It never fails. On every author’s book tour, every interviewer, every moderator, every talk show host always asks the identical question, especially when the area goes silent plus they have to rescue an interview — “Why do you write your book?” This is a failsafe way to get the author chatting again. Hopefully, after the author spends the following three minutes answering this, other people will ultimately be inspired or emboldened to ask another question to keep the momentum going. I know most authors have a compelling answer for why they invested a lot of their precious time in putting words over a page.
However, with my case, I’d no choice, no choice in any way. It simply was from my hands.
For the nearly six long years which i researched and wrote Walking Through Walls — a memoir about my pops who eventually discovers he can talk to the dead and heal the sick — I had been beneath the happy illusion which i was willingly writing about one of the strangest father/son/family stories ever told.
Certainly, my children story was closer to the Addams Family than Ozzie and Harriet or Hand it over to Beaver. His phenomenal psychic powers descended upon our house as an unseen tornado, shredding all notions of normalcy. Overnight, our house became like Lourdes as people lined up awaiting their miracle cure. Babies who couldn’t see, men with one leg shorter compared to the other, women with leukemia all found their way to our door and usually left completely healed.
My pops carefully documented his work and collected thousands of testimonial letters from his “patients”who ended up successfully treated by him. He never charged any cash for his services because he believed his was a special gift and really should be shared. Through the years, he accumulated thousands and thousands of pages of spirit dictation — messages from invisible beings, a few of whom he previously known once they were alive, that instructed him on creating never-before-seen healing methods, lessons on consciousness, explanations from the multitude of energetic realms and so forth.
I thought the reason I was writing the book was to tell people about my amazing mothers and fathers and what extraordinary lives they had led. I can not imagine being more fortunate in having been blessed by using these great souls because the those who brought me into this unique world.
My mother would be a brilliant, stylish adventurer with endless curiosity and a massive feeling of creativity. In my father’s case, he was trying to reinvent and expand the boundaries medicine and human healing while constantly being harassed by the authorities for “practicing medicine without a license”or for “importing unauthorized medications”such as homeopathy and even some vitamins. We forget that America would be a different place Forty years ago and my dad was viewed as doing the devil’s work.
A few things i did not know was that the writing of the book had already been preordained and predicted in writing nearly 4 decades ago. Several months before I finally handed inside the manuscript I came across one more folder of papers i had somehow overlooked inside my research. They contained one more thick stack of spirit dictation on the number of topics. For the past many years, I had been studying these thousands of written spirit messages as material for your book.
When i read through this folder, I came across an email to my pops from of his spirit guides that suggested he get his papers organized because his son (me) was going to eventually write a magazine on his work. Furthermore, the content continued, I’d over see having the book published. Oddly, out of all years I labored on this book, I needed not witnessed this specific message. I suddenly remarked that the spirits and my dad knew that this book would materialize and that i will be the one doing the job. However, no one bothered to share with me. The fact is that basically had seen this message earlier hanging around, I might happen to be much more casual about writing the book, figuring since it was intended as this would end up done all by itself. The spirits don’t mess around a certainly understand what they’re doing.
As though I didn’t get the point, several days later I came across an unmarked audiotape in a white plastic cassette. In addition to all his manuscripts, my dad taped his calls, his classes, his healings and forgotten a treasure chest of audio tapes which also contributed most of the material for your book. I made a decision to listen to the cassette when i drove for the airport. What I heard was a woman using a British accent conducting a psychic reading for my father. Midway with the tape she asked if he had a son. He acknowledged he did. She declared there is gonna be a novel published by me about my father’s work, and also the book would be “kind of just like a documentary.” I don’t think the memoir genre was quite typical within the early seventies and actually my book is really a documentary only it’s in some recoverable format rather than film.
Funny the way i never came across these messages ’till the end from the book. Unsurprising, considering the fact that in life, we usually find our answers and meaning as we have finished a procedure or task.
Now, the next time I will be asked the question regarding “why I wrote my book” a better solution will probably be since, “I were required to… to honor my mother and father.”
writeyourbook9 