What made you start writing?
I have been writing my entire life! When I was a child I would write poems and short stories all the time. I enjoyed writing during my education years and even liked writing papers, etc., for college courses. After several years of counseling, there was such a need for literature regarding letting go of childhood trauma and abuse I just decided to begin researching the subject. Using my own experience and those events of my patients, I found I had a book in progress! Since that time in the early 1990s, I have continued writing what I felt needed to be investigated and shared for others to heal and begin recovery from both childhood abuse and substance addiction.
You have been a Psychospiritual Therapist for over twenty-five years. How has this experience effected your writing?
While working with my patients, I have learned a lifetime of information about people and their relationships, their pain, and their dreams. I cherish all my patients and thank them for allowing me to share in their healing journeys. Without their bravery to delve into issues of pain, abuse, and addiction, none of my books would have been written.
Your work focuses mainly on Recovery and Self-Empowerment. What makes you qualified to write about such topics?
As I share in my book, Gifts From the Child Within, I experienced sexual molestation while a child. This experience shaped my life in many ways, some negative and some positive. One of the positive effects of my childhood abuse is my determination to help others who went through similar types of events. I believe self-awareness and self-empowerment can lead to self-recovery. Of course, along with my personal experience and my counseling experience, I have attained a higher education surrounding these fields, including a Doctorate Degree in Psychology.
Gifts From the Child Within was released January 2008. Tell us a little about it.
This book was originally released in 1994 and is the culmination of many years of working with my patients through their journey of recovery. I found most of the people I was seeing had issues from childhood which were at the root of their current presenting issues. Along with my love of writing, it was easy to bring the concepts of this important work into a book form. This recovery book is geared toward both professional and layperson. Its pages are filled with offerings from psychological, physiological, and spiritual perspectives which takes the reader on a journey into the soul. It is written with sensitivity and clarity inviting the reader to search within for healing.
Your new book ADDICTION: What's Really Going On? Inside a Heroin Treatment Program is due out in early summer 2009.
Yes, I am very excited about this book's release. It should be available sometime this summer if all goes well. This book is a brief look at ten years in the real life of a substance abuse counselor. My coauthor, Deborah McCloskey, took the time to write extensive notes pertaining to her personal struggles of working with drug addicted clients while employed in a methadone clinic located in Southern California from the late 1990s to her untimely death in 2006. We worked on this manuscript together over several years sharing our passion for client advocacy and discovering alternative ways to deal with those addicted to drugs and alcohol.
The manuscript progressed to a long narration of countless stories related through Deborah from her clients. I have woven these powerful stories, as well as, the immediate highs and lows of her own life crises to form a tapestry filled with pain, joy, defeat, and success. The entire manuscript is molded by Deborah’s heartfelt desire for her clients to be free of drugs. Her deep compassion for those she counseled guided them toward self-education, self-discovery, and self-recovery. These counseling methods both endeared her as “the counselor to get” and locked her into a decade of searching for better ways to help those she felt were stuck on the merry-go-round of a methadone system.
It is evident throughout the manuscript that Deborah’s passion for aiding those in addiction became her focus, as well as, to help redirect the way we as a society handle our drug addicted population. This passion led her to write the fascinating stories which pose the compelling question: What’s really going on? The manuscript addresses this question and others surrounding the need for changes in how those with drug addictions are treated in our society. One of Deborah’s goals was to manifest this vision and to bring the reality of addiction out-of-the-closet.
The stories are true, the people are real, the life threatening incidences and tales of pain. To balance the darkness, Deborah uses her candid sense of humor to reel in the reader until he can no longer resist. Once he enters, he will not leave until he finds justice. But is there justice? Throughout the manuscript the reader will search for illumination within the intriguing stories of depression and defeat, but find it rarely. Only in a few select brave souls who have struggled to become drug-free will the reader find the answers to the manuscript’s questioning title.
The target group for this manuscript is all with an interest in learning the factual reality of drug and alcohol addiction, including those addicted. Readership will include teachers, social workers, medical professionals, and counselors who wish to experience the eye-opening truth about their students, clients, and patients. It will be read by those incarcerated, working in hospitals, attending college, in our government, and our general adult population whether addicted, sober, or straight. The manuscript instructs us all to ask questions surrounding those we love and those we do not know--our addiction population.
How did you decide which publishing company to use for your books?
Well, being an unknown author my first two books were published by small independent houses which actually went out of business soon after the books were released! I then approached a non-profit spiritual group named Astara which I had been following for several years and they gladly published the second edition of Beyond Words and took on the first edition publication of An Inspirational Guide for the Recovering Soul in 2004. In 2007, as I was talking online to a fellow counselor, I asked him who had published his last book and he told me about Loving Healing Press. Subsequently, I contacted the publisher and asked if he was interested in printing a second edition of Gifts From the Child Within since it had gone out-of-print. He happily reported, "Yes!" and now I will have two books published by Loving Healing Press, and hopefully my next one also!
How important do you feel networking is for the sales of your books?
As a fairly unknown author, I feel it is very important to do all the networking possible to get my books into the public's eye. In today's market with the Kindle Reader, Amazon, and many other online booksellers it is imperative for an author to take the reins and book booksigning events, keep up a web site, and join as many online writers' sites as possible.
Where can people purchase your books?
All my books are available in bookstores and online through Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Copperfields, etc., as well as, directly through each of the publishers. Just ask your local bookseller to order it if you cannot find it on the shelves.
Anything else you'd like to add?
Please visit my web site for more information including Interviews, Articles, and other healing avenues:
www.DrSinor.com
I have been writing my entire life! When I was a child I would write poems and short stories all the time. I enjoyed writing during my education years and even liked writing papers, etc., for college courses. After several years of counseling, there was such a need for literature regarding letting go of childhood trauma and abuse I just decided to begin researching the subject. Using my own experience and those events of my patients, I found I had a book in progress! Since that time in the early 1990s, I have continued writing what I felt needed to be investigated and shared for others to heal and begin recovery from both childhood abuse and substance addiction.
You have been a Psychospiritual Therapist for over twenty-five years. How has this experience effected your writing?
While working with my patients, I have learned a lifetime of information about people and their relationships, their pain, and their dreams. I cherish all my patients and thank them for allowing me to share in their healing journeys. Without their bravery to delve into issues of pain, abuse, and addiction, none of my books would have been written.
Your work focuses mainly on Recovery and Self-Empowerment. What makes you qualified to write about such topics?
As I share in my book, Gifts From the Child Within, I experienced sexual molestation while a child. This experience shaped my life in many ways, some negative and some positive. One of the positive effects of my childhood abuse is my determination to help others who went through similar types of events. I believe self-awareness and self-empowerment can lead to self-recovery. Of course, along with my personal experience and my counseling experience, I have attained a higher education surrounding these fields, including a Doctorate Degree in Psychology.
Gifts From the Child Within was released January 2008. Tell us a little about it.
This book was originally released in 1994 and is the culmination of many years of working with my patients through their journey of recovery. I found most of the people I was seeing had issues from childhood which were at the root of their current presenting issues. Along with my love of writing, it was easy to bring the concepts of this important work into a book form. This recovery book is geared toward both professional and layperson. Its pages are filled with offerings from psychological, physiological, and spiritual perspectives which takes the reader on a journey into the soul. It is written with sensitivity and clarity inviting the reader to search within for healing.
Your new book ADDICTION: What's Really Going On? Inside a Heroin Treatment Program is due out in early summer 2009.
Yes, I am very excited about this book's release. It should be available sometime this summer if all goes well. This book is a brief look at ten years in the real life of a substance abuse counselor. My coauthor, Deborah McCloskey, took the time to write extensive notes pertaining to her personal struggles of working with drug addicted clients while employed in a methadone clinic located in Southern California from the late 1990s to her untimely death in 2006. We worked on this manuscript together over several years sharing our passion for client advocacy and discovering alternative ways to deal with those addicted to drugs and alcohol.
The manuscript progressed to a long narration of countless stories related through Deborah from her clients. I have woven these powerful stories, as well as, the immediate highs and lows of her own life crises to form a tapestry filled with pain, joy, defeat, and success. The entire manuscript is molded by Deborah’s heartfelt desire for her clients to be free of drugs. Her deep compassion for those she counseled guided them toward self-education, self-discovery, and self-recovery. These counseling methods both endeared her as “the counselor to get” and locked her into a decade of searching for better ways to help those she felt were stuck on the merry-go-round of a methadone system.
It is evident throughout the manuscript that Deborah’s passion for aiding those in addiction became her focus, as well as, to help redirect the way we as a society handle our drug addicted population. This passion led her to write the fascinating stories which pose the compelling question: What’s really going on? The manuscript addresses this question and others surrounding the need for changes in how those with drug addictions are treated in our society. One of Deborah’s goals was to manifest this vision and to bring the reality of addiction out-of-the-closet.
The stories are true, the people are real, the life threatening incidences and tales of pain. To balance the darkness, Deborah uses her candid sense of humor to reel in the reader until he can no longer resist. Once he enters, he will not leave until he finds justice. But is there justice? Throughout the manuscript the reader will search for illumination within the intriguing stories of depression and defeat, but find it rarely. Only in a few select brave souls who have struggled to become drug-free will the reader find the answers to the manuscript’s questioning title.
The target group for this manuscript is all with an interest in learning the factual reality of drug and alcohol addiction, including those addicted. Readership will include teachers, social workers, medical professionals, and counselors who wish to experience the eye-opening truth about their students, clients, and patients. It will be read by those incarcerated, working in hospitals, attending college, in our government, and our general adult population whether addicted, sober, or straight. The manuscript instructs us all to ask questions surrounding those we love and those we do not know--our addiction population.
How did you decide which publishing company to use for your books?
Well, being an unknown author my first two books were published by small independent houses which actually went out of business soon after the books were released! I then approached a non-profit spiritual group named Astara which I had been following for several years and they gladly published the second edition of Beyond Words and took on the first edition publication of An Inspirational Guide for the Recovering Soul in 2004. In 2007, as I was talking online to a fellow counselor, I asked him who had published his last book and he told me about Loving Healing Press. Subsequently, I contacted the publisher and asked if he was interested in printing a second edition of Gifts From the Child Within since it had gone out-of-print. He happily reported, "Yes!" and now I will have two books published by Loving Healing Press, and hopefully my next one also!
How important do you feel networking is for the sales of your books?
As a fairly unknown author, I feel it is very important to do all the networking possible to get my books into the public's eye. In today's market with the Kindle Reader, Amazon, and many other online booksellers it is imperative for an author to take the reins and book booksigning events, keep up a web site, and join as many online writers' sites as possible.
Where can people purchase your books?
All my books are available in bookstores and online through Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Copperfields, etc., as well as, directly through each of the publishers. Just ask your local bookseller to order it if you cannot find it on the shelves.
Anything else you'd like to add?
Please visit my web site for more information including Interviews, Articles, and other healing avenues:
www.DrSinor.com
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