Books

Drawing from more than 25 years of literary know-how and modeled after a 15-week college course, this manual provides guidance for seekers wishing to delve further into self-exploration through writing. Extending beyond the idea that memoir writing intends to put past events into a more understandable current perspective, the guide maintains that keeping a document of one’s life is actually the basis of a psychic process called “soul work,” which manifests as a desire to experience the state of being alive to the fullest. This unusual approach to memoir writing aims to generate more honest and genuine results that come from inner needs rather than outer expectations. Intended to clarify a writer’s developmental path, this resource emphasizes the importance of self-awareness and the need for dealing with difficult material that actually alters the writer in the process, resulting in significant growth of the soul.

“The beauty of this book is in the way it takes its followers well beyond the writing process and into a deeper, spiritual journey.”  —Connie D. Griffin, author, To Tell the Truth: Practice and Craft in Narrative Nonfiction

Write Your Memoir is an extremely well written, concise, clear and lucid guide to the practice of writing a memoir. This is a good book and one I will definitely use when I teach this subject.”  —Carlo Gebler, author, Father & I: A Memoir

“I can’t imagine the first-time memoir writer making the journey through their manuscript with a gentler guide, a wiser counsel, a more enthusiastic cheerleader.”  —Suzanne Strempek Shea, author, Sundays in America

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When love attachments fall apart it’s often at exactly the same place – although recognizing what that place is can be hard. We fall in love and we all have to deal with our partners. Doesn’t it make sense to know what the archetypal challenges are? In The Six Archetypes of Love we look at the stages we all pass through in our life journeys and see what they mean in terms of understanding ourselves and love. Who are you in love? Are you the Innocent? Or could you be the Magician? And what is this thing called love? Dr. Allan Hunter uses the ancient wisdom of the Tarot, examples from the everyday world around us, and stories from myth and literature in coming up with genuinely helpful answers to the universal questions about love.

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Stories We Need To Know traces characters in over 3,000 years of literature through six stages as they progress on their journeys to self-mastery and full authenticity. Careful examination reveals that characters progress through the same stages and always in the same order. From Beowulf to Harry Potter it is always the same. These stages can be seen as The Six Archetypes and we can learn to appreciate our own life journey as a progression through these stages in one or more aspects of that journey. From Innocent to Magician, we see what the obstacles are on our path to greater self-realization and mastery and how we might overcome them.

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We all go through various passages in our lives—graduation from school, relationships, marriage, separations and divorce, the death of loved ones and so on. Life Passages is specifically designed to ask you to reflect on these changes in yourself and in those close to you whether you are the one going through the experience of change, or your child is, or even your parent. You can choose to turn directly to the section that refers to your specific situation, or you can work through the book, using it as a way to reconsider your life up to this point, and beyond. The chapters will ask you to respond to questions, develop images, even to draw diagrams and charts, all as a way to uncover the wisdom that is already within you. You will be given a context for all your responses so that you can find the meaning in what you have written about. This will allow you to take charge of your own life.

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Why The Sanity Manual? In our fast-paced world we rarely have the time to check in with ourselves, to see how we really are. And if we’re not sure how we are, how can we tell if we’re making good decisions? This book is based on a series of interactive writing and drawing exercises which are designed to acquaint you more fully with yourself—perhaps for the first time. Refined over twenty years of work with clients, these exercises will give you a context against which to compare your responses, so that you can come to a clearer understanding of who you are, how you function, and where you want to take your life. Consider these exercises a way to heighten awareness so you can eliminate the confusion in your life. Once you have started to do that you can liberate yourself to be who you truly are, and not what you think others expect you to be. In the process you can reclaim that most beleaguered of attributes, your sanity.

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Allan Hunter wrote the introduction and collaborated on this memoir by his father, Jim Hunter.

From Coastal Command to Captivity is the extraordinary tale of a Second World War Airman shot down and taken captive. Although never an escapee, his skills as an artist enabled him to help others by forging vital documents.

Jim Hunter’s war took a turn for the worse when he succeeded in hunting down the German battleship Scharnhost and her escorts in the Atlantic. Displaying almost reckless bravery he and his fellow Beaufort crew members pressed home their attack before succumbing to the inevitable; a swim in the Atlantic! Rescued after a mercifully short time, Jim became a POW but his war was by no means over.

Fortunately he kept a diary throughout his captivity, in itself a hugely risky thing to do and it is this that forms the basis of this evocative memoir.

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What happens when a man discovers he has a stalker? And what if the woman is someone he once worked with? Everyone jumps to assumptions and some are not flattering. That’s what faces Bill Staniforth. But when the harasser is found badly beaten things take a more sinister turn.

How They Met is a novel about prejudice and fixation, and also about how we can lie to ourselves to bolster our self-image.

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