John Selby
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I was lucky enough to grow up on a cattle ranch in Ojai California, and I still feel deeply grounded in country life. Then at 16 I spent a remarkable exchange-student year living in the bustling city of Durban, South Africa. Ever since, I've felt an integral part of the world community.
Then I went off to Princeton , mostly to satisfy my mother and grandparents. I received a great education, especially in English literature and history - but majored in Psychology, and ended up doing early EEG brain research for NIH studying the cognitive dynamics of meditation and psychedelics. I was my eating club's token cowboy, and fenced on Princeton's varsity team.
Rather than going to Vietnam, an unjust war which I opposed strongly, I went to the San Francisco Theological Seminary and became a Presbyterian minister (my family's faith) and a spiritual therapist. But my driving interest in Buddhist meditation, and my budding friendship with the philosopher Alan Watts, led me away from church work.
Instead I went to L.A. and participated in the American Film Institute's early internship program, studying screenwriting for several years, getting a film agent (Reese Halsey) and working in Hollywood. But there was little interest in my spiritually-grounded screenplays, so I attended the Radix Institute for Integral Therapy, finished my grad work and then worked as a therapist in San Luis Obispo.
All along, I was also developing a cowboy/jazz band with my brother, and working on my fiction and song-writing, A bit bored with the life of a therapist, I headed way down to Guatemala to spend a year at Lago Atitlan, writing songs, researching shamanic practices, and writing my first published book, Powerpoint (Warner). Barely escaping death in Guatemala, I spent almost a year up on my parents' new ranch in Idaho. On a whim I accepted a lecture/seminar tour in Europe - I went for 3 weeks and stayed for 7 remarkable years.
They loved me in West Berlin in the mid-eighties, and I set up a thriving therapy practice, wrote 2 dozen self-help books for the German market - and met my wife Birgitta, who I've been together with ever since. Moving to Switzerland, Birgitta and I developed a new idea (for then) called the self-help cassettebook (100 pages of text leading to an embedded cassette with audio guidance). We sold the concept to a major publisher there, and spent the next 4 years producing 24 cassettebooks. During that time we moved to Santa Fe, New Mexico, then Santa Barbara, then over to Kauai - where we raised our two sons. After the hurricane, we hand-built a sugar shack and lived a quiet country life, writing more books, producing self-help audio and video content, and briefly heading an early online therapy company called BrightMind.
But Kauai was a hard place to advance a writing career, even though we made lots of breakthroughs guiding people in meditation and emotional growth via audio/video support.
In 2010 we moved to our current home in Santa Cruz, where we attempted to interject short-form mindfulness meditation into the Microsoft community, then shifted to Plantronics where we co-produced several at-work mindfulness apps. Realizing the need for professional guidance in the rapidly-expanding cannabis community, we then raised capital and developed the Mindfully High program which includes the Cannabis For Couples book and audiobook, and the High Together App.
I've spent most of my adult life developing a fiction style and genre that's only now matured into serious English literature - it's just taken me that long to realize my deeper vision in fiction. I'm blessed with a great film agent who's shopping the miniseries in Hollywood, so I seem to have come full circle. Right now I' m also helping authors to manifest and publish their books, while continuing to develop new audio and video programs to expand the High Together App. I look forward to your perspective on both my fiction and nonfiction writing!
Then I went off to Princeton , mostly to satisfy my mother and grandparents. I received a great education, especially in English literature and history - but majored in Psychology, and ended up doing early EEG brain research for NIH studying the cognitive dynamics of meditation and psychedelics. I was my eating club's token cowboy, and fenced on Princeton's varsity team.
Rather than going to Vietnam, an unjust war which I opposed strongly, I went to the San Francisco Theological Seminary and became a Presbyterian minister (my family's faith) and a spiritual therapist. But my driving interest in Buddhist meditation, and my budding friendship with the philosopher Alan Watts, led me away from church work.
Instead I went to L.A. and participated in the American Film Institute's early internship program, studying screenwriting for several years, getting a film agent (Reese Halsey) and working in Hollywood. But there was little interest in my spiritually-grounded screenplays, so I attended the Radix Institute for Integral Therapy, finished my grad work and then worked as a therapist in San Luis Obispo.
All along, I was also developing a cowboy/jazz band with my brother, and working on my fiction and song-writing, A bit bored with the life of a therapist, I headed way down to Guatemala to spend a year at Lago Atitlan, writing songs, researching shamanic practices, and writing my first published book, Powerpoint (Warner). Barely escaping death in Guatemala, I spent almost a year up on my parents' new ranch in Idaho. On a whim I accepted a lecture/seminar tour in Europe - I went for 3 weeks and stayed for 7 remarkable years.
They loved me in West Berlin in the mid-eighties, and I set up a thriving therapy practice, wrote 2 dozen self-help books for the German market - and met my wife Birgitta, who I've been together with ever since. Moving to Switzerland, Birgitta and I developed a new idea (for then) called the self-help cassettebook (100 pages of text leading to an embedded cassette with audio guidance). We sold the concept to a major publisher there, and spent the next 4 years producing 24 cassettebooks. During that time we moved to Santa Fe, New Mexico, then Santa Barbara, then over to Kauai - where we raised our two sons. After the hurricane, we hand-built a sugar shack and lived a quiet country life, writing more books, producing self-help audio and video content, and briefly heading an early online therapy company called BrightMind.
But Kauai was a hard place to advance a writing career, even though we made lots of breakthroughs guiding people in meditation and emotional growth via audio/video support.
In 2010 we moved to our current home in Santa Cruz, where we attempted to interject short-form mindfulness meditation into the Microsoft community, then shifted to Plantronics where we co-produced several at-work mindfulness apps. Realizing the need for professional guidance in the rapidly-expanding cannabis community, we then raised capital and developed the Mindfully High program which includes the Cannabis For Couples book and audiobook, and the High Together App.
I've spent most of my adult life developing a fiction style and genre that's only now matured into serious English literature - it's just taken me that long to realize my deeper vision in fiction. I'm blessed with a great film agent who's shopping the miniseries in Hollywood, so I seem to have come full circle. Right now I' m also helping authors to manifest and publish their books, while continuing to develop new audio and video programs to expand the High Together App. I look forward to your perspective on both my fiction and nonfiction writing!
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