I guess we'll find out
So a few days ago I decided I'm all for this blogging business. I didn't really know what came next; I've never blogged. I called the nice computer guy at my publishing house and asked what I should blog about, he said (with real enthusiasm) “yourself!” This set off an alarm bell, because I am after all a fiction writer who makes up things about other people, people I've never even met. I know there are parts of me in those people, but I don't think about it much and on my own I don't find myself that interesting. Maybe I've been hiding behind my fiction because I am a profoundly dull person. I guess we'll find out.
But this is a site about a book I wrote called RESURRECTION, and if you've found yourself here, that's probably what you want to hear about. The first thing I want you to know about me is that I have not read THE DA VINCI CODE. I have not seen the movie. And yet every review of RESURRECTION will mention that book and my book will be compared to the best seller of all time. For a number of reasons, this makes me nervous.
The reason I never got around to reading the CODE isn't because I live under a rock. It was because I was into another story and I didn't want to be distracted. I found the events around which RESURRECTION is based to be quite incredible and the more research I did, the more impassioned I became about telling this particular story. And something else happened as I started writing the book -- something writers hope for. Things clicked. Characters came to life. Their conflicts and loves and betrayals gripped me; their world, Cairo in the 1940's, became real to me.
The historical material I found for RESURRECTION was radical. I found myself thinking, geez, I could get into some trouble here. But it was all fact -- all out there, for anyone to put together. And it had been put together, but not in fiction. Passages from the Nag Hammadi Gospels were enough to make one's head spin. In the Gospel of Thomas, Jesus says, When you know yourselves, then you will be known, and you will understand that you are children of the living father. But if you do not know yourselves, then you dwell in poverty and you are poverty. The value of self-knowledge in Gnosticism (a valid and widespread Christianity that was later stamped out by the forming church) was paramount. As was learning and tolerance of other faiths. As was respect for women. It was a very different Christianity to the one we have come to know. Most people today are unaware that such a faith ever existed. While there have been wonderful nonfiction books written on the subject, I saw a place for a story. Not everyone reads theology. But stories can find their way into the world. And this story spoke to me with urgency. We seem to be living in a time where people want and need to understand faith – their own and others. They want to know why the judgments are being made, why the wars are being fought. They want all the pieces. I'm one of those people. So that, in short, is how Resurrection came to be. (And this, I have been told, is long enough for a first blog.)