Sometimes writers, when they begin their careers, think that if they write, they can write about anything, but the truth is they need to write from their heart about things that matter to everyone, and if they do that, you can hardly go wrong. Because stories are really not about words or word choice or anything like that. They’re about conveying the power of a character facing a dilemma that you have no idea how he or she will resolve, and when you do that, you’ve got everyone’s attention.
Write with Purpose!
Sometimes writers, when they begin their careers, think that if they write, they can write about anything, but the truth is they need to write from their heart about things that matter to everyone, and if they do that, you can hardly go wrong. Because stories are really not about words or word choice or anything like that. They’re about conveying the power of a character facing a dilemma that you have no idea how he or she will resolve, and when you do that, you’ve got everyone’s attention.
The Inspiration Trap by Dennis Palumbo
"The Inspiration Trap": the belief that a special talent or knowledge or divine gift—something outside of the artist—is necessary.
CREATIVE MINDS: Psychotherapeutic Approaches and Insights
“Art is everywhere, except it has to pass through a creative mind.”
-Louise Nevelson
When discussing the origins of creativity, the idea I hate the most is that of inspiration. In my clinical work with creative patients, I have found it to be soul-killing for artists of all stripes and at all levels of professional success.
Like the quote by Mary Chase, when asked how she got the idea for her famous play, “Harvey.” Her reply? “I looked up from the breakfast table one morning and there he was.”
This is the kind of story that gives new (and not so new) artists acute and potentially shaming grief: the belief that brilliant ideas just “come to you,” that the lucky few are visited by the spirit of creativity and originality. Even Shakespeare, in his prologue to “Henry V” implores the gods to inspire him: “O for a Muse of Fire, that would ascend the brightest heaven of invention…”
Most of our creative patients, when having breakfast, rarely encounter an invisible 6-foot rabbit, or a Muse of Fire, for that matter. Most encounter the empty canvas, the blank computer screen, the inert, unhelpful lump of modeling clay.
The idea of inspiration, as it is commonly understood, does a great deal of damage to those of our creative patients who succumb to its siren song. For one thing, it devalues craft, which I believe is the most important attribute to be cultivated by every artist. It also reinforces the notion that the creative patients themselves are somehow not enough. That some special talent or knowledge or divine gift—something outside of the artist—is necessary. I call this “The Inspiration Trap.”
It is an understandable misconception, since the word inspiration—from the Latin inspirare, which means “to breathe into”—certainly reinforces the notion that a creative burst comes from the outside of a person; that a divine spark animates the literary, musical, or visual artist, leading to new and innovative work.
Conceptualized in this way, inspiration, by its very nature, cannot be grasped or looked for, and certainly not commanded to show up. (Though many artists give it a try. Hence the various rituals I have heard from creative patients when starting work, everything from earnest prayer to vigorous hand-washing to wearing “lucky” socks. More than 1 writer patient has pointed out to me that Jack Kerouac famously made the Sign of the Cross before sitting down at the keyboard.)
This conception of inspiration can do tremendous damage to our creative patients. I have known artists to give up halfway through a beloved project because they “no longer feel inspired.” (As if you are always supposed to feel good about what you are working on! In my previous career as a Hollywood screenwriter, this was rarely the case.)
Then there was a composer patient of mine who consistently refused to begin a new orchestral piece until he “heard the goddam Muse,” which meant he spent more time listening for that elusive, ethereal helpmate than risking the possibility of composing badly.
(Which reminds me of an old Zen Buddhist story about a monk who patiently tilled the soil in his garden for 20 years, hoping to attain enlightenment. Then, 1 day, his hoe struck a small rock in the dirt and he heard a soft “ping.” Suddenly, he was enlightened. So then the question is, did hearing the “ping” bring him to the state of enlightenment, or was it rather the 20 years of sustained effort tilling the soil that prepared him to recognize and understand the significance of that soft sound when it happened?)
What the 2 aforementioned patients fail to grasp is that— like the experience of the monk in the story—the artistic struggle is, and has always been, something of a grind. It requires persistence, which means one usually spends more time slogging through the valleys of frustration than standing at the peaks of fulfillment. To put it bluntly, if inspiration is going to strike at all, it will emerge unbidden; embedded, I believe, in the deepening levels of craft the artist develops. As most professional artists—and creative types in all fields—seem to understand.
For example, the novelist Albert Morovia said, “I pray for inspiration…but I work at the typewriter four hours a day.”
Writer Peter De Vries goes him one better: “I only write when I’m inspired, so I see to it that I’m inspired at 9 o’clock every morning.”
In other words, good creative work results from the doing itself. As Pablo Picasso said, “Action is the foundational key to all success.” In a similar vein, he reminds us that “inspiration does exist, but it must find you working.”
Or as I often tell my writer patients, “Writing begets writing.” As doing any creative task tends to beget more of the same. Conversely, not working while waiting for inspiration to strike begets more work undone and, ultimately, unfinished. In such instances, there’s very little difference between waiting for inspiration and procrastination.
Of course, leave it to an engineer and entrepreneur, Nolan Bushnell, to cut to the chase: “The ultimate inspiration is the deadline.”
Pragmatic as that comment may seem, I think the best way to help our creative patients wedded to the idea of inspiration, and often therefore its shaming byproduct, is to challenge the underlying meaning they assign to this belief. By which I mean the notion that they themselves are untalented, fooling themselves, or simply fated not to succeed.
Usually, this meaning is birthed in critical or shaming childhood dynamics, which the patient believes they can only transcend by means of a sort of inspirational jump-start. (Frequently, when hearing of another artist’s seemingly “overnight success,” these patients usually attribute it to some inspirational notion the artist suddenly had. Rather than the fact that most “overnight successes” are the result of years of toil, false starts, and bitter disappointments.) As well as that most fickle of gods, luck.
Though, as golfer Ben Hogan once remarked, “The harder I work, the luckier I get.”
Maybe that is a clue as to how we might reframe inspiration, both for ourselves as clinicians and for our creative patients. What if we conceptualize inspiration as the lucky idea or notion that sometimes emerges as a result of a determined constancy in our work, a love of the practice of the artistic project itself. After all, we can love people who sometimes disappoint us. Perhaps we can extend to our creative work that same loyalty and regard.
Given the shifting winds of fortune that accompany any creative person’s life, the smart money is on craft, practice and the love of doing the thing. If luck—or inspiration—shows up, so much the better.
Mr Palumbo is a licensed psychotherapist and author in Los Angeles. His email address for correspondence is dpalumbo181@aol.com.
Why Aren’t You Writing?
WRITE THE WORLD!
TAP-DANCING ON THE RAZOR’S EDGE
It’s the smallest and most dynamic and most important bridge in human experience—one that everyone would like to be standing on, but few have the courage to attempt:
It’s the bridge of VISION--that links dream with reality.
It’s a very small bridge and very narrow and uncomfortable when you first step onto it. But the longer you’re on it, the more maneuvering room you realize you have. The more comfortable it becomes standing on what you recognize as the razor’s edge.
You learn to tap dance.
You learn to laugh and cry again.
You learn to enjoy the dance, to sing while you dance.
You learn perspective. You build character. You turn from butterfly to lioness.
Sooner or later, you should begin to feel, as I do, incredibly fortunate to be doing what we love the most—storytelling—and getting paid to do it. As a producer, editor, literary manager, author consultant, and brand launcher, I get to be an alchemist, turning stories into gold.
And as someone who tries hard to always think OUTSIDE THE BOX—especially since the boxes either are crumbling or have already crumbled--it has been thrilling to see my clients’ DRACULA THE UNDEAD on page one of cnn.com and on the New York Times extended list—after I added a brand name to the mix; and to be producing my clients’ Jerry Blaine and Lisa McCubbin’s THE KENNEDY DETAIL, which appears from Gallery Books/Simon & Schuster after we found a way to get Clint Hill to write the forward, and we managed to set up, with our reality partner Renegade83 a 2-hour Discovery Sunday special which garnered an Emmy nomination. These clients danced the danced successfully, and because they, like all storytellers, are inveterate masochists are already back on that bridge dancing that crazy dance again.
No one is forcing you to do this. Remind yourself of that when the going gets toughest. You’ve chosen this career, and you can only lose at it if you quit.
What you are doing, in business terms, is creating the most valuable commodity on earth, “intellectual property.” And today that is worth more than real property!
You are entering an infinite profession, of unlimited potential. Not even the sky is the limit—my client Nik Halik’s The Thrillionaire has been in outer space! In this world of studios crashing, networks retrenching, publishers conglomerating, where everything is changing all the time—at least one thing is constant: the need for stories never ceases.
“Trackers” are highly paid by the major studios to find stories and bring them in.
No wonder storytellers were considered sacred among the ancient Greeks--because they were the channelers of STORIES, stories that described reality in terms humans can relate to.
Therefore don’t let your ego prematurely destroy your career, as I have seen it do for so many writers. “No ego” should be your mantra, as you take your WORK, not YOURSELF, seriously.
Eventually, on that razor’s edge, you’ll learn that though the Promised Land IS worth the promise it’s the struggle to get there that is the most valuable experience of your life.
As storytellers who are here this weekend because you actively pursue your vision, you know full well how narrow the bridge we stand on is, how fragile. But you should also know that we’re heroes for even attempting to cross this bridge.
The First Step
The young poet Evmenis
complained one day to Theocritus:
"I've been writing for two years now
and I've composed only one idyll.
It's my single completed work.
I see, sadly, that the ladder
of Poetry is tall, extremely tall;
and from this first step I'm standing on now
I'll never climb any higher."
Theocritus retorted: "Words like that
are improper, blasphemous.
Just to be on the first step
should make you happy and proud.
To have reached this point is no small achievement:
what you've done already is a wonderful thing.
Even this first step
is a long way above the ordinary world.
To stand on this step
you must be in your own right
a member of the city of ideas.
And it's a hard, unusual thing
to be enrolled as a citizen of that city.
Its councils are full of Legislators
no charlatan can fool.
To have reached this point is no small achievement:
what you've done already is a wonderful thing."
So let’s pause to celebrate--and applaud ourselves right now--for even being here today, on this step—whether it is your first, or whether you’ve taken a few steps already. If you are among the latter, you’ll appreciate the words of the great playwright-poet Samuel Beckett: “Do not come down the ladder. I have taken it away.”
Let’s also face it: you’re in “show BUSINESS,” as my client and partner Michael A. Simpson constantly reminds me; and you must deal with it as the BUSINESS of SHOW. What years have taught me is how important it is, never more so than today, to understand the BUSINESS of being a visionary, a person others call “mad” or “insane.” Remind them of Salvador Dali’s response: “The difference between myself and a madman is that I am not mad.”
I always say that the difference between a visionary and a con man in the creative world is SUCCESS. No one believes you can really do it, because everyone has told them how hard it is—and they themselves are too fearful to try.
Yes, it is difficult. That’s why, though everyone in the world has a story, NOT everyone—only YOU—are doing something about it.
Your personal cutting edge difference will be dealing with your career as a business on all fronts. Business requires a plan, an investment, a marketing program, and unceasing determination to move the flag across the field, remembering, for consolation, that if you die in the midst of your own dream that, by definition, has to be a happy death!
As Muriel Rukeyser said, for us humans, “the universe is made of stories, not of atoms.” Whatever it’s really made of, all that matters is how we perceive it. And it’s through stories that we form our perception.
When you’re standing on the razor’s edge in fear, or complaining—as all of us constantly do--remind yourself:
No one is FORCING you to tell your stories to the world. No one is holding this gun to your head but yourself.
You’re here by your free choice, while they are behind their counters or their commuting dashboards or their tellers’ windows because they are afraid to take the chances you are getting used to.
Meanwhile, you are following your dream.
Welcome to the world of storytellers:
What is a storyteller? A storyteller is a simply a communicative dreamer—a person who dares to learn how to communicate her dreams to all of us.
Doing so is not only his privilege, it’s his responsibility. I always told my Occidental College students, “If you have a dream, and fail to express it, you have denied all of us a unique vision that only you can bring us.”
But Aristotle said, “Excellence is not a plan.” Dreamers need to plan. An authorpreneur who truly wishes to succeed in the commercial world of storytelling needs to analyze it from a business point of view. AMBITION and VISION are NOT ENOUGH. You must equal them with CRAFT, TECHNIQUE, AND SKILL.
In my book, A WRITER’S TIME, I wrote that four things are needed to succeed in Hollywood:
1) Persistence (endurance, determination)
2) Contacts (networking)
3) Being a fun person to work with (and its corollary, “Staying off everyone’s life is too short list”) and
4) TALENT
It’s sobering to realize that any one of the first three are sufficient in themselves. Bad movies can be made through sheer persistence; mediocre books can be published just through strong contacts. But the 4th, the one we’re all looking and hoping for, is NOT sufficient. Talent alone must be combined with the others.
And add LUCK or GOOD TIMING and, remembering what someone said that the “harder I work the luckier I get.”
You might also add ORIGINALITY—which Joe Roth defined as “being able to think of something that hasn’t been on TV!”
Recently, trying to maintain the business of show business, my company has evolved. We raise independent financing for films, and encourage writers to become filmmakers to move their projects forward. We consult with writers on their career strategies one on one. We launch brands. As literary managers, we look for the next Sue Grafton or Robert Ludlum whose vision CLEARLY extends into the future.
What we learn from the tap-dance on the razor’s edge is:
TOUGHEN UP.
KEEP MOVING FORWARD DESPITE YOUR PRESENT MOODS. A week from now, you won’t even remember how you feel today; so don’t let it stop you from working. My wife Kayoko is always reminding me that Gandhi said, “Full effort is full success.”
PERSIST. NEVER GIVE UP. Yes, you may be going through hell. But “if you’re going through hell,” Winston Churchill advised, “keep going!”
NEVER PUT DEADLINES ON YOUR CAREER.
TAKE YOUR CAREER, NOT YOURSELF, SERIOUSLY. Don’t go from saying “I just want to be better” to “I just want to write what I want to write.” I’ve repeatedly seen clients lose the humble perspective created before success hit them, and sabotage their careers.
NEVER PUT ASIDE YOUR VISION, BUT PERFECT IT, PERFECT IT, PERFECT IT and make allies of those who can help you do that to bring your craft and skills to the level of your talent and ambition. If you continue pursuing your dream no matter what until you achieve it—and then you’ll have bigger dreams, of course—by definition, YOU CAN’T FAIL. Carlyle put it this way: “Success is steady progress toward a worthy goal.”
Walt Disney was turned down 302 times before he got financing for Disneyland.
Frank Herbert’s DUNE was rejected 36 times. Don’t let your representative give up at 32!
George Lucas was forced to put up his own money to pay for “Star Wars” because NO ONE believed in his vision. By the time the film came out, he was bankrupt. He is now fabulously wealthy of course—PRECISELY BECAUSE HE WAS UNABLE TO SELL ANY OF THE RIGHTS TO THE FILM OR ITS SEQUELS. Shakespeare played politics to get the Globe Theater built for his own plays. Sophocles and Aeschylus had to do the same thing in the time of classical Greece. Jane Austen, Thomas Hardy, in fact most late nineteenth century novelists began their careers SELF-PUBLISHING.
Jerzy Kosinski’s STEPS won awards, but was rejected by publishers 34 times—once by its very own publisher, after it had already been published.
Remember what William Goldman observed, in his Adventures in the Screen Trade: NOBODY KNOWS ANYTHING.
In today’s tough world of authorpreneurship, be flexible and always THINK OUTSIDE THE BOX.
Yes, the business of becoming and being a professional writer is hard. The hard part is the great part. That’s why you’ve chosen to do it. The river is wide between where we are now and the success and attention we want is on the other side. The razor’s edge is thin and dangerous. You don’t NEED to do this. You’re DESTINED to do this.
What could be a happier mission in life?
How can you fail at being yourself?
And now you know what the bridge is—a razor’s edge--and how to dance on it, just promise me and yourself that you won’t fall off.
WATCH Life or Something Like It on NETFLIX - "Destiny is what you make of it."
Reporter Lanie Kerrigan interviews psychic homeless man Prophet Jack (Tony Shalhoub) for a fluff piece about a football game's score. Instead, he tells her that her life has no meaning and will end in just a few days. This sparks her to action to change the pattern of her life. Also, Starring Edward Burns as Pete Scanlon.
Check Out Book Trailer for Rick S. Mordecon's Offworld!
ORDER LIVE NOW FOR OFFWORLD Origins
TIME: 2325
SETTING: Earth, its Solar system, and beyond.
Earth unveils the most incredible engineering marvel in its history, the Space Ring known as “Shenu,” an off-world colony. From this moment on, humanity discovers more about itself, its solar system, and its unique alien origins. But there’s danger in every corner as a dimensional rift outside of Jupiter threatens to cause chaos in the Solar System, an alien presence is detected on Earth, battle lines are drawn, and a comet is sent on a collision course to strike Mars.
The Ring Dwellers:
🧬 Gina Prime
Humanity 2.0, the most advanced being to ever traverse the stars. As questions of her origin intertwine with alien technology, an invasion plan, and humanity’s destiny, Gina must grapple with her role -- friend or foe, savior or destroyer?
🧑 Dr. Tantalus
A Transhuman Evolutionary Architect metaforming into a Reptilian who is the most dangerous adversary humanity has ever encountered.
🌌 Betta Rajastani
A Gen Epsilon 23-year-old twin whose evolution may be humanity’s best hope -- or its undoing.
🧬 UMA
More than just a soul-infused Geneticom, UMA may secretly be an alien intelligence infiltrating humanity’s core.
🧠 Anderson Olefors
A scandal-ridden genius and Gina’s creator. He holds the key to a terrifying truth that could shift the balance of power.
⚛️ Harrison Byrnes
Commander of Athena, the first sentient dark matter starship. His love for Gina may jeopardize the very mission he leads.
🔥 Perfect for fans of:
✔ "Dune" by Frank Herbert
✔ "The Expanse" by James S. A. Corey
✔ "Red Rising" by Pierce Brown
✔ "Foundation" by Isaac Asimov
✔ "Hyperion" by Dan Simmons
✔ "Snow Crash" by Neal Stephenson
👁 If you love deep world-building, morally complex heroes, futuristic tech, and cinematic action with philosophical stakes, this book is for you.
👁 Step into a bold new universe where AI possesses souls, evolution blurs into extinction, science collides with myth, and the line between evolution and revolution is one secret from being crossed.
💥 OFFWORLD – ORIGINS is your gateway to a bold new universe where science, myth, and destiny collide.
📚 Ideal for readers who enjoy:
✔ Science Fiction
✔ Science Fantasy
✔ Intelligent sci-fi thrillers
✔ Romances between space-faring star-crossed lovers
✔ Space operas with ensemble casts
✔ Philosophical futurism and AI ethics
✔ Tech-noir and intergalactic warfare
🛰️ History is written by the victors. The future? By those who dare to change the rules.
🔥 "Humanity’s final frontier isn’t space -- it’s what we become to survive it."
Denise Griffitts Reviews Nicole Conn's Descending Thirds
by

The story follows two women—one a concert pianist, the other a filmmaker—whose lives intertwine in a deeply emotional and, at times, painfully raw relationship. As always, Conn writes with poetic precision, offering a lens into the vulnerability and complexity of deeply human emotions. Her characters are beautifully flawed, and their journey together is one that will linger in your heart long after the final page.
What makes Descending Thirds so powerful is Conn’s refusal to offer easy resolutions. She leans into the dissonance of relationships—how people crash together, pull apart, and sometimes find their way back, not as the people they were, but as something new. The novel is both sensual and cerebral, a symphony of emotional chords that refuse to be ignored.
This isn’t a light read—but it is an unforgettable one. If you’ve ever loved too deeply, lost too much, or longed for healing, Descending Thirds will speak to you.
New From Story Merchant Books: A Rose in Roatan
A remote exotic island...a fragile new relationship...and a mysterious disappearance, leaving behind many questions. This journey will test her in ways she never imagined.
Misty is excited to be getting away from the pressures of her all-consuming corporate job to the tropical paradise of Roatan, with Peter, the man she thinks may be her perfect partner. But soon after their arrival, she discovers the stresses she left behind in the big city pales in comparison to what was awaiting them…
A seemingly innocent introduction to fellow travelers soon becomes an all-encompassing mystery after one of them, a young woman, suddenly disappears.
When Peter refuses to indulge Misty in her search for the missing woman, even becoming angry with her at times, she struggles to hide her detective work. To add to the confusion, Peter and the young man last seen with the missing woman have a secretive connection that they refuse to share with her.
Having forgotten to pack her medication, Misty is left to manage and hide her mounting anxiety from Peter, who begins to show a side of himself that leaves her wondering if she had him figured all wrong.
When the missing young woman’s sister shows up at the resort, Misty is further drawn into the strange disappearance, treading lightly through the maze of an unhelpful police force, an overbearing boyfriend, a distraught sister, and a trail that seems to be leading nowhere fast.
With the vacation reaching its end, her relationship with Peter strained to a near breaking point, and nothing making sense, Misty is struggling to understand…and then suddenly, she does.
About the authors
Nancy Kolodzie resides in Toronto and works in the financial service industry. She enjoys spending time with family, friends, travelling and gardening. Nancy was inspired to tell this story, after a trip to Roatan with her life partner who, at that time, happened to be a writer without a story.
Fran Lewis' in depth review of The Messiah Matrix
A matrix is defined as “ A situation or surrounding substance within which something else originates, develops, or is contained.” Within the pages of this intricate novel we learn about the origins of situations in the past the have reflected themselves in the present as the author takes us back in time to 70A.D. when Flavius Josephus the Historian decided to add 100 words that would change the course of history and the perspective on the existence of one man who was and still is crucial to the Church and Christianity, Christ. Did he really exist? Why is that so many scholars, writers never make mention to actually seeing Jesus in person. Those investigating this issue found one physical reference in a document titled: Testimonium Flavianum added to an edition of his book: Josephus’ Antiquities of the Jews, where he makes mention of his existence. Antiquities 18.3.3. “Now there was about this time Jesus, a wise man, if it be lawful to call him a man, for he was a doer of wonderful works, a teacher of such men as receive the truth with pleasure. He drew over to him both many of the Jews, and many of the Gentiles. He was the Christ; and when Pilate, at the suggestion of the principal men amongst us, had condemned him to the cross, those that loved him at the first did not forsake him, for he appeared to them alive again the third day, as the divine prophets had foretold these and ten thousand other wonderful things concerning him; and the tribe of Christians, so named from him, are not extinct to this day.”
According to history Pilate condemned him to be crucified and to his death. Some who became his disciples did not abandon him. Some reported that he appeared three days after he was crucified and he was the Messiah. But, our novel begins with the murder of a Monsignor authorized we are told by the Holy Mother Church as related by his killer who seeks redemption from Father Ryan and absolution for his sins. But, no sooner does the young Priest begin speaking to him in the Confessional, this man runs out of the church and finds himself the next victim. Why was he sent? Why would the Holy Mother Church order the death of this great man and what do the final words of the killer mean?
Diving in the ancient Harbor in Israel, Emily, an archeologist and her team are diving below the surface and encounter some rough waters. Hidden below the surface in a boat that has been there for many years is a treasure that will change the course of many lives and endanger those that found it. Two of her student divers remain below the surface during this dangerous storm causing Emily to have to find out their fate. Diving, searching and finally learning the reason why their rise to the surface was delayed she decides to complete what they started. Beneath and stuck in a krater was a gold coin. But, not just any gold coin one that was enveloped in bronze by its first owner who left it there thinking he might return for it at a later date but never did. “The Augustan Aureus: never released, was sitting in the palm of her hands.” The author vividly describes the coin: the figure portrayed is wearing a crown that appears to look like thorns. His face has a beard and the thorns look like a halo of spikes differing from the coin depicted on the cover of this book. Within the coin the creator inscribed: Chi and Rho, Greek Letters. The discussion was exciting and heated between Emily and her two students as the history behind the coin is revealed, their excitement palpable and the need to protect the coin noted. Meeting a man named Luke who Emily feels might provide more answers and perhaps funding for her team to continue their research in this field.
Father Ryan relates his meeting with our late Monsignor and the fact he too was in search of answers regarding Christ and his existence. Throughout Chapter 10 he relates what he learned about the man, the many scholars who published documents back then but never mentioned seeing Jesus in person and determining how to handle the fact that the killer, an Albanian man died in his arms and whether he should report it. The chapter relates information about Herod, the slaughter of male infants and the rumor of a royal birth. It continues with his meetings with the Monsignor, his lifestyle and wondering what he might have found in the Sibyl’s cave that got him killed.
Three separate plots: two murders, a coin that could change it all and a Priest that wants to find the connection between the death of the clergyman and the secret he might have buried with him. The Messiah Matrix will hopefully answer this question, leave readers asking more of their own and hopefully enlighten everyone about the research and the history related to Jesus and his existence.
Getting to understand Father Ryan we learn just what a threat he seems to be to the Vatican when summoned to the office of the Procurator General of the Society of Jesus and we hear his tone, his threats to Ryan and the end result in being attacked, entombed when looking at the sarcophagus of St. Paul and then bumping into Emily and finding out it is the Bishop and many attached to the Jesuits that are involved. Followed, shot at, attacked and learning the name of the bishop behind it all is not even the tip of the iceberg for these two when they team up to find out what caused someone kill Oscar Isaac their beloved Monsignor. The book is replete in history and the Monsignor found a link between Jesus and Augustus, which is explained in detail. Next, the cameo of the Emperor Augustus with a crown and holding the royal Roman Scepter carved they think during the time Christ was depicted on the center of the holy cross. This cameo was said to mean that the emperor was the “earthly representative of the almighty power of God.” He was also hoping to find the coin that Emily recovered and he thought his research important for the “origins of Christianity,” dangerous to the church and the Vatican. Finding the coin that was so valuable and the events that followed alerted Ryan to why he had to fear Pimental the Procurator. But, there is much more as the man who cleaned the coin, translated the words for the one person she thought she could trust but not only stole it from her but intended to capitalize on it, realized that on the coin in Greek were the words: God and son of god embossed across from the name: Jasius Augustus.
As you read this novel many different viewpoints come to light regarding Jesus as the Son of God and the Roman Emperor Augustus thought to be the real Son of God according to the Monsignor’s research. If this is true and he is said to be son of god then the Christian Savior should be considered even more a Son of God which explains the tension that mounts within this novel between the Christian church, the Jesuits and the conflict that Father Ryan and Emily face as they come in contact with those that are behind the events that almost took their lives and did take the lives of three others. The Antiquities of the Jews and the crown that was worn by Apollo and the evidence found in the cave and presented to them will give every reader pause for thought, reason to do the research into what is presented themselves and make your own final decision. The cult of Augustus was “reinstated by Constantine,” and revived in the present. In other words Augustus had “designated a dozen of his pontiffs as August ales, to spread the rubrics of his cult throughout the empire.” In reality what Emily and the Monsignor uncovered is from what is depicted on her coin: the bearded image of Augustus wearing the Crown of Thorns- standing for the golden spiked one worn by Apollo. In reality when they asses what they have found, rendered all of the information in the files found in the catacombs and more the end result is that Isaac surmised that : Jesus was Augustus and Ryan has been asked to continue on with his work called the Messiah Matrix.
Was Jesus a real person? From the research presented within this novel the author relates that Augustus founded Christianity. The story created by Pimental and the Bishop would change the course of history. Stating that the imperial cult of Augustus Caesar was Christianity in itself. As we hear Pimental and Emily speak and the research of the Monsignor revealed we learn what others believe to be the truth: that Jesus Christ was “ simply the imperial cult name for the deified Caesar Augustus and the Church Fathers would later spin the manufactured mythology to create a literal biblical Jesus.” When the truth as they tell it unfolds the answers reflect that a mythology emerged into religious power and housed itself with the guardians and those who related the what they thought the real version of religion. Temptations rise, lives are placed in danger as Emily and Ryan face the challenge of their lives but first they have to escape what has been planned for them by those that appear to want them to submit to their will. A final scene will make readers hold their breath as Emily and Ryan are sent head first into a boiling underground river and hope to emerge unscathed.
Characters that are quite interesting and a storyline you will have decide for yourself whether you believe or not. As you read the final chapters and hear the voices from the past of the Emperors, Virgil as he is honored and allowed to sit with the Emperor. What is truth and what did they decide to recreate and change you will have to read and hear the voices of Virgil, Augustus and those in attendance to find out. Creating a cult, which would unify the people of the empire and bring peace. A document or book that would relate the facts and events the way they had conceived them making one man the true God in the eyes of the people. When Ryan and Emily present their findings and you read the last chapter and the chart they created of the events from start to finish, you the reader will decide: Was the real Jesus the one born in a manger or was Jesus: Jesus Augustus? You decide after reading this outstanding novel whose research and an ending that will bring it all full circle.
Fran Lewis: reviewer