ABOUT
THE UNHOLY
A
young curandera, a medicine woman, intent on uncovering the secrets
of her past is forced into a life-and-death battle against an evil
Archbishop. Set in the mystic land of Aztlan, The Unholy is a novel of destiny as healer and slayer. Native lore of dreams and
visions, shape changing, and natural magic work to spin a neo-gothic
web in which sadness and mystery lure the unsuspecting into a
twilight realm of discovery and decision. PAUL DeBLASSIE III, PhD, is
a psychologist and writer living in his native New Mexico. A member
of the Depth Psychology Alliance, the Transpersonal Psychology
Association, and the International Association for Relational
Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy, he has for over thirty years
treated survivors of the dark side of religion.
PURCHASE
ABOUT
THE AUTHOR
Paul DeBlassie III, Ph.D.,
is a psychologist and writer living in Albuquerque, New Mexico who
has treated survivors of the dark side of religion for more than 30
years. He is a member of the Depth Psychology Alliance, the
Transpersonal Psychology Association and the International
Association for Relational Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy. Dr.
DeBlassie writes psychological thrillers with an emphasis on the dark
side of the human psyche. In The Unholy, a young curandera, a
medicine woman, intent on uncovering the secrets of her past is
forced into a life-and-death battle against an evil archbishop. Set
in the mystic land
of Aztlan, The Unholy is a novel of destiny as healer and slayer. Native lore of
dreams and visions lure the unsuspecting into a twilight realm of
discovery and decision.
Tell
us about the background of the book:
The
story comes out of over thirty years of treating patients in
psychotherapy who are survivors of the dark side of religion…have
been used and abused and cast to the side. I’ve seen that when this
happens people, those around the victim, to include family and
friends, often turn a blind eye and deny what has happened. Rather
than writing a self help book I decided to approach this realm of
human suffering in fiction. To tell a story moves the reader into a
deep and unconscious dimension that bypasses conscious defenses,
leaving us open to truths that otherwise would be blocked. So,
dramatizing the dark side of religion, pulling what can be the most
vile and evil, and pivoting it against an innocent and sincerely
searching soul leaves the reader on edge, hopeful, but unsure as to
what will happen and who in the end will survive…a truth conveyed
symbolically and dramatically. To have written out a list of what to
do or not to do in the midst of religious abuse might have helped
some individuals, but would have left many people stone cold because
there is no emotion is such guidance. In The Unholy, the story is
pure emotion, fear and rage and hope and challenge, that inspires and
frightens and causes us to stay up late at night in order to finish
the story. Dream and chronic nightmares plagues people who’ve gone
through the horror of being abused within a religious system. It
could be emotional, spiritual, physical, or sexual torment---or all
of the above---a true encounter with the unholy---that people undergo
during childhood or adolescence or adulthood. They become anxious,
depressed, or suffer a terrible emotional breakdown. I’ve treated
them, helped them, and they helped to inspire the story of The
Unholy!
How
do you balance life and writing?
It’s
a matter of listening to the energy coming from self, family, and
friends so that nothing tips more one way than the other and the
creative juices stay flowing rather than being depleted by excessive
writing and are therefore constantly in a state of being replenished.
I had a music teacher who once told me to practice or play up to the
point that I feel bored, that the energy for it has been spent, and
then to stop for the day. That’s what I do with writing. I stay
with it, hit the page running each day, and go for as long and with
as much intensity as I have for the scene that I’m writing. Then, I
stop. And, if I don’t stop I’ll have nightmare that night that
I’m being seduced and used by the muse and that such a thing could
lead to utter ruination. There are horror stories about this. Writers
in the stories feel the tug to write, the muse senses that someone is
taking the bait and then the writer is hooked and reeled in. So, if I
let myself be hooked and reeled in then I lose my balance. There is
something to being hooked and reeled of course, but the true and
balanced thing of it happens when it comes from a hook and a reeling
that is my own and not one that causes me to be possessed by
something other than my own common sense. After all, what matters is
the living of life, and living a good one to the best of one’s
ability, writing only a part of that.
Where
do ideas come from?
Ideas
come from the deep repository of the collective unconscious mind that
inspires images and symbols during the fantasies of waking life and
during dreams and nightmares. Mainly, it’s the nightmare stuff that
bodes best for writing psychological thrillers and dark fantasy such
as is in The Unholy. When I wake up in a cold sweat with the
characters of the novels threatening me (I remember when Archbishop
William Anarch, sinister prelate in The Unholy tormented me for
nights on end, demanding that I not write the story) that’s when I
know that real inspiration is flowing and that to listen to it and
follow the images and symbols that emerge from my deep, unconscious
mind during sleep and during the reverie of writing the story will
end up in the development of spine tingling realities that jettison
both me as the writer and the reader into phantasmagoric realms that
have a way of shaking up conscious mindsets and get our heads blown
out in a very, very unsettling but ultimately useful way. My writing,
in other words, comes from an inner place of torment that needs to be
let out so it can be set right. When mind stuff is set right inside
me I can feel it by sensing a quality of being at peace, that I’ve
written to the best of my ability and been true to the deep,
archetypal energies swirling through my mind during the narrative. It
really is a trip to listen to ideas, let them become images, and
suddenly have them take over a page. It’s like the pages catch fire
and everyone has come to life and things become disorderly, fraught
with conflict, and danger looms.
