Complementing my daily blog interviews, today’s Author Spotlight, the forty-seventh, is of Doug Simpson.
Doug Simpson is a retired high school teacher who has turned his talents to writing. After many years of research and study he commenced his writing career by producing articles using the archived readings of the legendary American mystic, Edgar Cayce. Through 2011, he has published over twenty articles in magazines and on websites in Australia, Canada, France, India, the United Kingdom and the United States. He does not publish his articles on his website. Instead, he refers visitors to his site to the magazines and websites where the articles can be read.
And now from the author himself:
After writing articles for eighteen months, I was inspired to commence the creation of my first novel. My articles using the Edgar Cayce readings primarily involved reincarnation and past lifetimes so it made perfect sense to me that I should write a novel using my acquired knowledge about the discovery of past lifetimes and the survival of the soul after death, and that is precisely what I did. Soul Awakening is a spiritual mystery inspired by a series of actual events.
Thank you Doug. And more about Doug and his writing…
For an interesting adventure, check his website at http://dousimp.mnsi.net. His first novel, a spiritual mystery titled Soul Awakening, was published in the United States in October of 2011, by Book Locker. Check it out at http://booklocker.com/books/5754.html. It is available in print and eBook format through most bookstores around the world.
Soul Awakening is the story of three strangers, who are brought together by accident, or so it appears initially, but who ultimately discover that their unorthodox introductions were arranged by Divine Intervention. Dacque LaRose, the senior member of the trio, is the learned teacher who commenced an educational journey, ten years earlier, a month after the unfortunate passing of his wife, when her spirit appeared in their living room one evening with some inspirational advice for him. Already a casual believer in life after death of the body, Dacque eagerly researched the notion of survival of the soul and spirit after death, and his acquired knowledge led him to the possibility of reincarnation.
Dacque joined the snowbird migration, within a year of the death of his wife, and sold the family home in Ohio and landed in the south in the small retirees-dominated city of Anywhere. His research after his move to Anywhere introduced him to an area group called the Reincarnation Enlightenment Group, and he joined up. One of the founding members of the Group is a certified regression therapist who, as part of her research in the area of reincarnation, offers Group members past life regression sessions for free, in her spare time. Dacque requested three regression sessions and discovered ten of his previous incarnations, as well as learning that significant individuals in this lifetime had played primary roles in his earlier incarnations.
With Dacque’s elevated understanding of souls, spirits and life on ‘the other side’ there grew the realization that he was receiving communications from God, or more likely one of God’s messengers. It was messages from God that led him, in two separate incidents, to the younger members of the aforementioned trio of strangers. God first leads Dacque to befriend Dani Christian, an unemployed and depressed legal secretary who is not destitute but effectively alone in the city. Only days later, through a Divinely-orchestrated nose-dive into the sidewalk on his morning walk, Dacque is introduced to his rescuer, a Good Samaritan named Max Winston.
Over time, Dacque enlightens Dani and Max on his beliefs in the survival of the soul after death and reincarnation. Max and Dani obtain past-life regression sessions and they discover that their souls experienced a previous lifetime together that also included Dacque’s soul. Later Dani, Max and his parents uncover a series of earlier intertwined incarnations where they are descendants of their soul’s previous incarnations, and also discover some historical earlier incarnations that they never could have imagined.
The blog interviews will return as normal tomorrow with short story author and novelist Sarah England – the two hundred and forty-second of my blog interviews with novelists, poets, short story authors, bloggers, autobiographers and more. A list of interviewees (blogged and scheduled) can be found here. If you like what you read, please do go and investigate further. And I enjoy hearing from readers of my blog; do either leave a comment on the relevant interview (the interviewees love to hear from you too!) and / or email me. You can read / download my eBooks from Smashwords.
What genre do you generally write and have you considered other genres?
Tristram: I write only gay fiction, or M/M as it is sometimes referred to, though there is a school of thought that M/M and gay fiction are actually quite different. M/M romance readers tend to expect something that follows a standard formula with nice people and a happy ever after. My romances don’t necessarily do that and the reason is, well, life isn’t actually like that, is it? The romances I have written so far do deliver a happy ever after or a happy for now, but the road there can be bumpy, dirty and gritty.
Tristram: I’ve written four novellas and all have been published: On My Knees, Lorenzo il Magnifico, Fixed, and The Hun and The General. I shouldn’t have a favourite, should I? I’m proud of them all for different reasons. But (there we go again) I have to say that The Hun and The General is special, maybe because it’s my first foray into historical fiction and I loved every minute of writing it. I can’t choose a favourite character, it would feel like betrayal.
Tristram: It was a blustery summer day in Alnmouth, a village on the Northumberland coast with a rather famous resident author. Sitting on a bench by a war memorial was an enormously fat young man with a shaved head, tattooed neck and nose ring. I saw he was reading a Kindle and craned my neck as I walked behind him. He was just starting to read On My Knees. It made me smile. I wondered about offering to scratch my name on the back of his Kindle but thought the better of it.
Tristram: Actually, all the titles are as I presented them to the publishers. For me, the title is crucial since my story is always woven around it in some fashion. Book covers are extremely important, especially for eBooks where a small icon is all you get as your first throw. All my covers have been professionally produced for the publisher by top digital artists and, whilst I was consulted on them, I wouldn’t dream of trying to dictate the final version. I’m very happy with the covers, as it happens.
