Rose Rosetree Expert On Face Reading, Skilled Empathy, & Aura Reading Interviewed

Today, Norm Goldman, Editor of Bookpleasures.com is delighted to have as our guest,     ROSE ROSETREE

 Rose is the author of is the author of several books and is widelyconsidered the world's leading expert at deeper perception. She haspioneered easy-to-learn techniques of of Face Reading, Skilled Empathy and Aura Reading Through ALL Your Senses.

She's written how-to books, two of which were selected by a division of the Book-of-the-Month Club. She's given over 650 media interviews--on five continents-her work praised in publications as different as The Washington Post, The Washington Times, The L.A. Times and The Catholic Standard. Her clients include Clinique, the American Folk Art Museum, the NFL Players Association, USA Today, Freddie Mac.

Good day Rose and thanks for agreeing to participate in our interview. * I'm honored, Norm, and hope that in some way I am able to help every person who is reading our interview.

Norm: Rose, could you explain to our audience what is meant by face reading?Rose: Face reading means looking at physical face data to learn aboutpersonal style in areas like career, relationships, power, sex, dealing withmoney.

Reading other people is a way to gain practical insight, overcomeruts in an existing relationship and evaluate potential dates, employers,etc. Reading yourself can do wonders for self-respect.

If you write fiction, face reading can help you to give characters just theright faces. (Dickens, among others, used physiognomy.) If you writenon-fiction, what you learn about your own face can help you work moreconfidently and sell yourself more congruently.

What else to know from the outset? My system of Face Reading Secrets (R) isan adaptation of a 3,000-year-old Chinese art and is based on the premisethat God does not make junk! FAQs galore are answered at my web site.

Norm: And what is aura reading?

Rose: Auras are energy bodies around each person's physical body. Unlessyou're writing a detective story-in which case the corpse lacks any aura atall. :)

But for us among the living, fictional or not, auras are filled tobursting with vital information.

Myths about auras make it appear that a person must possess a rare kind ofclairvoyance to access auric information, and that special photos must beused to read auras. Nonsense and nonsense. My system of Aura Reading Through

All Your Senses has helped thousands of people to become really good aurareaders, and clients often hire me to read auras from regular photos.One of the most practical benefits is being able to do the most effective,and nuanced, lie detection you can imagine. I've used that for everythingfrom hiring a painter for my house to helping hotshot executives make moreinformed choices for business mergers. For FAQs on this topic, click HERENorm: And what is an empath?

Rose: Among writers and artists, the percentage of empaths is higher than amongthe population at large, so I hope your readers are still scrolling andreading away! Very likely you, Dear Reader, are an empath of some kind.

Gifts can be intellectual, physical, spiritual, etc., not simply emotional.While anyone can become a face reader and can learn to read auras in depthand detail, either you're born as an empath or not. Most people are not. InAmerica, it's about 1 in 20 people with a lifelong gift as an empath.

How can I tell? Because any empathic ability is encoded in auras. Many giftsare possible. Every empath has at least one significant, trainable gift fordirectly experiencing what it is like to be other people. Unless skilled-notmerely talented-you probably have spent your whole life picking up pain fromother people. That part-time job is completely optional, and I'd love toteach you how to turn off that part... and without putting up walls (whichnever work and only make a person feel dead inside). I also have developedunique techniques for turning gifts on stronger.

Both facets of skill are extremely helpful for writers. FAQs are, as you mayhave guessed by now, available at my website: 

Norm: Why and how did you become interested in face reading?

Rose: At my college, Brandeis, the motto is "Truth even unto its innermostparts." And that could be my personal motto, too. As soon as I discoveredthat faces could be interpreted meaningfully, I began to study face reading.That introduction came at a MENSA meeting in New York City in 1975. By 1986,I turned pro as a physiognomist.Norm: You have written several books, what makes you write a new book andwhat keeps you going?Rose: Inspiration starts it up, keeps me going, and reminds me to continuedespite any difficulties. At times, I've been so discouraged that I wantedto give up for good. For instance, one day I came to work at Rodale Press,where I had a staff job in their book division. I had moved across thecountry at my expense, borrowing money, to take this job.

After three months to the day, my boss called me into his office, explainedthat Rodale had closed down a magazine that same day ("Spring," not theirfamous one, "Prevention"). Because it would be expensive to fire thoseemployees, he was going to let me go. It was the final day of my probationperiod, so Rodale didn't have to pay a penny for unemployment or severancepay."Be out of here by noon," he said. It took six months before I stoppedshaking, deep down.When I packed up my apartment, I felt so deeply discouraged that I threwaway the manuscript of a book I'd worked on for years. I'd never writeagain, I told myself.Just one example! The writing has always come back. It is my greatest joy inlife.Norm: You have a very unusual and pretty name. Is Rose Rosetree your realname?Rose: It's real, i.e., both legal and authentic. Original? No. I've had aneventful life, including multiple marriages (but not simultaneous ones).Norm: How do you come up with ideas for what you write?

Rose: Again, inspiration. Sometimes I'm so filled with joy or insight, I have to dropeverything else and write the stuff down. Maybe this sounds lofty but,really, it's just as natural as scratching an itch.

Sometimes ideas for books result directly from conversations with people.You may know from my website, Norm, that I teach workshops and do personalsessions with clients related to deeper perception. Service to real peoplekeeps my sights on what is worth writing about. For instance, a friendcomplained to me that she had taken a workshop on aura reading that was acomplete waste of her time. I thought, I could teach something better thanthat dreadful workshop. So I wrote "Aura Reading Through All Your Senses."

Norm: What methods do you use to flesh out your idea to determine if it'ssalable?

Rose: The ideas? I trust them. And they come complete with plenty of flesh.Only ideas that really interest me are worth writing about; I never havewritten just because something is salable. That would be like eating poison.But sometimes I must work with ideas to make them intelligible, which isrequired to make any words from a non-celebrity salable.

With "Aura Reading Through All Your Senses," I wrote it three times in itsentirety, taking 6 1/2 years. With "Empowered by Empathy," I drafted thebook during three months of inspiration and then spent three years revisingit so that other human beings would be able to make sense out of theconcepts. For "Wrinkles Are God's Makeup: How You Can Find Meaning in YourEvolving Face," I spent over nine years researching, writing, locatingphotos. Just yesterday I found out that I'm down to my last few cartons andwill have to do a second edition next year.Norm: How have your used the Internet to bolster your career?Rose: Three cheers for the Net! I love all the ways it has helped mycareer... except for the used books sold by Amazon and e-Bay. I used to bepretty generous in sending out review copies, but I sure hate seeing themshow up for sale.

Otherwise, my website lists my books, classes, tours and articles. A monthly zine with face and aura readings of people in the news has about 2,000 subscribers, and I love having a way togive something for free, yet not be taken advantage of.

When requests come in for free readings of people, I've had to learn to say no or I wouldn'thave time left to earn a living. But thanks to the Net, I can give everyone that zine, which alone is reason to be grateful for the e-world.

Right now I'm doing something new with the Internet. In June 2006, I'llofficially publish, "Let Today Be a Holiday: 365 Ways to Co-Create withGod." But the books came in from the printer last month. So I'm offeringadvance copies with free shipping through my website and tollfree numberonly before the Pub. Date. So far it's working well.Norm: Can you tell us how you found representation for your books. Did youpitch it to an agent, or query publishers who would most likely publish thistype of book? Any rejections? Did you self-publish?Rose: Norm, if you were in the mood for a tear-jerker, I could tell many sadtales of my hideous experiences with 29 literary agents, one worse than theother. And that doesn't even include the agents so terrible I didn't hirethem.

At least I can recommend a fantastic agent for foreign rights, Loris Essaryof International Titles, lessary@austin.rr.com. He has wonderful integrity.

Any reader who is curious can google on International Titles and find Loris'website, or just query him about representation. He charges a reasonable feeand it's a far better investment than being displayed by a distributor.

Likewise, with publishing, ooh la la. I've been burned by big, medium andsmall presses. They make for funny stories now, but I've cried more thanI've laughed. Thank goodness I have the skill set to run my own publishingcompany. I've even gotten to be pretty good at typesetting my own books,though I have covers and inner design from professionals.Norm: Could you briefly tell us something about your books and theirunderlying objectives.Rose: They empower people to use their gifts in life. Every non-fiction workcontains leading-edge techniques and understandings that you won't findelsewhere. My lone novel, "The Roar of the Huntids" supports my how-to"Empowered by Empathy," and is very appreciated by people who enjoy fiction.The great poet Robert Frost, when describing his writing process, wrote, "Nosurprise for the writer, no surprise for the reader." For me, it's aboutjoy. Readers seem to find that my joy is contagious for them.Norm: How would you respond to potential readers who might be skepticalabout the subject matter of your books?Rose: Why waste time on skeptics? I appeal to those who are interested.There's a loyal, growing following for what I offer, so that's where I putmy attention. However, I also do lots of media interviews (including onetoday, for the Chicago Sun-Times), and sometimes those interviews turnskeptics into readers and clients.Norm: I understand you are called upon to give classes to physicians,psychotherapists, social workers, massage therapists and otherprofessionals. How do you help these professionals?Rose: Techniques for being more perceptive and emotionally stable, plus newconcepts for self-understanding-that's how I help. Nobody else (yet) isteaching the information for empaths, which has the greatest impact. Thesystems of Face Reading Secrets (R) and Aura Reading Through All Your Sensesare also distinctive. And my new book ought to have an interesting life.It's another big step forward, a daybook about consciously co-creating withGod.Norm: I understand you have students that come from all over the world. Howdid they find out about you?

Rose: Here's where we can thank the Net. For example, I was scouted byVOICE, the premier seminar company in Japan, and will be teaching there forthe third time in 2006. They publish books, too, and will bring out thefirst Japanese edition of "Empowered by Empathy" to coincide with the booktour.Otherwise, I must thank Loris, my foreign rights agent. We have many titlesworldwide now, including my first national bestseller, the German edition of"Aura Reading Through All Your Senses." I've studied enough German to givefunny little answers to my German fan mail, which I adore receiving.Norm: What challenges or obstacles did you encounter while writing yourbooks? How did you overcome these challenges?

Rose: Publishing was the biggest one, with a subset being my varied andpathetic experiences with agents. Mostly what got me through was the joy atthe core of my work and my determination to honor what I'd been given bybringing my best to it.

Beyond that, I do my best to act with integrity in every situation. Soundswaay abstract, so here are two examples:

When I began my publishing company, I got a tollfree number, MORE-JOY. Onemonth, Sprint made what they called a "little mistake" and sold it to aphone sex company. This number was imprinted in every one of my books, plusmy how-to aura reading video.

Sprint refused to give me compensation of any kind. I tried to hire a lawyeron contingency, and researched telecommunications lawyers all over America.I contacted every one I could find, asking for help. Not a single responseto any of my letters.... Later, a friend explained to me that I was just toosmall to be worth their time. I also appealed to a writer's organization towhich I belonged, but received no significant help there.

So I cried and raged and then let it go. Eventually, I reprinted "AuraReading Through All Your Senses" and "The Power of Face Reading" without theoffensive phone number. With the insert in my video, I hand-correct thatpart-did it just last month when ordering a new batch of VHSes. After Ibring out this title as a DVD next year, there will be no further remindersin print of MORE-JOY.At the time, all this seemed like such a big deal. But it would have been abigger deal to let that stop me.

The second example is the worst thing that has happened in my career. One ofmy titles, "I Can Read Your Face," was published by a book producer,Ottenheimer Publishing.  I worked on it with a delightful editor for aboutsix months. Ottenheimer had a secret arrangement with a mail order companythat pretended to remainder books from big publishers. I'd been wooed with asmall advance and the promise that my title would sell tens, even hundreds,of thousands of copies.

Imagine the happy day when I opened up my box of author's copies and found alittle note from the editor. "Perhaps you already know that the book wasremaindered." Yes, after just three weeks it was staler than moldy toast. Infact, I got a phone call from a man who bought a copy of my newborn book fora buck at Wal-Mart. He was delighted with the content and happy to by mybook at such a bargain.

What had happened? The mail order company lost interest after my editorthere quit and a test ad (two whole column inches) didn't do fabulouslywell. So they dumped the book.

That wasn't even the worst part. In my contract with Ottenheimer was aclause that rights would revert to me when the book went out of print. I'dpaid a literary lawyer to go over that contract with a fine-toothed comb.But neither of us anticipated that Ottenheimer would lie and claim the bookstill was in print.

Not having had the presence of mind to get the phone number of my fan fromWal-Mart, I couldn't prove the book was out of print, and because of thattechnicality, Ottenheimer forbade me to print any more books on mytrademarked system of Face Reading Secrets (R). Again, I lacked the funds topay for a big litigation. For over a year, I wrote the most threateningletters I could pen, but the publishers were incredibly greedy about thispossible future source of income for them and, therefore, refused.Finally, Ottenheimer decided to stop publishing trade paperbacks altogetherand sent me a little letter saying they would let me have back the rights tomy material.Bottom line: I persisted. They didn't. That's what joy will do for a person!Norm: Is there anything else you wish to add that we have not covered?

Rose: My best advice is to go deep inside for the best you have to offerpeople as a writer. It will help you to write, to market, to make adifference in the world. And yes, if you ever do go through tough times,your desire to help people can help you keep going.Oh yes, Norm, here's some advice about book reviews: For six years, I wrotereviews of small press books for Pathways Magazine. I quit about fiveyears ago because I'd become so busy. To this day, I receive sample books toreview.Even when I did review books, I asked that people send me query lettersonly, so they wouldn't waste their money. I explained that I would letpublishers or authors know if I was interested in seeing a review copy.So why do I continue to receive these books? At least one extremelyunscrupulous entrepreneur sells my contact info. When I emailed him, herefused to stop.

Thus, this interview's two last bits of advice for my colleagues: Sendqueries rather than books to any reviewer, whenever possible. And questionsome of the people who peddle services to self-publishers and authors.You'll find a higher percentage of scam artists than in the public at large.Thanks once again and good luck with all of your future endeavors. Aw, you're welcome, Norm. Great questions!