COYNE, Tami 1960-

PERSONAL:

Born March 9, 1960; married; children: a daughter. Education: Smith College, A.B.

ADDRESSES:

Home—New York, NY. Agent—c/o Author Mail, Red Wheel/Weiser, P.O. Box 612, York Beach, ME 03910-0612. E-mail—info@spiritualchicks.com.

CAREER:

Marketing, management, and executive recruiter; spiritually oriented career and life coach; author. Featured essayist on Managementgeneral.com.

WRITINGS:

Your Life's Work: A Guide to Creating a Spiritual and Successful Work Life, Berkley (New York, NY), 1998.

(With Karen Weissman) The Spiritual Chicks Question Everything: Learn to Risk, Release, and Soar, Red Wheel/Weiser (York Beach, ME), 2002.

SIDELIGHTS:

Tami Coyne authored her first book, Your Life's Work: A Guide to Creating a Spiritual and Successful Work Life, when she discovered that people who love their work and those who don't project distinct differences in their attitudes. Her second book, The Spiritual Chicks Question Everything: Learn to Risk, Release, and Soar, was born from a serendipitous meeting with coauthor Karen Weissman at a course in metaphysics, a subject that probes the connection between spirituality and science. In association with her writings, Coyne has led seminars, presented lectures, hosted online chats for iVillage.com, made guest appearances on radio shows and online with WellNet, and been a featured essayist on managementgeneral.com.

A Publishers Weekly reviewer pointed out that, in her first book, Coyne combines her spiritual and vocational experience to examine how one's spirituality affects one's work life. She begins with the premise that we are all spiritual beings who, in conjunction with divine energy, create our own future. She then explains that all aspects of one's job, like them or hate them, "are merely the appropriate response of 'Spirit' to one's own conscious and unconscious requests."

Coyne's second book, coauthored with Weissman, took birth when she signed up for a 1994 course called "Concept Therapy." The course focused on the underlying similarity between spirituality and science-areas of inquiry that appear, on the surface, to be almost diametrically opposed. When she began the course, little did she know it would bear fruit in the forms of a friendship, a Web site, and a book. Coyne and Weissman ended up in the same tiny classroom in Brooklyn and discovered they lived just a block from each other in Greenwich Village. The women admit to having entirely different personalities, and they come from entirely different backgrounds: Coyne, a right-brained, passionate, and highly motivated woman, is a French literature major; Weissman, a left-brained, analytical woman who thoroughly think things through, has a Ph.D. in engineering. However, they discovered during long sidewalk conversations that they had similar philosophies to life and the concept of spirituality.

From those sidewalk conversations grew a friendship, and from friendship a collaboration. Self-confirmed spiritual women, they decided to call themselves the "Spiritual Chicks." They began contributing essays to a lifestyle Web 'zine in 1999 and, after the Web site's demise, collected their articles and sent them to Red Wheel as a book proposal. The proposal was accepted, but the Spiritual Chicks needed more material to make their work book length. In the process of writing additional essays and articles, they started their own Web site, www.spiritualchicks.com, to field-test their new material. The book was written with the deliberate intent of relating to the real-life experiences of its audience.

The basis of The Spiritual Chicks Question Everything is the "One Life Principle," the idea that a single universal power manifests in all things and holds the universe together at the same time. Coyne and Weismann formatted their book in a question-and-answer style, with short essays on real-life experiences wherever they felt it necessary to bring an answer to life. Those essays may be hard hitting, or humorous, just as real-life experiences are. Many answers, however, have no corresponding essay, the reason being—according to the authors—that readers need the opportunity to apply their own life experiences rather than just reading those of the authors. "Otherwise it would just read like the 'Tami and Karen show!'" the authors commented on an online interview for Girlposse.com.

In her review in Awareness, Maryel McKinley described The Spiritual Chicks Question Everything as "a refreshing, if not mind-blowing, book that will open your heart and help you dispose of junk thoughts one might be holding onto unnecessarily." Leslie Gilbert Elman, in Healing Retreats and Spas, called the book "savvy, affirming and enjoyable," and a Girlposse.com contributor dubbed it "Sassy, saucy and completely insightful." Jan Suzukawa in Science of Mind described the work as a "delightful and irreverent book" that counsels its readers to "(1) question everything; (2) condemn nothing; (3) and then, align ourselves with what we want."

Concluding their online interview with Girlposse.com, the authors wrote: "Questioning what we believe invites life to bring us answers to even our most troubling issues. Not condemning—our beliefs or anyone else's—makes us open to new perspectives and new experiences, and allows us to align ourselves with, and get, what we really want. The spiritual process is about learning that we are the masters of our own destinies—and, if you want to have a great life, there's nothing better than knowing that."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Healing Retreats and Spas, November-December, 2002, review of The Spiritual Chicks Question Everything: Learn to Risk, Release, and Soar.

Publishers Weekly, March 9, 1998, review of Your Life's Work: A Guide to Creating a Spiritual and Successful Work Life, p. 61; September 30, 2002, p. 66.

Science of Mind, February, 2003, Jan Suzukawa, review of The Spiritual Chicks Question Everything.

ONLINE

Girlposse.com,http://www.girlposse.com/ (May 8, 2003), review of The Spiritual Chicks Question Everything: Learn to Risk, Release, and Soar; "The Fifteen-Question E-Mail Interview with 'The Spiritual Chicks', Tami Coyne and Karen Weissman."

Spiritual Chicks Web site,http://www.spiritualchicks.com (May 8, 2003).