The Way of StoryBooks
Books written by Catherine Ann Jones. All are available for purchase on amazon.com
The Way of Story – The Craft & Soul of Writing
The Way of Story – The Craft & Soul of Writing Offers an integrative approach to writing all forms of narrative, this illustrated book contains evocative insights from the authors own professional journey. The emphasis on the integration of both a solid craft and an experiential inner discovery makes this writing book unique.
“Your structure gave my story wings. I’ve never been so clean on what I want to write.” — Linda L., Ann Arbor, MI
“This is the best book on writing I’ve ever read.”
– Jill P., Santa Barbara Writers Conference
Available on Amazon as a Paperback, and Kindle
Book Reviews
Heal Your Self with Writing (Nautilus Book Award 2014)
Heal Your Self with Writing offers a step-by-step journey of discovery and re-visioning through focused journaling, a practice that can enable healing and empowerment. In this way, each listener is able to make meaning out of memory and put the past where it belongs – behind them.
“Heal Your Self with Writing is an elixir for the soul.” Psychology Today
Discover today! Available on Audible, iTunes and Amazon as a ebook, audiobook and paperback.
I deeply value the soft voice of wisdom in this book.The accounts of encounters with shamans and mysterious teachers are unforgettable. On every page we find something to cherish: an exercise to stir the depths, a quotation to remember always, an insight to open the way.
Catherine Ann Jones is a true friend to the soul.
— Dianne Skafte, Ph.D., Listening to the Oracle
What Story Are You Living?
The stories we tell ourselves become who we are, therefore being authentic and true to one’s self are crucial elements on the path to healing and self-discovery. What Story Are You Living? is a short compact manual on how to achieve goals that are truly appropriate for you and how to find the courage to move forward in a soul-centered way.
Discover today! Available as a ebook, and audiobook, on Audible, iTunes and Amazon
Freud’s Oracle: A Play Based on the Life of H.D
Freud’s Oracle, a new play by award-winning author/actor Catherine Ann Jones, is a one-person play about the American poet H.D. and her relationship with Sigmund Freud. H.D. suffered great personal losses and a nervous breakdown due to the Great War and became Freud’s patient in 1933 because of an increasing paranoia about the rise of Hitler and the fear and certainty that another world war was coming. The themes are the travesty of war and the triumph of the individual spirit.
Freud’s Oracle held me spell-bound. Very compelling!
Hendrika deVries, Licensed Marriage & Family Therapist
Jones’s artful work not only pays tribute to the past but is a true gift to the present. – Dianne Skafte, Ph.D., Listening to the Oracle
Seeing and being become a form of love. Freud’s Oracle is moving, mysterious, and wise.
– Betty Sue Flowers, Ph.D., Editor, Joseph Campbell and the Power of Myth
Congrats on your gentle, charming and engaging stories, True Fables. Excellent content and voice for kids. I really liked them.
Arthur Kornhaber, M.D, Life Fellow, American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, Spirit
I feel like I’ve just returned from an enchanted voyage, reading all of your True Fables stories in a row. The spell stayed with me through each new account, and it still lingers. These stories have a magic all of their own. I think their special power comes from a deep sincerity and truth, combined with soft, inviting lessons for the soul. Because your accounts are true, they exude a living presence that most manufactured stories can’t achieve. And a larger spiritual aura surrounds it all.
Dianne Skafte, Ph.D., Listening to the Oracle
I think that stories like these will stimulate parents or adult readers to recall their own childhood stories as well as young children. – Trent Jones, Ask Now realtor
Catherine’s stories are sweet and just right for the early reader and picture book crowd. Comforting and comfortable, they will be enjoyed by children and adults everywhere.
Julie Albright, Children’s Services
Buddha and the Dancing Girl is a story of inner and outer adventures, from acting in New York to writing in Hollywood, and from a girlhood in Texas to a spiritual search in India – a life fully lived, offering us remarkable experiences, memorable people, and deep wisdom. What a privilege to read about this life!
Betty Sue Flowers, Ph.D., editor, Joseph Campbell and The Power of Myth
You inspired me through your new book, The Buddha and the Dancing Girl. I can’t quite explain how I was inspired but it has something to do with the way you described the opposites in your life coming together, and the way events can define and alter our lives. – Dixie Gladstone
Buddha & the Dancing Girl is so warmly and gently written, her lessons learned quickly become our own. Reading about the author’s life varied explorations of diverse dimensions of possible experience help us to energize, validate, and increase attention to our own spiritual consciousness.
Arthur Kornhaber, M.D., Spirit
Catherine’s outer life and accomplishments is matched in its richness only by her inner spiritual life. What a life lived! Catherine balances the tug of war of opposites – the inner spiritual world in one hand, the outer world of theater, acting, writing in the other – with the grace and beauty of a ballerina. Buddha & the Dancing Girl is a beautiful and fascinating read that I literally could not put down.
Molly Jordan Koch, co-author of Magic Time: My Life in Hollywood
Buddha and the Dancing Girl perfectly describes the difference between ordinary time and the Story that emerges in this moving remembrance/creation.
Catherine Ann Jones gives us a life with two centers, art and the spiritual quest. As her title implies, she dances for the sake of a deeper reality. I couldn’t put it down.
Al Collins, Ph.D., Fatherson: A Self Psychology of the Archetypal Masculine
Discover today! Available on Amazon in Print, Kindle, or Audible.
East & West: Stories of India launch first in India on Aug 15, 2023 and by fall in 20 countries.
These memorable stories are so different from each other in theme and characters – and yet each is located in that place in the heart where east and west meet. Based on years of grounded observation, these Stories of India are beautifully transporting and evocative.
Betty Sue Flowers, Ph.D., editor, Joseph Campbell’s The Power of Myth
Catherine Ann Jones is a great storyteller. The stories in this book are all set in India, but each one has a very different context and shows a highly insightful and impartial look at the Indian culture. Each story is unique, wonderfully written and enchanting. Not only worth reading, but reading again and reading aloud to others. Highly recommended.
-Ravi Ravindra, Ph.D, author of The Bhagavad Gita: A Guide to Navigating the Battle of Life
Most of her enthralling stories, though not all, are located in India, a country and its people that Catherine loves and knows with the deepest understanding. She writes with the clarity and delicacy of butterfly wings. – Roshan Seth, actor
In the best tradition of storytelling in India, this new book by Catherine Ann Jones is a modern classic. Seemingly covering the entirety of Indian culture, values, current events, and philosophy, the fifteen stories in her collection will long be treasured for capturing the ethos of the twenty-first century. In spite of the 114th sloka of the Dharma Shastra that intones “The essence of dharma is hidden and elusive,” it is true that the Catherine Ann Jones dharma is storytelling.
R.E.Mark Lee, World Teacher: The Life and Teachings of J. Krishnamurti
East & West (Stories of India) by Catherine Ann Jones are simply delightful and show how deeply she understands our Indian ways and our cultural heritage. I loved the simplicity and honesty of each narrative and found myself in each story living the situation and the outcome.
– Meena Kaushik, Ph.D. and CEO of Quantum Consumer Solutions. Bangalore, India
As a reader I found myself viscerally experiencing each of your stories and felt the force of the emotions you captured and expressed in each tale. Each story is beautifully nuanced with a deep understanding of the human psyche and the Indian culture. I shall certainly read your other books now that I have sampled your stories. These delightful Stories of India were like a fresh water shower.
– Meena Kaushik, Ph.D. and CEO of Quantum Consumer Solutions. Bangalore, India
Exceptional stories of India, gently spun by the author. A trip to India on a quiet afternoon…
– Arthur Kornhaber, M. D., American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology, Spirit
Murder in Assam is a very heart wrenching story, beautifully told and tragically based in truth.
Kitty Winn
Movies
The Christmas Wife
Widower John Tanner (Jason Robards) is unhappy that he has to miss a longstanding Christmas gathering with his son Jim (Jim Eckhouse) and his family. So to avoid being alone, he decides to hire a platonic companion for the holidays, enlisting the services of forlorn escort Iris (Julie Harris). He makes it clear from the beginning, however, that there will be no hanky-panky between the two. But sparks begin to fly when charming John begins to warm Iris’ bitter and bleary heart.
Unlikely Angel
Country superstar Dolly Parton stars in this heartwarming tale of a brassy and sassy lounge singer who is killed in a car crash, but denied entrance into heaven because of the selfish way she lived her life. Her penance: to reunite a family by finding a mother for two children and their recently widowed father before the Christmas deadline.
Plays
Freud’s Oracle
Freud’s Oracle, written and performed by award-winning actor-playwright Catherine Ann Jones, is a one-person play about the American poet H.D. (Hilda Doolittle 1886-1961) and her relationship with Sigmund Freud. H.D. suffered great personal losses and a nervous breakdown due to the Great War, becoming Freud’s patient in 1933 due to an increasing paranoia about the rise of Hitler and the fear and certainty that another war was coming. H.D. helped persuade Freud to leave Vienna and re-locate to London. The themes are the travesty of war and the triumph of the individual.
(2016 Productions: Ojai, CA; Santa Fe, NM; New Orleans, LA, Santa Barbara, CA)
“I think Freud’s Oracle is terrific! I am going to read it over again. Bravo! – Arthur Kornhaber, M.D.
“Catherine Ann Jones’s artful work not only pays tribute to the past but is a true gift to the present. – Dianne Skafte, Ph.D., Listening to the Oracle
(2016 Productions: Ojai, CA; Santa Fe, NM; New Orleans, LA, Santa Barbara, CA)
Freud’s Oracle Reviews!
Book Available for purchase on Amazon!
The Women of Cedar Creek
This comedy-drama family play is set in Texas in the mid-seventies. Three generations of Texas women come together to persuade their aging mother to leave Cedar Creek, her home of fifty years. Old ghosts and family secrets explode over a twenty-four hour period, exploring the love-hate relationships of family.
“I wrote this play about how families often say and do terrible things to each another yet at the end of the day, gather and have dinner as though this was all completely normal.” – Catherine Ann Jones
The Women of Cedar Creek Reviews
Calamity Jane
Story: Calamity Jane, a legend in her own time, lived a century too early to be understood as the emancipated strong-willed woman she was. Forced to give up her daughter for adoption when Bill Hickok leaves her for another woman, the story presents the confrontation between mother and daughter as well as the myth and reality of the Old West.
“If you’ve ever been a parent
If you’ve ever had a parent,
If you’ve ever loved and lost,
You’ll love Calamity Jane!”
Calamity Jane Reviews