From Paint to Print for Steve

Just another promotional piece from another local paper on this post. This time from the free 'Rugby Observer'. Quite a nice coverage this time I think which I am fairly pleased with, though again it is astonishing to see just how distorted a message can be when it has been filtered through a journalist before appearing in print.

Promoting the RJKD book is almost as hard a task as was writing it in the first place. It is astonishing how difficult it is to get people to take any interest and at other times it is equally as astonishing at how much some others fall all over themselves to get to you and hear what you have to say. Suddenly it seems, I am an expert in some quarters. Well, I don't feel too much like an expert actually, and as I scan the mental filing cabinet for all the data that would qualify me as being an expert, it would seem that it is largely empty - just a few random bits of mental flotsam and that is all. Still, I did write the book, so I must know some things about the subject and my students seem to think I do anyway. It is nice to know that I am able to make a positive contribution to the lives of some in any case and I hope that the book will help even more by bringing many others to the Reiki Jin Kei Do tradition, lineage and teachings.

What is important for me in this however, beyond the helping of others and the reinforcing and spreading of the RJKD message, is something that is a very personal and long cherished goal. The writing and publication of this book has been the realization of something that I have wanted to do for the last 30 years -since in fact, at the age of 14, I sat at school in Mr Markham's English lesson and decided there and then that all I wanted to do with my life was write. Other things have come and gone but my overriding passion has always been to one day make my living as a writer (and by the age of about 24 I had added 'artist' to that ambition also). So this publication is significant for me on a level that has nothing whatsoever to do with Reiki. Frankly, the book could have been about pretty much anything and it would have served its purpose in this sense.

Pleased as I am therefore to have written something that is significant in terms of the Reiki Jin Kei Do lineage, that may help others through life, that can contribute some good to the world, there is for me a further satisfaction that I have finally achieved a long held and extremely important personal goal.

So really, what I want to make crystal clear in this is that the writing and publication of this book was not and is not about creating a 'Steve Gooch - Reiki Expert' brand. There will never be such a thing. My main concern in writing the book is to establish a career as a writer. A writer of books on all sorts of subjects in fact.

As to future writing projects...At present, although I can see the possibilities for many projects that I would love to turn my hand to I am now fully engaged with more Reiki books. What I do intend to avoid at all costs is the easy route that so many have taken in writing one or two books on Reiki that have something of import to say and then banging out three or four more that are frankly a waste of good trees. I would rather just shut up than go this route. Right now however, I have two books planned. One is under way at present and the other is still rather nebulous.

The book that is under way is the sequel to my current book in many ways. It is not, I hasten to add, being written solely by myself. There are 8 of us working on it. I am not going to give too much in the way of details away here, but the plan at present is that it will go much more deeply into the mechanics, history and philosophy of the Buddho-EnerSense system than does my book, which for practical reasons had to concern itself with the Reiki method alone. I am editing the whole work, and I have to say, even though at the time of writing this we are in the very early stages of collecting material together, it is looking like a stunning book. I will be putting details of its progress on here as things move along of course, but that is all for the future - watch this space!

That is my little contribution for tonight...back again in a few days with more!

Namaste.

Steve