AWARD-WINNING AUTHOR CYNTHIA BELLINI OLSEN

My Background
During the mid–1980s, my business partner and I had an essential oil import business. 

We were the North American representative for Thursday Plantation Australian tea tree oil products. 

Over the next few years, we established 30 health distributors in the USA and Canada. We had ten broker companies representing the line into health food stores.

I was approached by Christopher Dean, the head of Thursday Plantation in New South Wales, Australia to consider writing a book on tea tree oil. 

At that time, tea tree was in its infancy stage, but Christopher provided massive amounts of research material to me. I had no experience in writing a book -- all of my days were spent marketing, writing magazine articles, and setting up advertising for Thursday Plantation. I had no time left at the end of my day to even consider writing a book.

I finally surrendered and made the commitment to write in my office, which was a small separate studio on the property, and hired a local college student to transcribe my writing into her computer. 

It took a year to complete the 50 page book, and to have it edited and designed.  I had 300 copies printed up by a local Santa Barbara company. I made a call to one of our health accounts and asked the buyer if he would like to see a copy of my book. To my amazement, he ordered 500 books, so I ordered more books from the printer.

To my knowledge, this was the first tea tree book published in North America. Our business was on a private piece of property owned by a television director whose father was a journalist and author of several books. 

A famous movie was made from his book, A Man Called Horse.  In the midst of my project, I told our landlord that I was writing a book in the little studio behind the house. I was astonished when he shared that his father only wrote in that same studio. His father had died two years before we moved to that property. I look upon that time in my life as divine intervention and guidance toward my new path.

When our business arrangement ended with Thursday Plantation, I decided to take the plunge and write a second edition of the Guide, expanding it to 110 pages. That was when Kali Press was born. Subsequently, I wrote more health related books, published for a handful of authors and worked steadily for the next 13 years.