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Blogs by Pinckney D Rivers
Writing what you know. 4/21/2009 5:54:45 PM
why the characters in The Magdalene Chronicles live in my brain and tell me what to write. the book convention started today. I drove over to set up my display space with the free giveaways and to deliver the bookseller baskets to be given away during the convention. I checked out the schedule and found my agent appointment as well as an appointment with a Bantam Editor and one for Kensington. Now the big worry is how to convince the agent to represent me and then how to convince the editors that my series is marketable. With all the money I have put into these goodie bags,I wonder how it will make the readers feel about my subject. Why DO I write about Biblical times and follow it all the way until now. It is a good question and one that my very first preacher could probably answer. I nearly drove him crazy. At seven I asked a lot of questions that preachers didn't want to have to answer for grown ups and being cross examined by a kid just wasn't in his repertoir. He asked my mother not to bring me to the discussions anymore. Being raised a Southern Baptist, I was taught that it was the ONLY REAL religion. My two Catholic friends were going to Hell and there only hope was for me to drag them away from the church their parents took them to and make them change their religion. Worse, yet, my friends in the Methodist Church and Episcopal church were going to be denied access to the Heavenly reward promised to the Christians in the Bible,too. I just couldn't believe it. I couldn't believe an all loving God would punish people who had never heard or even had a way to hear. And wan't there only one God anyway? What was the big deal? How was the MANNER in which one FOUND God more important than the actual finding? When I left home to go to university, the first thing I did was start going to every denomination in town. Then I took every religion class offered (a great bonus for this was that religion majors didn't have to take PE classes so that made me happy.)I became obsessed with religions. I found out that Christianity didn't just appear out of the sky one day. I learned about the people who believed in the words of the man named Jesus and had never intended to become a religion. They only wanted people to be gentle and get along with each other; treat others as they wanted to be treated. Then I transferred to another university and discovered the most wonderful professor in the world. He knew about books that were not allowed to become a part of the Christian cannon. He introduced the class to the lost and hidden books of the bible, the Gnostic scriptures, The Pseudipigripha, the Apocrypha, the Dead Sea Scrolls, and the most obscure texts I had never heard of. That's when the people started talking in my mind. I started to write down the stories I saw and heard there. I tried to interest a publisher but I was told that it wasn't a maketable subject. But I kept on writing. I read anything I could find in any language I could translate. I learned about Nicholas Notovich, a Russian who spend time in Himis Lamassary in Tibet. He read the ancient scrolls there that pertained to Jesus and his visit to India and Tibet. I read books from Japan that said Jesus lived and died there and was buried there. There is a tomb in India that is supposed to be Jesus' too. And fiction; there has always been so much fiction written about the subject. What does it mean? Is there something hidden somewhere? Is there truly some nefarious scheme to keep the truth from people? Does it matter? Would it affect one of the largest religions in the world? The people in my head say no. They say there is a different story here that is often missed (but is right there in plain sight for anyone to see if they want to). Maybe I am a little bit nuts, but I actually believe them. Funny; those who read the books in my series believe me too.
