About ASH: Return Of The Beast by Gary Val Tenuta:
THE FACT: Soon after the 1947 death of history’s most notorious occultist, Aleister “The Beast” Crowley, the urn containing his ashes mysteriously vanished.
THE FICTION: Now, more than 60 years later, the urn has resurfaced and Seattle’s clergymen are dying… one at a time… exactly nine days apart.
This is the most bizarre case that has ever landed on the desk of Seattle Police Detective, Brian Kane. It’s so bizarre that FBI Special Agent Rowena Ravenwood knows Kane will never solve it without her expert assistance. Her expertise is in realms of reality that Detective Kane thinks only exists in B-grade movies. He’s in for a very rude awakening. And what about his own dark and deeply personal connection to the case? How long can he keep it a secret?
What is the meaning of the strange symbols branded onto the bodies of the hapless victims? Why has a black plastic Batman medallion been stuffed into the mouth of each victim? Were they all part of some bizarre cult? How many more will die? No eyewitnesses. No fingerprints. Is it really murder? Where’s the evidence? How does a young millionaire rock star fit into the picture? And what is the disturbing secret that Detective Kane is holding so close to his chest?
The investigation catapults Kane and Ravenwood headlong into life-threatening situations as they grope their way through the strange dark labyrinth of the occult and soon find themselves battling for their lives against the powerful forces of ritual magick.
A bloody carnage of unimaginable horror is about to be unleashed upon the world as the offspring of the fabled “Old Ones” are awakened from their ancient slumber.
The survival of the entire human race hangs in the balance and the clues to help solve the case are in desperately short supply. Worse yet, so is the amount of time left to stop the mysterious killer’s reign of terror before all Hell breaks loose. And – according to Special Agent Ravenwood – that’s not just a figure of speech.
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Author Bio:
Who am I? These excerpts from an interview will probably tell you more than you ever wanted to know about me.
(Q) OKAY, FOR STARTERS, WHAT’S THE LOW DOWN ON GARY VAL TENUTA? WHERE DO YOU HAIL FROM? WHERE ARE YOU NOW? WHERE’D YOU GO IN BETWEEN?
(A) I hail from Seattle. Or maybe I rain from Seattle. We do that a lot here. My webbed feet prove it. I’m still in Seattle. Sort of. I’ve migrated to a location a few miles north. When I’m not here I’m most likely working security for a renegade group of alien- human hybrids at a top secret underground base near Dulce, New Mexico.
(Q) WHAT’S THE BEST CAR YOU’VE EVER OWNED?
(A) The car I have now, actually. A gorgeous 1993 Oldsmobile Elite that I found on craigslist (My other car is a row boat). The guy who was selling the Olds didn’t own it and he spoke with a Russian accent. He gave me some story about how it belonged to his neighbor who was confined to a wheelchair. He did have the title, though.
Interestingly, there was a Russian gang buying and selling stolen cars in this area at the time. Just sayin’. But the car was immaculate, loaded with all the goodies, metallic maroon body with maroon interior, remarkably low miles, a price that was suspiciously low and it had a U.S. Air Force security sticker in the front window. I’m not kidding. All of this made me a little nervous but the thing was so friggin’ gorgeous I bought it anyway. So far, no Men In Black have come looking for me so I guess I’m good. For now.
(Q) I’VE HEARD THAT YOU WRITE AND PERFORM COUNTRY MUSIC. CARE TO TELL US A LITTLE ABOUT THAT?
(A) I grew up on rock-n-roll, Elvis, Jerry Lee, you know. Then I got into folk music with Dylan, Baez, and a host of others that most people probably never heard of in the 60s. Some of that got played on radio but the really good stuff never did.
One day, someone told me some folk music was getting airplay on some country music stations. I had never really paid much attention to country music but decided to tune in and see what was happening. They did play a few of the more obscure folk artists like Doc Watson and some bluegrass bands occasionally but mostly, of course, they just played whatever country music was popular at the time. I got to where I was really digging the country music because of the story aspect to a lot of the songs. Marty Robbins’ gun-fighter ballads were great and Johnny Cash knocked me out with stuff like Folsom Prison Blues and Ring Of Fire. Then I found out Cash and Elvis and Jerry Lee Lewis all started out together at Sun Records. I thought that was pretty cool and I began to notice how country and rock-n-roll were really quite intertwined. Presley’s early stuff consisted of a lot of country songs that he was doing in his typical jacked up style. In the 70s a lot of the bands, like the Byrds, The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, and even the Stones (Honky Tonk Woman), were mixing country with rock and I loved what they were doing.
In the 80s I met a guitar player named James Michael Thomas who played in both country and rock bands and even played in Ray Charles’ road band for a while. He found out I was starting to write country songs and he was impressed with my stuff. He introduced me to the country band he was with at the time and they added one of my songs to their play list. That was pretty exciting for me to hear one of my songs blasting from the bandstand with all the people dancing to it.
Then I joined the N.W. Songwriter’s Association and ended up performing a lot of my songs at a weekly Singer/Songwriter Showcase in Seattle and a studio demo of my 1950s-Elvis-styled Christmas songs made it onto the regular rotation at one of the bigger local country music radio stations.
I thought maybe songwriting would turn out to be my bread and butter but the further I got into it, the more I found out what an almost impossible business it is to get into. The doors are made of 6-foot thick solid steel, bolted shut like a bank vault. You can get your foot in that door if you know somebody but it can shut on your foot really fast, too. The closest I ever got to any sort of success was a demo of one of my songs somehow made it all the way to a desk drawer in Waylon Jennings’ home office.
(Q) I ALSO UNDERSTAND YOU ONCE HAD A “CLOSE ENCOUNTER”. WOULD YOU LIKE TO TELL US ABOUT THAT?
(A) Now THAT was cool! In Seattle, 1993, I saw what has become known as a “Black Triangle UFO”. It was cruising very slowly, maybe 10 miles per hour, and very low and completely silent. Passed directly over me. I estimated it was about 300 feet to a side, about the length of a football field. An illustration of it and all the details of the sighting (including some interesting related information) are in an article on The Examiner at http://www.examiner.com/article/close-encounter-with-black-triangle-ufo.
(Q) DO YOU BELIEVE THERE MIGHT BE ELABORATE CONSPIRACIES IN PLACE DESIGNED TO KEEP US IGNORANT MASSES SAFE FROM KNOWING TOO MUCH?
(A) Ah! Conspiracy theory! Love conspiracy theories. However, I’m not sure I buy into that one. Not saying it’s not possible. I’m just not convinced that TV and video games are part of an organized conspiracy to keep us dumbed down. I think we tend to do that pretty well on our own without the need for it to be implemented by the mysterious Illuminati.
Having said that, however, there are some very odd things that go on that do seem a bit weird. Bohemian Grove comes to mind. But I’ll let people look that one up on their own. Some of the circumstances surrounding the official explanations for the 9/11 Twin Towers incident are also questionable, in my opinion.
One of my all time favorite conspiracy theories is the one about the alleged underground base at Dulce, New Mexico that’s run by a group of Reptilian aliens in cahoots with a secret faction of the U.S. Military. I don’t buy a word of it but I have to say there are elements of it that seem to have some basis in reality and that intrigues me. Specifically the alleged involvement of an actual person by the name of Philip Schneider.
Oh, and the MJ-12 conspiracy theory is freakin’ great. If it’s a hoax it’s perhaps the biggest, most complex hoax ever perpetrated. For anyone interested, I’ve written what you might call an MJ-12 primer. It’s called The Mystery of the Majestic-12 Documents. It lays out the entire story. You can find it here:
http://www.authorsden.com/categories/article_top.asp?catid=17&id=43071
What I’ve learned over the years about UFO-related conspiracy theories, in particular, is that they often involve real people and real events and we know the government has been interested in the UFO phenomenon at least since the Roswell incident back in 1947. There was Project Blue Book and Project Grudge, and the Condon Committee and the Brookings Report and I’m sure I’m forgetting some. My friend, Peter Gersten (a.k.a. the UFO Lawyer) was a key player in getting the CIA, the FBI and the NSA to release hundreds of UFO related documents that those agencies claimed they didn’t have. The actual government involvement in the ongoing UFO phenomenon is what makes the UFO-related conspiracy theories so compelling. There always seems to be some nuggets of truth mixed into them. Just enough, sometimes, to make you go, “Hmm…”.
(Q) WELL, NOW THAT THAT’S OUT OF THE WAY, LET’S TALK ABOUT YOUR WRITING. HOW LONG HAVE YOU BEEN AT IT? WAS THERE SOMETHING OR SOMEONE THAT INSPIRED YOU TO PICK UP THE PEN AND HAVE AT IT?
(A) I think the first story I ever wrote was when I was about 12 years old. It was a sci-fi story called The Beam From Saucer-X. It was really good, too. I know that because my mom told me so.
But it wasn’t until I was about 15 or 16 that I started to really become interested in creative writing. There were two authors that pretty much kick-started that interest. First was Edgar Allan Poe and then H. P. Lovecraft. I think the first Poe story I read was The Telltale Heart. I was immediately hooked. I read everything by Poe that I could get my hands on. I also must admit there was another writer whose work influenced me. That was, surprisingly enough, John Lennon. He wrote a couple of small books, John Lennon In His Own Write and A Spaniard In The Works. They were both filled with bizarre little humorous “nonsense stories”, some not more than half a page long. His word play was often so hysterically funny that I sometimes laughed until the tears flowed. Then again, maybe I just have a weird sense of humor. Anyway, his writing inspired me to write several short pieces of similar nonsense. Those little gems inevitably got passed around study hall and usually ended in me getting into trouble. But hey, what is high school for if it’s not to have fun and get in trouble?
(Q) DO YOU HAVE ANY EARLY WRITINGS THAT WE MAY NEVER HAVE HEARD OF? WHEN DID YOU ENTER THE WONDERFUL WORLD OF THE INDEPENDENT AUTHOR?
(A) My first paid writing gig was in the mid-1990s writing feature articles for the venerable old Fate Magazine. But my first novel (The Ezekiel Code) was self-published through Outskirts Press in 2007.
(Q) YOU’VE GOT A COUPLE OF TRULY REMARKABLE BOOKS OUT THERE NOW… “THE EZEKIEL CODE” AND “ASH: RETURN OF THE BEAST”. CAN YOU TELL US A BIT ABOUT THEM?
(A) Okay. Well, let’s start with my latest novel, Ash: Return Of The Beast.
I was browsing through a second-hand bookstore one day and came across a biography of the notorious British occultist, Aleister Crowley (1875-1947), the man the British press once labeled as “The Wickedest Man In The World”. Having had a long time interest in all facets of the supernatural, paranormal, and generally anything that resonated with those topics, I was familiar with who Crowley was. I knew he identified with the number 666 and often referred to himself as “The Beast”. But I’d never read a full biography about him. I paged through the book and, toward the end, my speed-reading eyes almost passed over a remarkable little factoid that I’d never heard about before. I did a double-take to see if it said what I thought it said. It did.
According to the biography (and I’ve since found the same information elsewhere), Crowley’s body was cremated upon his death. Curiously, however, the urn containing his ashes mysteriously disappeared. Its disappearance has remained a mystery to this day. When I read that I thought, wow, if that isn’t a great set-up for a supernatural tale, I don’t know what is.
This idea wouldn’t leave me alone. I mulled it over in my head for days, maybe weeks, trying to come up with a good story based around this intriguing little bit of Crowley trivia. Eventually, it came to me and I couldn’t wait to get started. Three years in the works, it finally emerged as Ash: Return Of The Beast, a supernatural serial killer chiller steeped in the occult and drenched in esoteric lore. I knew I had something here, something even better than I imagined it would be.
So, is it a horror story? Well, yes and no. It’s not horror in the gory slasher sense that we’ve seen so much of over the past couple decades. It’s more the quiet, subtle sort of horror that creeps up on you, gaining momentum, pushing you further and further into the darkness until you have nowhere to run. As one reviewer put it:
“I was reminded of Dennis Lehane. Very different from other horror fiction stories… even gave the whole Necronomicon tale a new spin.” – Cyma R. Kahn, goodreads.com reviewer
Actually, I like to think of it as a supernatural crime chiller steeped in esoteric lore. To a large extent it’s a police procedural heavily loaded with paranormal elements.
As many novelists will tell you, sometimes the author thinks he knows how the story will end. But, as the characters begin to take on a life of their own, the story can evolve in directions the author never anticipated and the ending can turn out to be something quite different from what was originally planned. Such was the case with Ash. Another reviewer said:
“An ending you will never see coming. Highly recommended.” – Lila L. Pinord
Believe me, as the author, no one was more surprised by the ending than I was.
Now, about The Ezekiel Code. I’d have to say the seed that eventually grew to become The Ezekiel Code was actually planted many years prior to having any notion of writing a novel.
Back in the late 60s I had decided to read the Bible from cover to cover. I can’t say I read every word but I did at least read “through” it from beginning to end. Now, having had an interest in the UFO phenomenon since the age of about 12, some of the passages in the Bible struck me as being somewhat similar to reports I’d read about UFO sightings. I first noticed it in the story of the Israelite’s long journey through the desert. They followed a “pillar of cloud by day” and a “pillar of fire by night”. That struck me as a rather curious phenomenon. Added to that was the Ark of the Covenant which functioned to somehow to serve as a communication device between “God” and Moses, the leader of this band of wandering Jews. I wondered, could the Ark be some sort of a wireless communication technology so “God” (or whatever it was!) could talk to Moses from his “ship”, the pillar of cloud by day, lit up at night?
Then, in the book of Numbers, this “cloud” that carried “God”, actually landed on the ground. And, further on, there was Elijah who was “taken up” in a “whirlwind”. It was becoming, as Alice would say, curiouser and curiouser. Then came the hammer that hit me on the head.
It was the book of Ezekiel. Ezekiel’s descriptions of the object that came down from the sky, and with which he interacted, seemed much too mechanical to be anything of an ethereal nature. His incredibly detailed descriptions seemed to me like the way someone of his time in history, with a priestly background and absolutely no knowledge of advanced technology (beyond a cart pulled by a donkey), would describe a technological craft.
Some years later I discovered a non-fiction book called The Spaceships of Ezekiel written by a former NASA contract engineer by the name of Joseph Blumrich. His son had noticed the same things about Ezekiel’s descriptions that I had noticed and, knowing the nature of his father’s work with NASA, he told his father about it. Blumrich didn’t believe it at first but the more he studied it the more he began to have second thoughts. The book is his professional analysis of what it was that Ezekiel may actually have encountered. After reading that book I was left with not a shred of doubt that Ezekiel had experienced what we now call a Close Encounter of the Third Kind.
Fast forward to sometime in the mid-90s:
My best friend, Julie, and I were sitting in an all-night diner at about 2 o’clock in the morning. I think maybe we had been to see a sci-fi movie earlier in the evening which is probably what sparked a conversation about UFOs. Once again, this idea about Ezekiel came to the forefront of my mind and I told Julie about it. I mentioned that the idea would make a great theme for someone like Spielberg or Lucas to build a movie around. The more I thought about it the more I liked the idea but I knew I had no way of getting the idea to either of those guys. This left me quite disappointed. I’d probably never get to see this idea on the big screen. Then it hit me. I can’t make a movie but I can write. Why don’t I write a novel based on this idea?
I was already half way through the writing of another sci-fi novel at the time but this idea struck me as so extraordinary that I immediately shelved the other novel and began sketching out ideas for this new book which, at the time, had a working title of Ezekiel’s Wheels. So how and why did it change from Ezekiel’s Wheels to The Ezekiel Code? That was a two-part process of an organic nature.
Part-1 of the process: At about the same time I started working on the book I was also well into the beginning stages of another little exploration that eventually began to take over my life. It’s called gematria. Think of it as a kind of numerology but with deeper implications. Traditionally, the concept goes back to the ancient Hebrew priests and mystics and was also used extensively by the Greeks. These cultures, of course, used their own respective alphabets and numeration systems when applying their gematria codes.
I had, quite by accident, stumbled onto the idea that the English alphabet might be naturally or artificially “encoded” in some manner so as to correspond with our base-10 numbering system and that, somehow, the number 9 and the phenomenon of “synchronicity” were key to the whole thing. That, in itself, is a long story. The bottom line is that this work was so ingrained into my consciousness that it naturally began to flow into my ideas about the plot of my book. It provided a perfect plot device to propel the story. Not only did I recognize how well it would work, I also knew it was so original that it would be unique among anything else that was out there.
Part-2 of the process: I was not at all happy with the working title, Ezekiel’s Wheels. It wasn’t dramatic enough. It wasn’t very catchy. Sort of… blah. Then one day, maybe around 2003/2004, I heard about a book by one of my favorite “alternative” researchers, Gregg Braden. His book was called The God Code. That reminded me of the title of Drosnin’s best selling book, The Bible Code. And Julie had recently purchased a book called Healing Codes of the Biological Apocalypse (a book, by the way, in which the co- author had made the same discoveries about the English alphabet that I had made a few years earlier!). At the same time came Dan Brown’s phenomenal best-selling novel, The DaVinci Code.
Well, I’m not blind. I started to recognize a pattern. All of these books were best sellers in their respective categories. Clearly the public had a thirst for anything with the word “code” in the title. How fortuitous for me! My book definitely had the code element going for it so I latched onto the idea and changed the title to The Ezekiel Code. As soon as I made that change, all the little things that kept blocking my progress regarding the direction of the plot just fell away and the story began to write itself, sometimes so fast I could hardly keep up with it even though it did take me nearly 9 years to complete the darn thing.
So that, in a nut shell, is the story behind The Ezekiel Code. The book did really well. In fact, it was an amazon.com bestseller in three categories for over 57 weeks. The reviews were mixed. About half the reviews were 4 and 5 stars and the other half were 1 and 2 stars. Some people loved it and some people, well, let’s just say they disliked it a lot. What was going on there? Well, listen up all you readers who are thinking about writing your first novel and delving into the world of indie publishing. There’s a lesson here. The success of a book isn’t always about how well it’s written. Sometimes it’s about the subject matter.
The Ezekiel Code didn’t become a bestseller because the writing was so incredibly good. Being a newbie at this novel writing stuff, I really thought the writing was great. So, why all the bad reviews?
It was only months later, after licking my wounds inflicted by the slings and arrows of those negative reviews that I realized many of those reviewers were right. The writing, while certainly not awful, wasn’t really up to par with novels written by more seasoned authors. Two main criticisms came up:
(1) Too often I led the reader by inserting hints of what was coming instead of letting the reader have the fun of making the discovery for himself. At the end of one chapter, for example, the lead character, Zeke Banyon, was in his office, anxious to get home to his lover, Angela. Everything seemed to be going along really well for them. Nothing dramatic was expected. In the next chapter, however, Zeke arrives at his home and finds the house in a state of disarray, blood on the back door which had been broken into, and Angela was nowhere to be found. Quite a shocking and unexpected surprise, right? Well, sort of but not entirely, at least not for the reader. Why not entirely? Because of the last sentence of the previous chapter:
*****
Back in his office, Banyon poured his last cup of coffee for the day and settled down to finish some paperwork. All the while, he kept thinking about Angela. He couldn’t wait to get home.
I have a feeling this is going to be an extraordinary evening.
He had no idea how extraordinary it would turn out to be. But not in the way he imagined.
*****
Two things happened here.
(1) Not only did that last sentence give away the idea that something bad was about to happen, thus depriving the reader of the chance to experience the shocking turn of events for himself, but that last sentence also unnecessarily interjected the voice of the author into the scene. When the author’s voice in interjected into the narrative it’s like watching a movie, you’re really into the scene, and suddenly you hear the voice of the director coming from somewhere off camera, shouting “Okay, now something bad’s going to happen!”
(2) The other big criticism was about the “info dumps”. An info dump is when the author dumps a large amount of information into the scene, thus interrupting the flow of the narrative. There is quite a bit of that in this book and it bugged some readers to no end. My only excuse for having done that is that the book could almost be classified as “experimental” in terms of style and construction. As I mentioned before, no other novel (that I’m aware of) has used gematria as a primary vehicle to drive the story. That presented me with the problem of having to impart a lot of information that I knew would be strange and unfamiliar to most readers. So not only are there sections where the “information dump” slows down the pace of the story, I also repeated some of it here and there throughout the story. Why? I did that because there were so many unusual terms and concepts introduced to the reader. I thought repeating some of them occasionally (although mixed well into the character’s conversations) would help the reader recall what some of those things meant. Apparently I was wrong. Well, not entirely wrong. There were actually some people who appreciated it because it kept them from having to search back through several chapters to find the information if, indeed, they did want to refresh their memory of some details.
If I could do it all over again, I think I’d probably figure out a way to trim those “dumps” down to a minimum and include an addendum at the back of the book with expanded details for readers who might want to delve deeper into the information.
Now, getting back to what I said about subject matter being a selling point. Remember The DaVinci Code? What was the big motivating factor underlying the phenomenal sales of that book? Was it the great writing? No. In fact, many readers thought the writing was just mediocre at best. I thought it was pretty good, myself. But I digress. The big reason behind the book’s success was its controversial subject matter. Jesus survived the crucifixion, married Mary Magdalene, sailed to France and had kids? What? Well, that’s sort of what motivated so many sales of The Ezekiel Code. It was both the controversial subject and the timing. Remember that whole thing about the ending of the ancient Mayan Calendar in 2012? That was my book’s big controversial selling point.
Even though I started writing the book back around 1997, I already knew about the coming end of the Mayan calendar on December 21, 2012. I was pretty sure that was going to become a global cultural phenomenon so I made that the primary basis for the story.
Eventually, dozens of non-fiction books about 2012 were coming out and filling the bookshelves. But for about the first two years after The Ezekiel Code was released, it was just about the only work of fiction, based on the 2012 phenomenon, that had appeared anywhere. With a few targeted (and creatively worded) promo ads on a couple of popular 2012-related websites, and a lot of enticing Tweets on Twitter, it didn’t take long for the book to start selling like crazy.
So, there you go. I could say more about what the Ezekiel Code experience taught me about writing a novel but we should probably get on to something else. I’ve probably already bored more than a few readers to tears. I’ll just say the experience was worth it. After The Ezekiel Code, I spent a lot of time honing my craft and learning the writing ropes. I think it shows in my latest novel, Ash: Return Of The Beast. Certainly the rave reviews, so far, are confirmation of my growth as a novelist.
(Q) ASIDE FROM YOUR WRITING, WHAT ELSE DO YOU DO?
(A) I’m a freelance book cover designer. Any authors who are looking for a cover designer are certainly encouraged to check out the many examples of my work and give me a shout.
http://BookCoversAndVideos.webs.com
(Q) TELL US ABOUT YOUR WRITING PROCESS. ARE YOU A DAY WRITER OR A NIGHT OWL? AN OUTLINER AND PLANNER? OR DO YOU JUST WRITE FROM THE HIP AND SORT IT OUT LATER?
(A) Definitely a night owl. Part vampire, you know. My process? I get an idea, sketch out a very loose outline, so loose it can barely qualify as an outline, and just start writing. I also tend to edit as I go along. I’ll write a paragraph. Read it. Revise it. Read it again. Revise again if necessary. It’s not unusual for me to spend anywhere from 4 to 6 hours just to write a 4-page chapter.
(Q) ARE YOU WORKING ON ANYTHING RIGHT NOW?
(A) I recently published an ebook (Kindle) called WANNA TAKE A RIDE? It contains 4 stories from my series of Twisted Tales From The Files Of The Second Chance Limousine Service. Think Rod Serling meets Stephen King meets Yours Truly and you get a pretty good idea of what the stories are like. I have two more Second Chance Limo stories in the works.
(Q) FINALLY, WHERE CAN WE FIND GARY VAL TENUTA IN CYBERSPACE?
(A) For info about all my books:
http://www.garyvaltenuta.blogspot.com/
For info about my book cover design service:
http://BookCoversAndVideos.webs.com
ASH: Return Of The Beast by Gary Val Tenuta is a post from Awesome Gang