S. Gale Bleth's 26 Years of Self-Defense Teaching, 16 Years in Higher Education, and 16 Years in Crime Prevention All Live Inside Her Scribe Book
"You can't go back once you start. If you don't throw your hat over the fence, the book just stays in the back of your mind."
— S. Gale Bleth, Personal Safety Expert, R.A.D. Systems Instructor
S. Gale Bleth spent twenty-six years teaching self-defense, sixteen years working in higher education at California State University East Bay, and another sixteen years as a Crime Prevention Specialist for the Hayward Police Department. For most of those years, she taught the same 90-minute personal safety presentation, condensed from a 12-hour R.A.D. Systems course, to women on campus and in the community. A.W.A.R.E.: A Personal Safety Playbook for Leaving the Nest came out April 28, 2026. It hit number one in three Amazon categories on day two. Gale now spends her retirement as a working author, teaching the same material to a much bigger room.
From a PowerPoint slide deck to a story-driven playbook
Gale walked into Scribe with a PowerPoint. She had thought for years that her 90-minute campus presentation, condensed from a 12-hour R.A.D. Systems course, would translate directly into a book. The story editor she worked with pushed back: a deck of bullet points does not read. She introduced characters. Chapter one follows Lily, a young woman who becomes a victim of a crime. Chapter seven follows Jack, who tries to be a hero and ends up getting beat up, and learns it's better to be a good witness. By the end, Gale's entire field manual, the five-color code of awareness, the victim pyramid, the personal weapons primer, the assailant vulnerable-location guide, was wrapped inside characters that teenagers actually remember.
"My niece Camila is twelve. She read the book in twenty-four hours. I had to ask her, 'Are you sure you read it?' I drilled her on the five colors of awareness. She knew it all."
— S. Gale Bleth
A.W.A.R.E. — the framework that drives the entire book
The acronym is the spine of the book and the spine of every workshop Gale still teaches. Alert: you are leaving your house, you know you are going somewhere with people in it, you are switching on. Watch: you are scanning for anything out of the ordinary. Assess: when something feels off, you stop and analyze the situation. Respond: you check how it makes you feel and decide what to do about it. Escape: you remove yourself from the chaos before it pulls you in. Gale teaches that 90 percent of personal safety is mental, not physical. The remaining 10 percent is what to do with your body if escape failed.
The book that hit #1 on day two — and changed the marketing question
A.W.A.R.E. launched on a Tuesday. On Thursday, Amazon sent Gale a notification that the book had reached #1 in three categories. Gale was not chasing bestseller rank. She was chasing a use case: she wants the book in the hands of every freshman walking into orientation at a U.S. college or university. Friends at her old university are already setting up the conversation about including the book in the new-student welcome package. Gale just finished a book signing in the Bay Area where her brother bought copies for her three nieces. The day before the signing, the dad sent Gale a photo of Camila finishing the book on the bus ride home.
"Do you remember in ninth grade, we had to read Catcher in the Rye? That's what I want this book to be. In every student's backpack, in every purse, on every bus, in every dorm room."
— S. Gale Bleth
Why she retired and then immediately started working harder
Gale retired from law enforcement four years ago. She thought she'd take up golf, see her grandkids more, and take a few online meditation courses. Then she started writing things down. The novel she had been quietly drafting (the publishing partner at Scribe doesn't do fiction) became the catalyst for a different book entirely. She started writing the personal safety manual in early 2025. It published April 2026. She launched a biweekly safety tips newsletter at stay-aware.com. She is now actively booking speaking engagements at conferences and at universities. The same person who taught a 90-minute personal safety class for twenty-six years is now doing the same job at scale, with a book in the hands of the audience she could never reach one classroom at a time.
Where the book goes from here
Gale's near-term goal is freshman orientation reading lists at U.S. colleges and universities, starting with the schools where she has personal contacts and expanding outward. Her medium-term goal is international distribution. The five-step A.W.A.R.E. framework translates without modification: the language changes from country to country, the method does not. Gale doesn't see the book dying off any time soon. Every August, a new class leaves the nest. They need what she teaches before they get to campus, not after.
"You can't go back once you start. If you don't throw your hat over the fence, the book just stays in the back of your mind. Five or ten years from now you'll be saying, 'I should have done that when I was thinking about it.' Start now."
— S. Gale Bleth
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