The creator of the Morgan Snow sex therapist series has added a new string to her bow. Here she talks about her latest work, which ranges from ancient Rome to the modern day.
M.J., you’ve had an interesting career in the publishing world. In fact, you’ve broken a lot of the rules—yet you’ve made being a rebel work for you. Let’s talk about your big new book that all of New York is buzzing, and then I want to talk a little about the past.
Your latest novel, THE REINCARNATIONIST, which goes on sale Aug. 28, was one of the big buzz books at BEA recently. It’s a break from your former books.
Question: Tell us what the story is about.
THE REINCARNATIONIST is equal parts modern-day thriller, historical fiction and love story. With one foot in present-day Rome and New York and another in Rome some 1,600 years ago. Photojournalist Josh Ryder survives a terrorist’s bomb, only to be haunted by near hallucinatory memories of a past life in Rome as a pagan priest. Memories descend on Josh at will, pulling him to an ancient yet strangely familiar Roman burial chamber harboring the remains of a woman clutching a wooden box.
A trail of present-day murders takes him deeper into a labyrinth at whose heart lies the enigma of a collection of “memory tools” whose origins trace back to both ancient Egypt and India. The stones’ promise to “assist the wearer in reaching his next incarnation” sets the ancient and modern worlds on a collision course.
Josh, like most of my readers, is a skeptic. And the book is his search to understand what is happening to him. The questions of who we are cannot be asked without first asking who we were. And I’ve tried to answer that using my own research into reincarnation theory - as well as the tenets and writings of those who have studied and believed in reincarnation over thousands of years.
Question: Is this the first in a series of books?
Yes, there are three planned so far.
Question: What prompted this novel? What was the seed of inspiration for this story?
It’s an idea I’ve been working on since my mother died ten years ago this summer… and at the same time most of my life.
As the family story goes, when I was three years old I told my great grandfather specifics about the home he’d left in Russia and he claimed there was no way I could have known those things unless I’d been there in a past life.
He was convinced and convinced my mother, that I was reincarnated.
She became interesed in the subject, eventually transferred that interest to me and I’ve studied the subject off and on for most of my adult life.
In my research I discovered we were in good company: Reincarnationists throughout history include: Carl Jung, Rudyard Kipling, Einstein, Ben Franklin, Napoleon, Mark Twain, General George Patton, Louisa May Alcott, Tolstoy, Henry Ford, Goethe, the Baal Shem Tov, Nietzsche, Gandhi, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Albert Schweitzer, Walt Whitman, Wordsworth, Levi ibn Habib (the Ralbah), Rumi, Thoreau, Socrates, Jesus Christ in the Gnostic Gospels, Voltaire, Josephus, Balzac, Gauguin, Pythagoras, Kabbalists, Hindus, Buddhists and Christians
In fact there currently over 26 million people who are believers.
I’ve even created a blog as a hub for "reincarnationists" to find news related to reincarnation, read reviews of books on the subject, and discover links to other blogs and websites on reincarnation and related intriguing topics.
www.reincarnationist.org/wordpress/
Question: Do you write in both third person and first? Do you have a preference? If so, which and why?
The choice depends on the book. In some of my previous novels, first offered an intimacy I felt the book needed. With this novel, crossing centuries and continents, I needed a bigger voice and third offered that. {mospagebreak}
Question: In doing the research for this book, you’ve spoken with some top dogs in related fields such as past life regression. Tell us a little about the research you did. Got any good anecdotes?
Well, I “found out” my ex-husband had me buried alive with him – apparently I was his slave in Egypt in a past live. And there’s no question about it, in this life he was definitely trying to bury me alive with him again.
Question: Your past series featuring sex therapist Dr. Morgan Snow has been lauded for your handling of sensual material. Reviewers have praised the way you write “sensuality, passion, intimacy, and the erotic.” These elements played a major role in these books. What drew you into this terrain?
To me character and plot are intertwined. The same way that sex and the rest of your life is intertwined. So if I’m true to the characters I’m writing about, I explore their sexuality as well as the other parts of their personalities and psychology.
In some novels – like the Snow series - sexuality played a greater role because Morgan is a sex therapist. In THE REINCARNATIONIST, sex doesn’t play a big role at all.
Question: Your first book, LIP SERVICE, was self-published, and went on to be the first self-published novel sold to the Literary Guild/Doubleday Book Club. It was also the first novel sold and marketed on the internet and the first novel that started as an e-book to be picked up by a mainstream publisher. What drove you to self –publish?
I had an agent –the wonderful Loretta Barrett who is still my agent - but she’d been unable to place my first two novels. While there were editors who loved the writing and the characters, both books crossed too many genres for marketing departments to be comfortable with them.
But I was in advertising and I didn’t agree the cross genre issue was an issue at all.
I never intended to “self-publish”, what I did was to go online and market one of the books for a few months in an effort to test market it and prove that the cross genre issue wasn’t really a problem.
Just as I was wrapping up the test and getting results for Loretta to take back to editors, the Double Book Club/Literary Guild called and made an offer. It was really an amazing time. {mospagebreak}
Question: You’ve had a very successful career in big-time advertising. You were creative director of Rosenfeld Sirowitz and Lawson. What made you give up the glitz, glamour and steady paycheck of advertising for the lonely job of writing?
Give it up? You’re kidding. A friend of mine jokes that my getting published was like becoming a Russian Princess on the eve of the Russian Revolution. I left advertising to write fiction full time only to discover that to stay alive as a novelist I had to get back into advertising and learn about marketing my novels. Which is what led to me starting a marketing company for authors – the first – AuthorBuzz.com
Question: What role does theme play in your books?
I can’t write with out a carefully identified theme. I may never tell anyone what it is, but I need to know it even before I know the plot. I want my novels to entertain first and foremost but it important for me to leave the reader with questions to think about, with something that haunts them after they’ve turned the last page.
Question: Who do you read for pleasure? Who do you read to learn from?
The first time I read every book it’s for pleasure. When I want to learn something, I read the books I loved reading over again to figure out why.
To keep this from turning into a four page list of names, I’ll stick to the mystery/suspense genre. I’ve loved and learned (sounds like a song) from H. Rider Haggard, David Morrell, Lee Child, Carol O’Connell, Daphne Du Maurier, Ruth Rendell, P.D. James, Doug Preston & Lincoln Child, Jeff Deaver, Edgar Allan Poe, Wilke Collins, Katherine Neville, Robert Goddard… and on and on and on. I hate mentioning so few. My bookshelves are bursting. I can’t leave out Laura Lippman whose character development is stellar and Barry Eisler who writes about place as well as any one out there. (Not to mention his sex scenes.)
Question: What words of wisdom from a writer have stuck with you through the years?
When I was 18 years old I met Ayn Rand after a lecture she gave at Sarah Lawrence college. I told her she’d inspired me to become a writer.
“Good,” she said, “become a writer. But first become a thinker.”
Question: And finally, what do the initials M.J. stand for?
My real name is Melisse. Rhymes with police. It’s a French herb. The problem with it is no one knows how to pronounce it and when people see it written they assume it’s misspelled and correct it to Melissa. Which is a nice name but not my name. When I published LIP SERVICE, I didn’t want to deal with the mispronunciation thing or the misspelling thing. A friend told me if I was going to pick a pen name chose one that had some meaning, that would “feel” right.
My mom had been the one person who believed that I really would get published one day but by the time that day came she’d died. So I took the J from her name, Jacqueline and the M from my name and became M.J. Much easier to spell. And I like that her name is on the cover of all my books. Which brings us back to reincarnation in a way, doesn’t it?
Carolyn Haines is the author of PENUMBRA, named one of the top 5 mysteries of 2006 by LIBRARY JOURNAL; and this summer, HAM BONES, a Mississippi Delta Mystery, and REVENANT, a new thriller set on the Mississippi Gulf Coast.
