Posts tagged christianity
This is My Blood – My First Published Work – FREE MAY 14-15
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It All Started Here
THIS IS MY BLOOD WILL BE FREE ON AMAZON.COM MAY 14 – 15 2013
If you get it free, the audiobook at Amazon is Whispersync Ready $1.99!
This is My Blood was the first novel I ever sold. In the end, my Star Trek Voyager novel, Chrysalis, came out before this one, but that was only due to the failure of the original publisher to actually – well – publish the book. The journey to publication would make a story unto itself, but I’m not going to cover it at this point.
One day, in the middle of the ocean, a group of us were sitting around, playing music, drinking coffee, and working on the various creative endeavors that kept us sane. Out of the blue, someone said: “What if Jesus was a vampire?” There are a lot of flaws in such a story – though others have tried to write it – and I was quick to point them out. I was, after all, not that far past the period of my life where Christianity and I parted ways. I had studied with an eye toward the ministry at one point, and I’d read the book – several times.
What I proposed, eventually, was that it made much more sense if someone close to Jesus was a vampire. Someone he trusted. Someone who could account for the rising of the dead in three days, without it actually being the man himself behind it all. I didn’t write about it then, I thought about it, and I filed it away with a lot of other ideas. Eventually I wrote a novelette – A Candle in the Sun – that was published in Starshore Magazine, then reprinted in Year’s Best Horror XIX, edited by Karl Edward Wagner, and has since been reprinted nearly a half dozen more times. It was good – everyone agreed that it was good, but I knew that it wasn’t complete. I just wasn’t ready to do the thing justice.
Then, on a completely different cruise, locked in a transmitter room with a 386 computer, a Deskjet 500 inkjet printer, and a CD Player loaded with Concrete Blonde & Depeche Mode, I realized it was time. I had a marked up, four inch tall copy of the New Testament that the Gideon Society had presented the ship with, and I had notes. I started out, jumping from gospel to gospel when some part of the story either had a hole, or was missing something important. As I went, I crafted large chunks of The Gospel According to Judas Iscariot, because I’d always thought he got a raw deal in the original mix, and I wanted him for a hero.
This is My Blood is a different telling of a very old story. I changed none of the order of things, nor did I change the outcome – only the road to reach that outcome. Mary Magdalene, raised by Lucifer in the desert to tempt Jesus in the guise of a woman, instead refused – wanting to return to Heaven. Lucifer cursed her to follow in Jesus’ footsteps, feeding on the faithful, and claimed she would become his undoing.
That is where my story starts. You will find the king’s daughter, raised from the dead, Lazarus, all the apostles in their flawed faith, and a narrator – in Mary – who does not depend on faith, but sees with the eyes of one who KNOWS what is truth, and is not impressed with the spirituality of men. Lilith also plays a sizeable part in this book.
All that I learned, figured out on my own, and wanted to repeat of The Bible, Christianity, faith, and – I suppose – of shadows – was tied up in this early work of mine. I have since come to believe that ancient myths should be left to the ancient societies who created them, and that we should worry more over our own self-worth than that of others. I don’t believe there are any spiritual rules laid down in the words of long dead men that I should follow, but I do believe that men know, inherently, the difference between right, and wrong, and that all choices made in that area are their own. No free ticket out for asking forgiveness, and no pit of fire for failures.
You’ll find that, I think, in the pages of This is My Blood. You’ll also find fantasy, vampires, and a lot more. I hope you’ll read it, and that you’ll like it as much as others have. Below are some links to reviews the book has received in the past – I include them here because I believe they are proof I have reached people with this book. I love reading the reviews of this book in particular because, for one thing, it was my first – and for another, it has affected so many people in so many ways. Here is the very first – from Publisher’s Weekly:
“Religious ecstasy and vampiric bloodlust blend to potent effect in this horror-oriented alternate history of early Christianity. Debut novelist Wilson casts Mary Magdelene as a spirit created by the Devil to tempt Christ. When Mary refuses the mission, Satan rebukes Jesus and curses her to become a vampire: “She will hunger for that which You fight to preserve. She will thirst for the blood of manAthe lives, the very souls You seek to save will be her bread.” Mary follows Christ, hoping for a miracle that will allow her to gain eternal salvation even as her vampiric nature forces her to kill to survive. Through her inhuman eyes, and through the writings of Judas’s own gospel, The Book of Judas, Wilson shows Christ and his disciples at work, lending a decidedly different perspective to miracles such as feeding the multitudes with a few loaves and fishes or raising Lazarus from the dead. Here, Judas is steady and loyal, while Peter, possessed by the Devil, betrays Christ to the soldiers at Gethsemane, forcing both Judas and Mary to sacrifice what they love most in order to ensure Christ’s resurrection and the Church’s future. Wilson’s prose is smooth and powerful, carrying its allegorical weight with grace. His first novel is one of the most unique vampire stories to appear in recent years, balancing themes of damnation and prophesy against those of faith and redemption.” – Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.
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