Author Interview with Paul DeBlassie III

Do you have any hobbies other than reading and writing?

For decades I’ve been carving stone as well as playing tunes on my guitar. After a day of psychotherapy and writing, they replenish the mind and satisfy the soul, natural conduits to psychic replenishment and refreshment.

Do you cook, what's your favorite recipe?

My favorite recipe for a great meal is adding a dash of folk tunes and a sprinkle of blues on my acoustic guitar as I sit one of our kitchen stools around the granite island and quietly intone love ballads to Kate, my wife of forty years and the most creatively divining conjurer of kitchen cookery I have ever encountered. I can do the basics in the kitchen, but Kate’s a mystical, magical creatrix of whole food delights.

Do you have young children? How do fit in writing time?

Our children are raised, two visual artists and two writers. During the early years of marriage and family, I managed a busy psychotherapy practice and writing by being consistent day in and day out. A phrase, “A little each day without hope or despair” by Isaac Denison always helped to encourage me to place one foot in front of the other and keep going.

Do you write in other genres or styles, do you write poetry?

Ahhhh….My oldest daughter, Katherine, is the poet extraordinaire in the family, an MFA in creative writing and poetry, teaching at the Native American Charter Academy in Albuquerque and writing and publishing her poems. The way of the poet is different from that of a fiction writer (although for some quite similar), a path strewn with nuanced turns of phrase, provocative perspectives, and mind-bending realities that enlarge heart and soul. As for me, my dreams say I too am a poet — of the bull-in-china-cabinet variety. So, I’d have to say my writing shakes things up, breaks things out, and springs things forward with a poetic shock of the unexpected. 

What are your top ten favorite books or series?

You know top ten I’d have to really stretch it out to do because I go more with top three or four urban fantasy/horror/metaphysical mix series: Urban Fantasy – Jim Butcher and Dresden Series, Brad Magnarella and Professor Croft Series, and then Shani Struthers and Psychic Survey Series, lastly another Brit., Sarah England with her Occult Horror Series beginning with Father of Lies. 

Do you have a music soundtrack for your book?

You know I wrote much of Goddess of Everything with the Prince 1977 Jazz Funk Sessions spiraling through the audiosphere of my study. Here it is: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cOc2MzvqbN0  Then, I popped into Full On Psychedelic Trance for the final go-throughs/edits: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x41UXP53a6w

Which of your book characters would you invite to a party?

Mother Juana de la Cruz, Mother Superior of a nefarious desert nunnery, would solemnly enter the mystic festivities of All Hallows Eve joined by her perplexed but earnest son, Gabriél, a caretaker and healer of orphaned children, her daughter-in-law Consuela, Gabriél’s wife, a seer and woman of fierce mind and heartfelt determination, and an underworld snake slithering up from the bowels of the earth. It would be a party to commemorate old times in which a crisis furthered the thinning of the veil between worlds and jettisoned forth unexpected turns of fate. 

Can you give readers an insight into one of your characters?

Enter into my miasmic mind as the sordid twists and folds of one known as Mother Juana de la Cruz run dark and deep as the sulfuric arroyos on moonless nights in the high desert of New Mexico where children are ritually sacrificed atop a centuries-old granite altar as my nuns dance their frenzied way to taste the forked tongue of the unfathomably large, old, and impenetrably coiled netherworld snake that emerges on the first lunar phase from subterranean realms and awaits the recitation of wicked vows and innocence promised. I am Mother Juana de la Cruz, incarnate darkness in Goddess of Everything, a cautionary tale of devouring love, blood sacrifice, and wisdom unnerving and primal.

Goddess of Everything

Paul DeBlassie III

Genre: Paranormal Thriller

Publisher: Hallowed Realms Press

Date of Publication: 2.11.20 

ISBN: 978-0-578-81368-4

ASIN: B08R13FQSH

Number of pages: 199

Word Count: 57,900

Cover Artist: Aaron C. Yeagle

Tagline: Goddess of Everything is a blood-curdling tale of the affection of one mother for her son and her son's struggle for truth, freedom, and love.

Book Description:

In the mystic land of Aztlan del Norte, a realm of supernatural happenings and unexpected turns of fate, psychiatric healer Gabriél de LaTierra encounters appalling evil within the Orphanage of the Holy Innocents. Children disappear for reasons kept secret by Mother Juana de la Cruz, Superior of the Nunnery and the Orphanage.

Love for Mother Juana, Gabriél's widowed mother turned religious superior, clouds her devoted son's mind. Consuela, Gabriél's wife, confronts his wall of denial. Torn between love for mother and wife, Gabriél turns inward.

It is Consuela who propels Gabriél's discovery of the nighttime blood sacrifice of children in the desert, a centuries-old ritual that imparts immortality to Mother and her nuns. Gabriél is further enraged by Mother Juana's vengeful attack on Consuela and her kidnapping of their four-year-old son, Cuauhtémoc. But his actions will determine whether Consuela and Cuauhtémoc live or die, and the fate of Mother Juana de la Cruz.

Goddess of Everything is a blood-curdling tale of the affection of one mother for her son and her son's struggle for truth, freedom, and love.

Amazon

Excerpt

His mother wailed again. Nighttime darkness continued to descend, and the wind stayed its brutal course at Father’s funeral. Mother Juana hadn’t noticed the spirit of a man cloaked in light beside Gabriél. He wasn’t Gabriél’s father. He was more than a man; he was everything that Father was and more. Through the corner of his eyes, Gabriél saw the white-bearded old man. In many ways, in many forms, I will come. The words were close as heartbeats and breath. He knew if he turned and looked directly at him, the man would disappear. The light was intense, like rays of the sun. The old man had something to say.

Suddenly, unclean sounds went into Gabriél’s ears and chest—crackling and squealing voices rising from under the earth and into his body, trying to block out the lingering presence of the old man and his words. Like a god, the white-bearded man lifted his right hand, fingers spread. The noise went up from the ground into his palm, a mighty hand with powerful magic.

Gabriél’s mind became silent as a windless autumn night, magic making him still inside, just like he was when in his bedroom reading alone. The old man was strong and made what was bad cease. Even as the underworld racket stopped, the graveyard winds kept up their awful screams.

The quiet of the man and the moment wrapped strong and warm arms around Gabriél. Invisibility stood guard around the old man. Mother could not see him. No one could see him. He was there only for Gabriél. He bent down beside Gabriél and touched his shoulder. A crystal clear calm made the shrieking wind and the crying women and the priest’s strange prayers seem far, far away.

Mother’s red hair blew in the wind like it was on fire. It didn’t scare Gabriél because of the old man, his warm and solid hands steady on Gabriél’s shoulders. His kind eyes said he was ten thousand times ten-thousand-years old. His mother’s red hair and shrieking prayers no longer scared him.

Then the old man spoke, and through Gabriél’s mind sent a message, LISTEN... WHEN THE DAY GOES AWAY AND THE NIGHT COMES, REMEMBER I AM HERE. He touched Gabriél’s heart. LISTEN.

Gabriél’s mother abruptly glanced down at him. He looked into her eyes and knew she hadn’t heard the old man, but she had a squint in her eyes. Her eyes glowed red, and the old man’s hands did not move from Gabriél’s shoulders.

Big branches from the cottonwoods cast long moon shadows over the grave. Now they looked like skinny people scratching at each other, cloaking the old man. The wind picked up its screeching.

Gabriél’s heart pounded like stampeding horses.

Mother squeezed his hand. His fingers tangled together, tips burning with pain. Then she looked away and wailed more loudly than ever.

The old man continued, TELL NO ONE ABOUT ME. I WILL HELP YOU AS A BOY. I WILL HELP YOU AS A MAN. LISTEN. The old man motioned again to Gabriél’s heart and then touched between Gabriél’s eyes, the brow point.

The old man stopped and looked up.

Gabriél caught his mother’s gaze.

She’d seen the old man, pointed at him, and screeched like the evil winds.

Blistering dust and grit blinded Gabriél. He pulled his hand away from his mother and rubbed his eyes and tried to clear them, but when he looked again, squinting, he saw that the light of the old man had vanished.

His mother was wrapped in a cloud of dust. Out of the cloud came a coyote, foam curling from its mouth. It howled, and an instant later legions of dust devils took over the landscape and swallowed it in clouds of dust, trash, and tumbleweeds.

Mother reappeared beside him and picked him up. She screeched with a million hateful voices. His heart beat rapidly, fluttered like a flock of sparrows flying away. Catching his breath was hard.

“The night plays tricks,” his mother seethed, her breath hot and rank.

The winds suddenly ceased. Brown and gray clouds gave way to blackness that closed in and covered the full moon. Spirits of children rose out of their graves. They pointed at Gabriél and his mother. Their hands and fingers grew and reached to grab him, take him away under the earth.

Mother swept her black shawl over Gabriél. She whispered, “I will protect you, mijo.”

They escaped into the jet-black night.

 

About the Author:

Paul DeBlassie III, Ph.D., is a psychologist and award-winning writer living in his native New Mexico, crafting visionary thrillers energized with trickster mischief and natural magic.

https://www.pauldeblassieiii.com/

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https://twitter.com/pdeblassieiii

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/56373593-goddess-of-everything