, and he was influenced by authors such as Stephen King, Clive Barker, Michael Connelly, Thomas Harris and Jack Ketchum. It wasn’t until he was undergoing a divorce that he decided to venture into writing books as a way to relieve the stress he was then experiencing. After finishing his first book, The Hand of God, he signed up with a small publisher which, after a year, was bought out by another publisher, with whom Tim didn’t get along. The publisher then gave the rights to the book back to Tim, who then self-published it on Amazon, and ever since then, he has self-published some 53 books, in total, to date.

Tim, at the start, wrote extreme horror, which is essentially horror which goes into the taboos which aren’t done in mainstream media, such as details on what happens to the body when things such as a knife is plunged into it, which is presented in the messiest and most horrific way possible. He remarks that a lot of his readers are stay-at-home moms, although he admits, he has gotten e-mails from readers who have actually been aroused by the horrific scenes he writes. Recently, however, Tim has moved away from extreme horror and has gone into writing in other genres.

Tim’s books are relatively short, at around 30,000 words, which is how he is able to write so many in so short a time; he even remarked that, in the past two years or so, he has written around ten books a year. The ideas for stories come to him so fast that he has often decided to not create a sequel based on a book and characters he has already written and instead write a totally new book.

From his own experience, Tim noted that, for an author to get his book accepted by a publisher is a difficult process, necessitating the hiring of a reputable agent, who will then shop the book - as well as the books of the possibly hundreds of other authors that he represents - to various publishers. Once a publisher is interested in the book, the publisher then gets the rights to the book, which includes control over the cover and editing; and once the book is published, it usually isn’t marketed much by the publisher, which means that the author has to be the one to do the marketing himself. The publisher does give an author an advance payment, but Tim noted that the costs of marketing the book, by an author, come from this advance payment, and that the publisher doesn’t give additional money until the advance has been earned.

Self-publishing his own books works out well for Tim, as he has total creative control over his works, rather than having a publisher dictate changes to him based on market research. He has some model friends who help him come up with the cover images for his books, and he also works with an editor and designers who help him out with the graphic aspects. Tim also has beta readers who check on how the stories go and who give him the necessary input he might need to change a book’s title to make it stand out more. That said, Tim remarks that he has to contend with Amazon’s own internal censorship, which doesn’t tell authors why certain books get banned.

Tim notes that being business-minded is necessary to succeed in self-publishing, and that his willingness to learn is what enabled his present degree of success. He does all his marketing himself and has built up a good Twitter following. Tim remarks that marketing through Facebook is somewhat limiting, as Facebook presently doesn’t allow for too much advertising and promotion, but that he can post every hour, if he wanted to, on Twitter, which works out, as it relies on a chronological news feed. He also buys Amazon ads, and while he does buy Facebook ads he has noticed that these have become less helpful of late.

Tim remarks that Amazon pays 70% royalty on retail price, which means that, if a book sells for $2.99, the author gets $2 per book. This is in contrast with going through a small-time publisher, where an author will get around $1 per book for the same price sold on Amazon, and far less when going with a traditional publisher. Tim notes that small-time publishers are run by only one or two people and don’t do marketing or promotion for a book. He also shared his experience with a small publisher when he needed to order a batch of books to be printed for a book signing, and the publisher charged him more per book than these were being sold on Amazon. Tim also remarked that, as the press is small, any printing requests are dependent upon their printing schedule, and that the disreputable small presses don’t pay royalties to their authors. Moreover, when a small printing press stops operating, the book effectively dies, as all of the rights belong to the press, which means that the authors can’t get their books back for future reprints.

Where traditional publishers are concerned, Tim advises authors to go over the details of the contract given and then negotiate with the traditional publisher on the details of the contract. He also advises getting legal aid for contract negotiations, as he believes that it is ultimately the author’s responsibility to get the best deal he can for himself, and that, if there is something in the contract that an author isn’t comfortable with, the contract should not be signed.

To would-be authors, Tim recommends that they write the book out, first and foremost, before figuring out what to do with it afterwards. He also recommends that authors get clear on their goals, as how they proceed will depend on these. A horror writer who wants to win a Stoker award and get recognition, for example, should go with a small, reputable publisher, rather than self-publish, while those who would want to make money from their work would be better off self-publishing and then promote their book on various social media. Tim also notes that there are a lot more books being published nowadays compared to even a decade previously, which means that his earnings from his books has gone down somewhat, due to market saturation.

Tim has a “sidekick,” Sancho the chihuahua, who literally walked up to him one day. The chihuahua was friendly, and after Tim checked if there were any missing dogs around and couldn’t find any, decided to adopt him for good. According to Tim, Sancho oversees his writing and is in accord with his present shift in genres.


Purchase from Amazon: Fifty Shades of Hell by Tim Miller

Robert Thorson and The Guide to Walden Pond (All You Need to Know)

In this interview, Professor Robert Thorson talks to Alexander “The Engineer” Lim, host of AuthorStory by alvinwriter.com about his book, The Guide to Walden Pond: An Exploration of the History, Nature, Landscape, and Literature of One of America’s Most Iconic Places.



“There’s nothing selfish about starting from within and defining your relationships in an outward direction.” ~Robert Thorson

Robert Thorson had become enamored of writer Henry David Thoreau, author of the book, Walden, while he was in college. Within a year of moving from Alaska to New England, he finally visited Walden Pond, the centerpoint of Thoreau’s book, and dropped a stone from his former home, marking the start of his relationship with the famous lake. Thor, as he prefers to be called, has been running field trips at Walden Pond since 2004, and it was in the summer of 2017, during the bicentennial celebrations of Thoreau’s birthday, that he turned a student handout into a pamphlet. When his wife found out, she told him to go ahead and write a guide, which was something that surprised Thor since there was no guide at all despite the fact that the pond received around half a million visitors annually. Although Thor has written scholarly books, writing a guide wasn’t on his “to do” list, and while he does admit that The Guide to Walden Pond is a guidebook, complete with images and descriptions, it also has various essays within.

Henry David Thoreau was one of the first main exponents of the American environmental movement. His book, Walden, which took nine years, seven drafts and two bursts of writing to complete, was the starting point for a lot of American nature writing. Thoreau contemplated about a sense of place and belonging, rather than of travel and adventure, and is known for such books as Civil Disobedience. He was an influence on such people as Mahatma Gandhi, Leo Tolstoy and Martin Luther King.

Walden Pond, which is really a lake, is around a mile or so south of the village center of Concord, Massachusetts, which is now a suburb of Boston. Concord itself is known to historically be the place where American transcendentalism began in the mid-19th century. Walden Pond itself is just one small lake in a chain of lakes in the area. As a lake, The Pond is deep and 62 acres in a woodland area at the center of a state reservation (actually a state park). In Thoreau’s time, access to the lake was done via railroad and was somewhat difficult; today, access is east through roads. There were was such a glut of visitors to Walden Pond in Thoreau’s time, both from the United States and internationally, that consequently, the number of visitors was limited by authorities in the 1970s to maintain it in the spirit of Thoreau.

For visitors, Walden Pond is the subject of Thoreau’s famous book about a place, Walden, but for Thoreau, it was a small and otherwise ordinary lake where he could get distance himself from normal, hurried life; a place where he could write, relax and contemplate. The lake’s shape, from his viewpoint, reflected such attributes of Thoreau such as simplicity, resilience, purity and symmetry, and became, to him, a source of inspiration. Thoreau could also see the sun rise from his house by the Pond, which served as a metaphor for rebirth. As for his house, it was a small one-room cabin and was reached by a carriage road, within easy walking access to other human settlements nearby. Thoreau had a lot of visitors to his house during his stay there, with as many as thirty guests at any one time, and held organized meetings there.

Thor noted that four things made The Guide to Walden Pond special. Writing was one of these aspects, given the process by which the book was written, involving a gestation on the various aspects of human social relationships - the relationship between human and nature and what he read of the works of such people as Charles Darwin and Alexander Humboldt. Landscape - that of Walden Pond itself - was another aspect, given its depth and appearance. Solitude was also offered by his location, as he could remove himself from society to a place where he was at a “tension point” between Nature and human society.

Thor remarked that a lot of those who read the book would be “armchair ##s,” who would visit the Pond through the book, while there would be those who would both visit the Pond and read the book. Thor started out with the northeast sector, where the parking area and visitor’s center are, and which is all modern, as is the entire eastern side of Walden Pond. It is the western part of the pond which approximates the environment that Thoreau resided in, particularly the northwestern part of the pond, whose landscape remains authentic to Thoreau’s day. The tradition of leaving a token at the site of Thoreau’s house began in 1872 by a Mrs. Adams and has been continued ever since. The southwestern part of the lake is where the Pond has three coves of interest, and offers an opportunity to reflect on different aspects of Walden Pond’s history. The western end of Walden Pond is also where the original access, by railway, was, as well as a Victorian-era amusement park, which was started in 1886 and burned down in 1902. The southeastern sector of the lake affords a quiet, reflective walk as well as a view of both the natural and the modern landscape, before returning to the real world, which could provide some reflection to visitors on the changes that have happened.

Thor notes that, although Walden Pond is within twenty miles of a major city, it is still completely surrounded by large trees, which isn’t common for lakes closely sited near urban areas. Although one would think that the environs around the pond are untouched, Thor notes that these have all been affected by the hand of man at some previous time. Thor noted a study done on the Pond based on sediment core work since 1979, which showed that the microorganisms within are being affected by human pollution and are changing due to climate warming. He also noted that people go to Walden Pond not just for a pilgrimage but also for such activities as swimming in the lake and training for triathlons.

To those who are seeking some relief from the hectic, daily life, Thor recommends disconnecting and then looking inside oneself and “explore the Atlantic and Pacific Ocean of your own consciousness,” as Thoreau once stated, after which one can spread oneself out to the world around, regardless of what others think. Thor then noted that Thoreau reflected on the telegraph, which was a new technology of his day, and expressed concerned about the costs of technology itself, which is reflected in a line in Walden: “Men have become tools of their tools.”

Purchase from Amazon: The Guide to Walden Pond: An Exploration of the History, Nature, Landscape, and Literature of One of America’s Most Iconic Places by Robert Thorson