Donna Del Oro: Behind "The Delphi Bloodline" Part Four of Six

Today we continue a series of six blogs by guest blogger Donna Del Oro, each providing insight into her novel The Delphi Bloodline, just released on June 1, 2012 by Musa Publishing. Please join us through Saturday, June 9th to learn more about this exciting new novel.

 Behind THE DELPHI BLOODLINE:

Questions about ESP

By Donna Del Oro

     
 Sixty percent of Americans, according to parapsychology studies cited in the book, Psychic Awareness, claim to have had experiences they would call psychic. Those experiences might be: Hunches about your or someone else’s future; physical clues that alert you to danger or wrong decisions; intuitive feelings that guide you correctly through life; and/or receiving information through physical sensations, thoughts, visions or emotions. It could be a prickly sensation at the back of your neck about a particular person, place or thing. Or a warm feeling at the thought of a good decision. If you’ve experienced any of the above, then you’re in touch with your psychic abilities.

            My heroine, Athena Butler in THE DELPHI BLOODLINE, has already moved beyond the “I know but I don’t know how I know” psychic awareness, where most of us are at. Through her gifted mother’s instruction and guidance, Athena—the modern-day descendant of an ancient, psychically powerful bloodline of women—knows HOW and WHY she knows. She’s a talented clairvoyant who sees visions and is able to access information simply by touching a person. This clairvoyance might take the form of reading that person’s thoughts or by seeing into that person’s past.

            While this ability of hers has caused her to lose boyfriends—who resent her intrusion into their privacy—her clairvoyance also alerts her to danger. When a handsome stranger approaches her in a Reno hotel gallery, where she is painting dead celebrities like Elvis and Frank Sinatra, Athena shakes his hand. Immediately, visions of his dark, violent past assail her, warning her that he is an impostor and even worse, that he means her harm.

            Thus begins a threat that forces Athena to flee for her life. With the help of Kas Skoros, a tall, dark-haired man who claims to be a Guardian of the Delphi bloodline, they begin a journey of running, hiding and finally fighting back. As more psychics all over the country continue to disappear, the FBI is stymied. What’s happening to these psychics?  Why are they disappearing?  Who’s kidnapping them?  Athena’s mother believes the mastermind has something to do with a White House dinner she attended months before.

            The three remaining descendants of the bloodline—Athena, her mother and Kas’s mother—are the only ones who can uncover the truth behind these kidnappings.

            So what’s the origin of such psychic abilities? Are these talents truly genetic, do they run in families, as I suggest in my novel?  Do they originate from an all-seeing God, as Athena’s mother believes? Do they come from an omniscient spirit world? Another dimension of energy as yet unexplored by man, as Athena believes? Or are they simply physical, biochemical reactions in the brain, as some neuroscientists suggest? Do brain waves play a role, as some parapsychologists have studied?

            Sorry to disappoint you, but experts have no definitive answers to those questions. Theories abound and what I put forth in THE DELPHI BLOODLINE is just one theory. There are many theories about psychic abilities, but no scientific proof. 

Not yet, anyway.

What the scientific experiments (and I include some of these experiments in my novel) do prove is that these abilities exist in varying degrees among all of us.  These are human abilities, like innate skills in art and music. Some of us can strum a few chords on a ukelele; others among us can write symphonies, like Beethoven and Gershwin. Some of us can paint by numbers; others become Titian, Michaelangelo and Da Vinci.

The true psychics among us—not the charlatans—exercise and develop their skills quietly and without fanfare or greed. For they know their gifts come with cautionary tales.

Like the cautionary tale in THE DELPHI BLOODLINE.

 Purchase your copy of "The Dephi Bloodline" from Musa:

http://musapublishing.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=11&products_id=273

Donna Del Oro: Behind "The Delphi Bloodline" Part One of Six

Today we begin a series of six blogs by guest blogger Donna Del Oro, each providing insight into her novel The Delphi Bloodline, released on June 1, 2012 by Musa Publishing. Please join us over the next week to learn more about this exciting new novel.

Behind THE DELPHI BLOODLINE:

The Philosophy of “The Flow” by Donna Del Oro

How to explain my vision of “The Flow” or spirit world that my heroine Athena Butler, a gifted clairvoyant, alludes to often in my romantic thriller, THE DELPHI BLOODLINE?  Below is a passage that might begin to explain this vision of mine and its important role in the story.

Athena has just explained to her friend, Kas Skoros, that she has telepathic visits with her psychic mother. That is how they keep in touch with each other at night when they are separated by thousands of miles.

“How do your night visits with your mother work?” Kas asked.

“Difficult to explain. I send my Upper Mind, which is separate from my biological brain—anyway, I send it out there into…”

“Yeah?”

“Into the Flow, a dimension where our spiritual consciousness lives. I can float about at will, go where I want, observe, interact with other spiritual entities or souls. Sometimes, a spirit will call me. Sometimes I’m drawn to a certain spirit or moment in time.

“My mother calls it The Flow, or the World of Spirits. I think physicists would call it a dimension we have not discovered yet, the invisible dimension around our planet that holds all of the thoughts and memories of past and future mankind. Everything that humans have experienced or will experience. A kind of vast CD storage place. Did you know, Kas, that most physicists believe there are at least ten dimensions? Humans know and experience only three. Einstein discovered a fourth. The others will become known as humans evolve.”

“Uh-huh,” was all Kas could manage.

“Anyway, it’s our way of connecting with each other when we’re apart. My mother and me. She comes to me or I go to her. Tonight I’m going to try to go to Italy and find her. I feel she’s in the mountains somewhere.”

Athena’s disembodied voice, soft and modulated, was lulling him to sleep. He wanted to keep listening to her, fought to stay awake. The Flow. Spiritual entities. In his concrete, material world, this was all bizarre as hell.

“Wow. You bottle this, Athena—this ability to move your mind around this planet and it’ll put the airlines out of business,” he joked. His own voice sounded rough and slurred, like he’d just been shot with Novocain. “It’s a kind of time travel. My mother travels forward. You travel back in time to ancient Greece. Incredible.” He yawned loudly. “Tell Annabella hello for me.”

Although Kas Skoros claims to be a Guardian of the Delphi bloodline, like his father is to his mother, he lacks the psychic ability of these women he admires so much. Nevertheless, his courage and commitment to the survival of this bloodline compensate for this lack. His dark, good looks and good humor ultimately win Athena over, and she allows him the privilege of being her Guardian. They do not plan on falling in love with each other, and it is this newfound love of theirs that prompts Athena to visit The Flow again, this time to visit the spirit of Kas’s dead brother. What she tells Kas about that visit becomes the emotional and philosophical climax of the book.

Writing about The Flow was a wonderful release for me spiritually. I’ve always believed in another dimension of spiritual energy, and the physics of such a dimension made so much logical sense to me. I’m looking forward to hearing from readers about The Flow. Do they believe such a dimension is possible, even likely? How closely does this vision of The Flow align with the Judeo-Christian idea of heaven? The Hindus’ belief in the Afterlife?  Have they ever experienced a connection with such a dimension?

Purchase your copy of "The Dephi Bloodline" from Musa:

http://musapublishing.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=11&products_id=273

Part Two of Six: Donna Del Oro: Behind "The Delphi Bloodline"

Today we continue a series of six blogs by guest blogger Donna Del Oro, each providing insight into her novel The Delphi Bloodline, just released on June 1, 2012 by Musa Publishing. Please join us through Saturday, June 9th to learn more about this exciting new novel.

Behind THE DELPHI BLOODLINE:

My Personal Research into ESP Phenomena

By Donna Del Oro

            It started with my cousin. She was a full-time, practicing psychic. People came from all over California for her “readings”, at which she claimed an approximately 85% accuracy. One day, while in my 40’s, I decided to get a reading from her.  Extremely skeptical—although I’d known her all my life and knew she wasn’t a con artist—I arrived, fully expecting a lot of lucky guesses on her part.  An hour later, I left dazed and confused. How did she know that my husband and I were deliberating over which of two investment opportunities to take. We hadn’t mentioned this to anyone, not even anyone in my family or my husband’s.   The one my cousin advised against—and which we didn’t take, fortunately—ended up in bankruptcy a year later. There were other revelations that day that proved true in the months to come.

            And so, I became intrigued by this strange phenomena known as ESP, or sometimes psi. Whatever you called it, it was known as “extrasensory perception”. My cousin claimed to be a “clairvoyant”, or able to “see” what most humans cannot see. Her insights into people, their health, and other personal facts were amazing to me. People in my family both welcomed and dreaded her phone calls. It was often: “You’ve got diabetes,” “You have a cancerous tumor in your bladder. See a doctor immediately”, “Your appendix is infected. Get yourself to a hospital now!” One close friend of the family received one of her calls. She told her that her brother was dying of cancer and that this friend should call him as soon as possible. The friend insisted that her thirty-five year-old brother was perfectly healthy and they’d just spoken days before. However, my cousin persisted and prevailed, even over objections of the friend’s brother. Two weeks later, the friend’s brother called back. He’d seen a doctor, had gotten a series of tests, and his prognosis was grim. He died a year later after a valiant battle against cancer.

            When I probed my cousin, she explained the genesis of her visions and revelations. As a child of eight, she began having dreams. Some occurred at night while she slept, while others happened as daytime visions.  A recurring vision puzzled her but one day it suddenly made sense. Her parents—my aunt and uncle—had announced that they were moving to Hollister, California and had just bought a house with property attached. My cousin “knew” what it looked like and proceeded to describe it to her parents, who hadn’t shown pictures of it to anyone. What she described, from the house to the trees, driveway and outbuildings, matched the place her parents had just put a down payment on.

            After that, the family believed my cousin to have a gift from God. That experience prompted me to open my mind and begin a twenty-year exploration into ESP. What I’ve learned has convinced me that clairvoyance does exist, and that perhaps to some extent, precognition. Many people have incredible, intuitive abilities and many share this gift with others, at no intent of monetary gain but simply a desire to help others. A poll cited in the Journal of Parapsychology showed that at least sixty percent of Americans believe that they have had at least one psychic experience in their lives.

            The difference between a true psychic and a charlatan, or someone who uses trickery and seeks profit or notoriety?  Only one does it for monetary gain. True psychics, as do the psychic women in THE DELPHI BLOODLINE, share their gifts quietly and gratuitously.

            Like my cousin.

Purchase your copy of "The Dephi Bloodline" from Musa:

http://musapublishing.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=11&products_id=273

        

My flash story, "Life Inside a Jar" published for the first time in Liquid Imagination #13

Life Inside a Jar

by George Wilhite

They wasted no time resurrecting Hector once more, per his contract. His knowledge of the plague, both from research and then exposure, was invaluable, so money was no object.


Hector had wondered what his earliest memories would be the second time around. Now he knew. Two months from embryo to mass of brain, eyeballs, and a few strands of nerves swirling in a jar of their “secret sauce,” the patented synthetic placenta that drove regeneration...


Read the rest of the story and the entire issue free online at:
http://liquid-imagination.com/issue13/li-issue-13/

Behind "The Delphi Bloodline" by Donna Del Oro Part Three of Six

Today we continue a series of six blogs by guest blogger Donna Del Oro, each providing insight into her novel The Delphi Bloodline, just released on June 1, 2012 by Musa Publishing. Please join us through Saturday, June 9th to learn more about this exciting new novel.

Behind THE DELPHI BLOODLINE:

My ESP Workshop

By Donna Del Oro

            Twenty-plus years ago, I became obsessed with exploring the facts and fictions of ESP phenomena. My cousin, a practicing clairvoyant, had inspired me to delve into the whole realm of parapsychology, or study of psychic phenomena. Highly skeptical about the whole business, I nonetheless signed up for a weekend ESP Workshop, given by a Czech physicist who once worked for the Moscow Institute for Psychic Research. The workshop took place in a classroom at a local community college (Foothill College) in my Silicon Valley town of Los Altos Hills.

            There were eleven of us, all total strangers—nine women and two men. The first day, Saturday, the Czech physicist lectured on the history of ESP and the various forms and types of ESP: Clairvoyance, clairaudience, clairsentience, precognition, telepathy, psychometry, psychokinesis, remote viewing and channeling. The study of psychic phenomena is called “parapsychology”.  Psi (pronounced “sigh”) is the study of psychic phenomena from a psychological perspective. The Journal of Parapsychology defines psi as “a general term to identify a person’s extrasensory-motor communication with the environment.”  Psi is a letter of the Greek alphabet and the first letter of the Greek word, “psyche”, which literally means “breath” in Greek and refers to the human soul. Basically, having ESP means that you are able to perceive someone’s thoughts, situation, or issues in life without using one of your five ordinary senses.

            The Czech physicist leading our ESP Workshop claimed to be a former skeptic, himself, and a dedicated non-believer who, after working in the experimental testing labs of the Moscow Institute, became a convert. He had seen incontrovertible proof, in his opinion, that ESP existed in gifted intuitives. These intuitives were able to consciously apply knowledge they had accessed and processed in an unconscious, unexplainable manner, and that science could not explain.

            Yet.

            He ended that first day of the workshop with instructions to return on Sunday with a notebook and an inanimate object that had emotional significance to each one of us.  The next day, the same eleven of us brought our own individual objects, which we all carried concealed in plain brown paper bags. Each of us put our paper bag into a cardboard box behind the physicist’s podium. Later, each of us approached the box and withdrew a paper bag that was not our own. After everyone had at his/her desk his chosen bag, he then told us to open the bag, take out the stranger’s object and hold it in our hands.  Then he timed us. For the next fifteen minutes, we were to meditate on the object and write down any visions, words or impressions that came to our minds. We were not to censor anything, no matter how strange, puzzling or nonsensical the vision, word or impression seemed.

            At the end of the timed period, he went from person to person and asked us to identify the owner of the object and to read aloud our visions, words or impressions. We did. What followed was truly astonishing and something I will never forget as long as I live. Nine out of the eleven of us correctly identified the owners of the objects. Eight out of eleven of us had made several—at least three to four--correct associations and revelations about the object, its owner and facts about the owner.

            For example, I correctly identified the owner of the object I held—a macramé type of belt. I’d had visions of a shelf full of potted succulents and cactus plants. A red-brick apartment building, the kind you find in the Eastern U.S.  Those two associations fit. The woman said she had a collection of cacti in pots and that she’d recently moved from Philadelphia, where she’d lived in a red-brick apartment building. There was also a scene of a little boy on a bike, which the woman could not place or relate to in any way. Who knows? Maybe it did later.

            Well, the fact that I’d gotten three out of four correct got my attention. After that experiment, I became a believer. Other experiences followed, too, including two precognitive dreams. Many years later, the idea for THE DELPHI BLOODLINE manifested itself and I ran with it. Researching and writing that novel was one of the most enjoyable and most satisfying experiences of my life.


Purchase your copy of "The Dephi Bloodline" from Musa:

http://musapublishing.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=11&products_id=273

Book Video Trailer: On The Verge Of Madness

Guest E. H. James, author of "The Visitor's Room" on the writing life

Today's honored guest blogger is E. H. James, here to chat about the writing life, particularly how the early years shape an author's development. James is the author of novels, short stories, and poetry in the science fiction, horror, thriller and fantasy genres. James' latest release with Musa Publishing, "The Visitor's Room" has received some tremendous reviews and was voted April 2012's Book of The Month by Long And Short Review (LASR). More information about "The Visitor's Room" and E. H. James can be found after the author's words.

I’ve always been a writer, I just never thought of myself as one when I was younger. Sure as students we would be required to write stories as assignments, but I was writing on my own time as well. First it was poetry, which I still write, and some short stories, and then as I got older the short stories became more focused and I felt more serious about the story and the quality of the finished product. I considered getting them published and I sent a few off to magazines, but I never heard back.

Even though that was discouraging I didn’t give up on writing short stories, instead I decided to redirect my focus into writing books, and my novel writing journey began.

When I first considered writing novels my first thought was that I wanted to write horror novels, or stories of the paranormal or strange. Every short story I wrote always delved into the paranormal or horror genres. I fast discovered that ideas started to come to me from all genres, horror and paranormal included. All these ideas about ghosts and time travel and psychic phenomena filled my mind.

So with my pile of finished short stories before me I started on my first novel, which I actually wrote out longhand for some reason—which I will never do again. This first novel was a paranormal saga, and then I wrote a sci-fi, and I am now half way through a horror/thriller novel.

I still write short stories and will continue to do so, always dealing with the paranormal. In fact I have three paranormal short stories contracted for publication so far, with two already released, Laura and The Visitor’s Room. The Locked Door is yet to come. I am pleased to see that people seem to like them, which, as far as I am concerned, is the greatest gift.

 
 

 
 
 
 
 

If Amy thought this day on the psych ward would be just like any other she would be wrong.

For although everything seemed normal, well as normal as a place like that could be, there was something that was not quite right. That she couldn’t put her finger on it only made it all the more perplexing.

Don’t go asking questions you don’t want to know the answer to, especially when you're on a psych ward, and even you begin to question your sanity.

The Visitor’s Room – Buy Links:

Musa

Amazon (U.S.)

Smashwords

Barnes and Nobles

Contact Links for E. H. James

Blog: http://ehjames.blogspot.com/

Web Page: http://www.wix.com/ehjames1/ehjames#!

Twitter: http://twitter.com/#!/EHJames1

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/AuthorEHJames?ref=ts