How and Why of Bless the Child
Researching BLESS THE CHILD was a wild ride – it entailed far more than I’d bargained for.
I’d like to tell you about it!
How Bless the Child Got Written
Who knows where stories come from? Bits and pieces of information lodge in a writer’s brain and sometimes they coalesce into a story that hooks you into writing it.
Bless the Child had two such irresistible hooks for me: One was a phone call from a dying friend who said she thought she was Possessed by an evil entity and asked my help in finding an exorcist! ( That was quite a shock and a story for another day!)
The other hook was reading an extraordinary book by a former Catholic priest and exorcist, Malachy Martin, who had been the Vatican’s Historian in Residence for two decades.
Father Martin was a linguist who spoke more than a dozen languages, many of them ancient. The book, Hostage to the Devil was a true account of his investigations into possession and exorcism. It was both brilliant and terrifying… definitely not a book to be read alone in the dead of night!
The two events caused a story to germinate in my mind, but it took several years and the catalyzing event of having a friend beg me to find her an exorcist to save her soul, to propel me into getting it all onto paper.
What If…
I began doing what writers can’t help doing… hypothesizing a series of scary what ifs that went something like this:
- What if your drug addicted daughter left a newborn baby on your doorstep and disappeared?
- What if she came back several years later and took the child you love into a dangerous Satanic Cult?
- What if that child turned out to have powers that made her mankind’s last hope in the war between Good and Evil?
- Would you risk body and soul to save her?
I just couldn’t get these questions and the storyline they created out of my head. To understand where my research took me, let me set the scene a little.
The Plot Thickens
In my book, Maggie O’Connor, is a 42 year old grandmother who is about to answer these what ifs… maybe with her life.
She’s also about to do battle with Satan, she just doesn’t know it yet.
Maggie finds the law won’t help her save her granddaughter from the Satanic cult. Only an exorcist priest believes her story, and a rabbi who practices Kabbalah knows too much not to believe her. Ancient memories of an Egyptian prophecy are beginning to rise within her terrifying dreams and suddenly it seems that everybody wants thisbeloved child – even the Devil himself.
The Research Trail
I wondered where in this world, to begin the arcane research I’d need?
I figured I’d have to bone up on Christian Mysticism, heresies, the Kabbalah, Ancient Egypt, the New York City Police Department, Satanism, ritual magic and the childcare issues that are plaguing
the legal system, as more and more children are being raised by grandparents.
Exorcists willing to discuss the subject without a lay person are scarcer than snowflakes in Hell, but because of the fluky fact that I had actually attended the exorcism I mentioned earlier, I had a surprising credential with which to open discussions… or maybe it was just the grace of God that directed me.
Over the course of my researching, three remarkable exorcists entered into serious dialogue with me and revealed information that’s so seldom shared with a layperson, that after Bless the Child hit the bestseller lists, a Cardinal asked me to explain to him how on earth I’d pulled it off! (see I Meet a Cardinal).
Finding an Exorcist
Exorcists are always the intellectual crème de la crème of their respective churches. Linguists, scholars – courageous men whose integrity is absolutely unimpeachable. Each one I interviewed told me that their empirical experience had convinced them that there is a disembodied evil intelligence in the universe that is inimical to mankind.
When you hear men of such intellect, education and moral principle say such things with absolute conviction and tales of specific experiences, trust me, you pay attention.
They told me stories of
- Demons speaking in long dead languages.
- The ability of the “Possessed” to change form and language.
- They said the criteria are very specific for a person to be declared “possessed” rather than mentally deranged. The afflicted person must be able to do things humans ordinarily cannot. Like speaking in unfamiliar tongues or levitating, or exhibiting super human strength, or telekinesis, or reading the thoughts of those around him. Sometimes even knowing the most intimate sins of those in the room, whom it considers the enemy.
They said they had seen it all… and I believed them. I knew The Exorcist (book and movie) was a fictionalized true story taken from the archives of the Georgetown Archdiocese.
Deliverance
People ask me if denominations other than Catholics, experience Possession. The answer is a resounding yes. In the Episcopal Church and some other Christian denominations, exorcism is called Deliverance. Mystical Jews also believe and have rituals to use if needed.
I decided to interview Rabbis who study the mystical Kabbalah and the fun really began. I was not Jewish, male, or Hebrew-speaking so I had to go through an interview process with Rabbinical scholars and almost got to meet the famed Rebbe Schneerson of the Lubavitchers, (see The Gates of Hell are Where? on my website for that story) but a week or so before I was to meet him, the Rebbe had a stroke, and never regained his health.
Weird Stuff
Some very intriguing things had happened to me during my research and writing of Bless the Child. Every time I talked with one particular priest, the phone line would go dead or become too statick-y to hear. My recording equipment often wouldn’t work at all when I was recording someone speaking about exorcisms. Books fell out of bookshelves and hit me on the head, then landed on the floor open to exactly the knowledge I needed.
Information and extraordinary people were placed in my path at so many turns in the road, I felt I was being led to where I was supposed to go in order to tell the story with authenticity. There was a distinct sense of being guided in my work…sometimes into directions I had not consciously chosen to pursue.
Call the Cops!
I went to the New York City Police Department and talked to detectives whose specialty is Cults. One particular detective, who’d been recommended to me as “the cop’s cop,” by a Judge I knew was absolutely wonderful and became my guide to police procedure and to understanding the complexities of the people who guard us.
I was so touched by the combined toughness and sensitivity of this man – a two-time Viet Nam Vet who spoke of a child’s murder with tears on his cheeks – that much of Malachy Devlin’s character – one of the two love stories in Maggie’s life in Bless The Child – grew out of his stories, strengths and tears.
Good and Evil
During my research and writing of Bless the Child, I learned a great deal about the nature of Good and Evil, (See What I Learned from Bless the Child’s Research if you’re interested in what some very heavy-hitter mystics had to say!) and an equal amount about the incredible scope of the human spirit. I believe this book is really a story about the humanity’s astonishing ability to love despite the cost, and the transcendence of Goodness itself.
That’s what our life’s journey is all about, I think… prevailing, not simply enduring, rising beyond what we ever thought we could, because we love so much and – if you believe as I do – because we take our strength from a Higher Source.
ORDER YOUR E-BOOK TODAY!
…back to the list
« Protecting Our Humanity in an A.I. World? | What Do the Planets Mean to You? »