Congratulations, Ky! You’re the father of twins! Who’d have thought that both of your books would be published in the same month?

Yes, well it did come as a bit of a surprise, yet I can’t help but appreciate the synchronicity. After all, they have the same genetic material.  Each, however, has a very different personality.

The Barefoot Warrior is a coming of age novel about a teen who sets out on the path of his own greatness. It’s intense and passionate, naked and honest, youthful and adventurous. I wrote it as a young adult, so it captures the spiritedness of a kid who’s got little to lose and a whole world of possibility to take in. It’s the spitting image of my heart.

The User’s Guide to Being Human: The Art and Science of Self is a nonfiction self-help book written after decades of pursuing the Barefoot Warrior’s path. It’s more of a no nonsense how-to guide for making the most of the natural human superpowers that every one of us is born with—superpowers that we never learn about in school because we’re busy memorizing, taking tests and getting grades.

Take intelligence as an example. Each one of us has one, but how many of us ever learn to unleash its true power? Most of us get fooled into believing that we were born with a set amount of it, so there.

Not so.

When you’re young, intelligence is like a cute little sapling that’s hungry for sunlight. Stick it in a room for six hours a day mostly devoid of sunlight and it tends to harden and get sickly. But that cute little sapling holds the code for a giant redwood. Learn to give it what it really needs and it grows into an awesome and inspiring tower of vitality. It brings out the giant that you were born to be.

I wrote The User’s Guide because it has saddened me all my life to see so many redwoods who never grew bigger than lemon trees. And as for the fruit of their lives…

The User’s Guide has stories in it too, but I mostly tried to keep myself out of this one when writing it. This was meant to be a book about you, not a book about me. It’s the spitting image of my dreams for humanity, and what each one of us can do to make this world a better place by filling it with our own magnificence.

As for the birth of both books in the same month—it seems like a convergence of heart and dream blossoming in the world side by side. Put them together like that and you find yourself growing a whole new reality. That’s what’s happened for me, anyway.

“In this remarkable work, Scott Miller mines the depths of human possibility. With clear and precise instructions, he brings the tried and true as well as state of the art understanding of how to transform our lives.  With story, grace and wit, the author helps us turn the page on our humanity and walk and live boldly with new ways of being.”

— Jean Houston, Ph.D (A founder of the Human Potential Movement, Researcher and Scholar, Author of over 25 books including The Mythic Life and Jump Time.)