Meet Kristine

Kristine Madera Here’s the short version:

Kristine Madera is a #1 bestselling Amazon author, novelist, hypnotherapist, and pro-topian with a passion for helping people better themselves and the world. Informed by global travel, teaching abroad, and a stint as a Peace Corps Volunteer, Kristine believes that everyone plays a part in imagining and creating our collective future.

Volunteering at Mother Teresa’s Home for the Dying in Calcutta inspired her novel, God in Drag. She birthed her upcoming novel, The Snakeman’s Wife, as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Papua New Guinea.

Now for the long version:

Grab a cup of tea and settle in if you’re interested in an expanded version that includes a hidden gem in appreciation for your fortitude…

I was hooked on reading since listening to my first bedtime story. I was hooked on writing when an eighth-grade teacher assigned us to write and “publish” a story—by folding our hand-printed and illustrated story paper in half and stapling the spine into place. Most of my life since then can be told through my books, both finished and unfinished.

An Adventure in Trust—Unfinished & In Process

When I was seven or so, I got sassy with the divine. I was so frustrated with life that I went into the backyard and demanded that God tell me why I was on this insane planet because it seemed a waste of my time. The moment expanded into a full-on merging with what I call Unity Consciousness, where all sense of my body and identity dissolved and I was one with all that is. The knowing that came with the experience was that I was here to be infinite consciousness in a physical body and to adventure in this life from that state. This experience is the spine of the book of my whole life and has been my guiding touchstone in all I do.

The expanse of that experience contrasted so sharply with the narrow bandwidth of my ordinary life that it drove me to find ways to expand my perspective and break through limitations. One of those ways was to learn about the subconscious mind—a thread that led from salesy Amway motivational sales training tapes to becoming a hypnotherapist and hypno-coach.

Another strategy I used to reveal and transcend the prison of my learned perspective is travel—the more unfamiliar the culture the better. This led to being a high school exchange student in Australia, part of it living (and working) on a sheep station. Then to a college semester abroad London and some tromping around Europe. When I graduated college, I put off having to deal with the “real world” as the adults called it, by teaching English in Japan for a while.

When it was time to leave Japan, I knew I had to choose between a more predictable “real life” and a less predictable life trusting the flow of Unity Consciousness. To do that, I reasoned, I needed to take a leap of faith. I left Japan with the intention of taking Unity Consciousness out for a spin, to see if it was trustworthy, how it worked, and decide if I could trust it with my life. At the time, I called that trip a Faithcation. It consisted of three months of traveling alone backpacker-style through China and Russia during what turned out to be the fall of the Soviet Union.

An Adventure in Trust is a memoir of that experience, how I learned to trust Unity Consciousness, and some guidelines to help you trust it, too

God in Drag—Published and available on Amazon

While in Poland during my Faithcation, I found out I’d been accepted to graduate school at The School for International
Training’s Program in International Management. After the coursework, I needed an internship and ended up in Catholic mission in rural northern Appalachia coal county—which for this globetrotting Southern California girl was a major culture shock. After a year there, my now-husband Joseph asked me to marry him while I was mashing potatoes for dinner. He’d only been there for two weeks, but after a near-death experience, he followed his visions, and had one of us married. In shock, I heard a voice telling me that marrying him was the best thing I could do with my life. This sparked another sassy talk with the divine, but that voice, which I haven’t heard since, earned its cred by warning me off a plane that was going to crash. So after some hyperventilating, I said yes.

We ended up a year or so later backpacking through India, Sri Lanka, and Nepal. Along the way, we volunteered for six weeks at Mother Teresa’s Home for the Dying in Calcutta (and yes, we met her a few times.) Joseph, who had been a hospice volunteer and even took CNA training to do more personal care, was in his element. I, who fainted at the sight of my own blood, kept to food service and clean up, and hanging laundry on the roof. Up there one day, I met a guy who said he was a British medical student. We had a nice chat and I never saw him again. The next day, I wondered why a medical student would be hanging up laundry at a hospice in the middle of a school term…and the story for God in Drag began to form.

Read the first Chapter of God in Drag HERE

The Snakeman’s Wife—Finished and looking for an agent

Joseph and I served as US Peace Corps Volunteers in rural Papua New Guinea. The interesting thing about the Peace Corps (at least at the time) is that they take your most obscure interest or skill and make that your job. Joseph had been a computer programmer analyst professionally. But he had fixed his roof once, so they made him a carpentry teacher. I listed an interest in nutrition, so they put me in charge of a nutrition program for women and children at risk of malnutrition. The work was interesting but emotionally exhausting. To relax, I write. About a month into our volunteer term when I sat down to journal, Hanna, the main character in The Snakeman’s Wife, parked herself on my right shoulder and said, “Do I have a story to tell you…”

That story was the seed of The Snakeman’s Wife.

I’m currently pitching this novel to agents, so it’s still a mystery about when and how it will come out. When it does, expect to cover to change (this is my beta-reader cover) and possibly the title to change. Check back to find out the latest.

How to Meditate with Your Dog—Published on Amazon and Audible

After the Peace Corps and a few years living in Las Vegas working with a pair of wild mustangs, I went to the Maui Writer’s Conference to commune with fellow writers and pitch God in Drag to agents. Before I left, a woman whose program I taught yoga for said, “Oh, you’ll want to move there, my friend will give you a job.” The serendipity clicked, we moved, and her friend gave me a great job. Then three people I met at the conference and I started a writing group. One of the people in that group was James (Jim) Jacobson, radio personality and entrepreneur extraordinaire. He, a long-time meditator, wanted to write a book about meditation and how to start a meditation practice for people with dogs. I was also a long-time meditator, and after I wrote a sample chapter, he brought me on as the co-author of How to Meditate with Your Dog: An Introduction to Meditation for Dog Lovers. Jim’s business savvy made the hardcover an Amazon #1 bestseller in four categories.

Since then, I moved off the island and went into hypnotherapy and Jim has turned his attention to dog health—specifically cancer prevention and treatment for dogs.

Find out more about How to Meditate with Your Dog and Jim’s dog podcasts HERE

Conversations from the Edge

Okay, this is a podcast, not a book. It’s also the hidden gem I promised that isn’t evident in many places on this website. Here’s the story…after hearing for years that I should write my Faithcation story, I finally said, “YES!” and was pre-selling the book to family and friends through Publishizer in April-May 2019, when I fell and had a concussion so bad that I had to sit in a dark room for three months. Though the concussion and the life changes it brought were as transformational as my early flash of Unity Consciousness, it also sidelined writing and working for a few years as I had to seriously limit light and screen time.

But I could still talk. Years earlier I had an idea for a podcast called Conversations from the Edge (of Consciousness) because my edgy, out-there friends and I all worked with people who were starting to have “out-there” thoughts but had no one to talk with about them. Whereas, “out-there” conversations were the only kind we had. My idea was to record our conversations and put them out as a podcast. So I did. Season one (episodes 1-50) is largely unedited because of the low screen-time issue and is with friends whom I spoke with a lot. Season two (episodes 51-100) is mostly with newer people who I found interesting.

Find Season One HERE & Find Season Two HERE

The Wild Place series—In development (stay tuned!)

During the pandemic, the teen girls I knew were in crisis. With not enough life experience to know that the lockdowns and restrictions would pass, the stress of being a teen girl generally, the extra stresses of social media, fears around climate change and other major societal changes, depression, anxiety and scary expressions of both were climbing. Now. I enjoy young adult (YA) fiction, but I had stopped reading it because so much of it was dystopian and/or depressing, which seemed to exacerbate girl’s (and boy’s) stress. It got me thinking about what Earth might look like if humanity was a highly functional, cooperative global society—a pro-topian world where life got better and not worse. That got me thinking about the unifying values that would organize that kind of society, compared to the value of maximizing profit and/or power that global society is organized around now.

I settled on a society in which personal and collective well-being were the organizing values. It took a while to imagine how a society like that might function. The challenge then was how to place a compelling story in this functional society interesting. A character who had popped in from time to time over the year jumped back onto my shoulder and said. “Remember me?”

The Wild Place series as it is conceived now is a pentalogy (a five-book series) and is a joy to work on. It will be a while before the first book is out and the series is scheduled.

Stay tuned!