AUTHOR
Meet Gene Stirm
WRITERS AS SHAMANS "Writer should bear in mind that they are Mentors of a kind to their readers, shamans who travel to other worlds and bring back stories to heal their people. Like Mentors, they teach with their stories and give of their experience, passion, observation, and enthusiasm. Writers, like shamans and Mentors, provide metaphors by which people guide their lives—a most valuable gift and grave responsibility for the writer."

Christopher Vogler, The Writer Journey
Gene displayed a love of the arts at an early age. By the time he was in high school, he was already involved in local professional theatrical productions in the San Jose, California area. By invitation, he spent two the summers at the Theater Wing Workshop at San Jose State. As an artist, he was responsible for the school’s art and library displays, designed and built dozens of sets for Community Theaters and school plays, including “Damn Yankees,” which he also directed. He made extra spending money painting seasonal windows and signs for local business. Upon high school graduation, he was awarded the Bank of America Award for Fine Arts. He had already established himself as an actor, director, and set designer, so he boldly gathered his friends together and started his own local theater production company.

After two years of college and a number of personal and family conflicts, “being an artist isn’t easy,” he chose to move to the mountains, and literally camped in Yosemite. After a year of trying to find himself (he figured he wasn’t really lost)” he moved to Oakhurst at the south gate of Yosemite and turned his focused towards commercial art. Finishing art school, he married Patricia in 1972 and went to work for a weekly newspaper and commercial printing company. This immediately put him in contact with photography at a professional level and within six months, he was working as a studio artist with a full service-advertising agency. There, he learned everything from story boarding to copy writing and was involved with directing commercials for TV. From the ad agency, he became the art director for Jostens’s publishing in Visalia, where he continued to study photography under Ansel Adams and guest lectured at Ansel Adams' Photography Book workshops in Yosemite.

He and his family moved to Orange County, California, and he continued work in the graphic arts industry specializing in menus. At that time, he completed Seminary and became actively in evolved the ministry. After selling his menu printing company in the mid 1990’s, he returned to professional acting and started screen writing and a way of occupying his time while working as a regular on the TV show, The West Wing. A documentary he wrote won the VIC award and several of his short subject and one feature film have been produced.

In 2004, he and his wife moved to Tehachapi, California, where he continued his studies of Native American art and culture and Shamanism. In 2008 he received a Doctor of Shamanism Degree from ULC Seminary. It was at this time began rewriting a number of his scripts into novels. The first to be published is, Mystical Path To Mystique.