Jeff Hudson – författare

''The noises were fuzzy in the darkness. Like hearing a domestic dispute through an apartment wall. As a cop, it was a scenario I''d experienced many times as I''d approached a stranger''s front door. But this was different. This time I wasn''t going anywhere. I wasn''t moving at all. Couldn''t move at all.''In May 2009 Napa cop Richard Marsh suffered a severe stroke that submerged him in the terrifying world of a Locked-in sufferer. Brain activity remains but sufferers have no way of communicating with the outside world. In fact, 90 percent of sufferers die within four months of onset. Locked In follows Richard''s extraordinary race against time. First, to prove his existence to the medical team and then to beat the odds of surviving Locked-in syndrome. Written with the intensity of a thriller, we witness astonishing moments in his journey, such as Richard finally hearing a neurosurgeon say, ''I think there''s someone in here''. Now fully recovered, Richard''s story is one of triumph that will captivate and inspire.

Kim Noble is an accomplished artist whose work has been exhibited around the world. She is a mother with a 13-year-old daughter. She is a bubbly and vivacious woman. To meet her you wouldn''t think anything was wrong. But when Kim was younger than five years old, her personality splintered and fractured. In 1995 she was finally diagnosed with Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID) which has been described as a creative way to cope with unbearable pain. Now her body plays host to more than 20 different personalities, or ''alters''. There are women and men, adults and children; there is a scared little boy who speaks only Latin, an elective mute, a gay man and an anorexic teenager. Some alters age with her body; others are stuck in time. ALL OF ME takes the reader through the extraordinary world of a woman for whom the very nature of reality is different. It will tell of her terrifying battles to understand her own mind; of her desperate struggle against all odds to win back the child she loved; and of her courage and commitment in trying to make sense of her life. It is by turns shocking, inspiring, sometimes funny, and deeply moving.