This is an alternative version – a kind of Twilight Zone
version, if you will – of a true story, an historical event from the previous century.
To paraphrase Stanley Eddington, "The universe is not only stranger than we imagine, it is stranger than we CAN imagine." --------------------------------------------------------------
A LEAP OF FATE An alternative version of a True Story
By Gary Val Tenuta
************************************************************* fate1: the principle or determining cause or will by which
things in general are believed to come to be as they are or events to
happen as they do : DESTINY, 2: an inevitable and often adverse
outcome, condition, or end. - Websters Dictionary
*************************************************************
He disappeared on
Thanksgiving Eve, 1971. The search for him was as thorough as could be
expected. The dense forests covering the Pacific Northwest mountains
made the search difficult if not nearly impossible. Besides, no one knew
exactly where to look. He planned it that way. He planned it all so
perfectly from beginning to end: Hijack the plane. Force the pilot to
land. Demand a couple of parachutes and two-hundred- thousand dollars in
small bills stuffed into back packs. When they resumed their flight he
would exit from the tail end of the aircraft with a parachute over a
predetermined area and make his way to the get-away car already waiting
for him. After that he would never be seen or heard from again because
an entirely new identity had been arranged for him physically as well as
in name. And from all accounts, he never has been seen or heard from
again. But not because of his plan.
A lot of folks think
he never made it. Many believe he died in the attempt. Others think he
did make it and that he walks the streets unrecognized but considerably
more wealthy. Truth is, he did make it. That is to say he's still alive
and, yes, he does walk the streets quite unknown but also unknowable.
He does have his money but he is not wealthy and the streets he walks
are not our streets. He lives in a place he does not understand; a place that does not understand him.
He remembers nothing, save two things: that the pieces of greenish
paper in his bag are very important (but he can't remember why) and he
remembers his name.
You see, the human
mind is a fragile thing. True, it can adapt to many situations if it has
time to adjust. But rapid changes can shock the mind. In his case, it
happened in a second, in the blink of an eye, the moment he jumped from
the plane. He fell through a rip in the fabric of space and time and
entered into another dimension. The sound of the plane was gone the
instant he jumped. He didn't even have time to open his parachute. He
simply vanished from his present position in space and time and emerged,
suddenly, in mid air, a few feet above the ground in a world similar
to, but not the same as, the one he had just left. He landed with a
thump on the ground just a few feet from what appeared to be some kind
of a road in the middle of what appeared to be some kind of a city
bustling with what appeared to be some kind of people.
They regard him, now,
as a harmless curiosity. Countless attempts to communicate with him have
failed. The language barrier presents an ultimate obstacle, let alone
the fact that the sudden experience shocked his keen mind nearly
senseless.
He wanders the streets
of this strange city clutching his precious bag of worthless green
paper and people give him food and, sometimes, shelter. He never speaks,
but people tell of the time he was first discovered. They say he
uttered a sound which they took to be his name. Whether it was his name
or not, they still call him by the odd sound: DEEBEEKOOPER.
The Ezekiel Code (http://amzn.com/B002NGO4JC)
was my first attempt at writing the great American novel. Normally, a
debut novel by an unknown self-published writer doesn't attract much
attention. Such a writer would be lucky to sell a hundred copies, total.
So what was The Ezekiel Code about and, more importantly, how and why
did it become a bestseller on amazon for over 57 weeks?
The seed that eventually grew to become The Ezekiel Code was actually planted many years prior to me having any notion of writing a novel.
Back in the late 60s I had decided to read the Bible
from cover to cover. Having had an interest in the UFO phenomenon
since the age of about 12, some of the passages in the Bible seemed
somewhat similar to reports I'd read about UFO sightings. I first
noticed it in the story of the Israelite's long journey through the
desert. They followed a "pillar of cloud by day" and a "pillar of fire
by night". That struck me as a rather curious phenomenon. Added to that
was the Ark of the Covenant which functioned somehow to serve as a
communication device between "God" and Moses. I wondered, could the Ark
be some sort of a wireless communication technology so "God" (or
whatever it was!) could talk to Moses from his "ship", the pillar of
cloud by day, lit up at night?
Then, in the book of Numbers,
this "cloud" that carried "God" actually landed on the ground. And,
further on, there was Elijah who was "taken up" in a "whirlwind". It was
becoming, as Alice would say, curiouser and curiouser. Then came the
hammer that hit me on the head. Contrary to what you might be thinking
at this point, that hammer didn't knock the sense out of me. I felt it
knocked some sense into me.
The hammer was the book of Ezekiel.
Ezekiel’s descriptions of the object that came down from the sky, and
with which Ezekiel interacted, seemed much too mechanical to be anything
of an ethereal nature. His incredibly detailed descriptions seemed to
me like the way someone of his time in history, with a priestly
background and absolutely no knowledge of advanced technology (beyond a
cart pulled by a donkey), would describe a technological craft.
Some years later I discovered a non-fiction book called The Spaceships of Ezekiel
written by a former NASA contract engineer by the name of Joseph
Blumrich. His son had noticed the same things about Ezekiel's
descriptions that I had noticed and, knowing the nature of his father's
work with NASA, he told his father about it. The elder Blumrich didn't
believe it at first but the more he studied it the more he began to have
second thoughts. The book (The Spaceships of Ezekiel) is his
professional analysis of what it was that Ezekiel may actually have
encountered. After reading that book, I was left with not a shred of
doubt that Ezekiel had experienced what we now call a Close Encounter of the Third Kind.
Fast forward to sometime in the mid-1990s:
My friend, Julie, and I
were sitting in an all-night diner at about 2 o'clock in the morning. I
think maybe we had been to see a sci-fi movie earlier in the evening
which is probably what sparked a conversation about UFOs. Once again,
this idea about Ezekiel came to the forefront of my mind and I told
Julie about it. I mentioned that the idea would make a great premise for
a movie by someone like Spielberg or Lucas.
The more I thought about it,
the more I liked the idea but I knew I had no way of getting the idea
to either of those guys. Then I thought, wait a minute. I can't make a
movie but I can write. Why don't I write a novel based on this idea?
I was already half way through the writing
of a different sci-fi novel at the time but this idea struck me as so
extraordinary that I immediately shelved the other work and began
sketching out ideas for this new book which, at the time, had a working
title of Ezekiel's Wheels. So how and why did it change from Ezekiel's Wheels to The Ezekiel Code? That was a two-part process of an organic nature.
• Part-1 of the process: At about the same time I started working
on the book I was also well into the beginning stages of another little
exploration that eventually began to take over my life. I had, quite by
accident, stumbled onto the idea that our alphabet might be naturally
or artificially "encoded" in some manner so as to correspond with our
base-10 numbering system and that, somehow, the number 9 and the
phenomenon of "synchronicity" were key to the whole thing. That, in
itself, is a long story and a lengthy summary of the work is detailed
here:
The bottom line
is that this work was so ingrained into my consciousness that it almost
naturally began to flow into my ideas about the plot of my novel. It
provided a perfect plot device to propel the story. Not only did I
recognize how well it would work, I also knew it was so original that it
would be unique among anything else that was out there. • Part-2 of the process: I was not at all happy with the working title, Ezekiel's Wheels.
It wasn't dramatic enough. It wasn't very catchy. Then one day, maybe
around 2003/2004, I heard about a non-fiction book by one of the better
known "alternative" researchers, Gregg Braden. His book was called The God Code. That reminded me of the title of Drosnin's best selling book, The Bible Code. And Julie had recently purchased a book called Healing Codes of the Biological Apocalypse (a
book, by the way, in which the co- author had made the same discoveries
about the English alphabet that I had made a few years earlier!). At the same time came Dan Brown’s phenomenal best-selling novel, The DaVinci Code. Well, I'm not blind. I started to recognize a pattern.
All of those books were best sellers
in their respective categories. Clearly the public had a thirst for
anything with the word "code" in the title. How fortuitous for me! My
book definitely had the code element going for it so I latched onto the
idea and changed the title to The Ezekiel Code.
As soon as I made that change, all the little things that kept blocking
my progress regarding the direction of the plot just fell away and the
story began to write itself, sometimes so fast I could hardly keep up
with it even though it did take me nearly 9 years to complete the darn
thing!
So that, in a nut shell, is the story behind The Ezekiel Code. The book did really well. In fact, it was an amazon.com bestseller in three categories (often ranking high in the top 10)
for over 57 weeks. The reviews, however, were mixed. About half the
reviews were 4 and 5 stars and the other half were 1 and 2 stars. Some
people loved it and some people, well, let’s just say they disliked it a
lot. Why such a sharp divide? What was going on there? Well, listen up
all you readers who are thinking about writing your first novel and
delving into the world of indie publishing. There’s a lesson here. The
success of a book isn’t always about how well it’s written. Sometimes
it’s about the subject matter and the timing.
The Ezekiel Code
didn’t become a bestseller because the writing was so incredibly good.
Being a newbie at this novel writing stuff, I really thought the writing
was great. But if that was true then why so many bad reviews? I was
baffled. It was only months later, after licking my wounds inflicted by
the slings and arrows of those negative reviews that I realized many of
those reviewers were right. The writing, while certainly not awful,
wasn’t really up to par with novels written by more seasoned authors.
Two main criticisms came up:
(1)A few times I led the reader
by inserting hints of what was coming instead of letting the reader
have the fun of making the discovery for himself. At the end of one
chapter, for example, the lead character, Zeke Banyon, was in his
office, anxious to get home to his lover, Angela. Everything seemed to
be going along really well for them. Nothing dramatic was expected. In
the next chapter, however, Zeke arrives at his home and finds the house
in a state of disarray, blood on the back door which had been broken
into, and Angela was nowhere to be found. Quite a shocking and
unexpected surprise, right? Well, sort of but not entirely, at least not
for the reader. Why not entirely? Because of the last sentence of the
previous chapter:
***** Back
in his office, Banyon poured his last cup of coffee for the day and
settled down to finish some paperwork. All the while, he kept thinking
about Angela. He couldn’t wait to get home. I have a feeling this is
going to be an extraordinary evening!
He had no idea how extraordinary it would turn out to be. But not in the way he imagined.
***** Two things happened here.(A)
Not only did that last sentence give away the idea that something bad
was about to happen, thus depriving the reader of the chance to
experience the shocking turn of events for himself, but (B) that
last sentence also interjected the voice of the author into the scene.
When the author’s voice in interjected into the narrative it’s a bit
like if you're watching a movie, you’re really into the scene, and
suddenly you hear the voice of the director coming from somewhere
off-camera, shouting “Okay, get ready. Something bad’s about to happen!”
Wouldn't you just want to shoot that director?
(2)The other big criticism
concerned the “info dumps”. An info dump is when the author dumps a
large amount of information into the scene, thus interrupting the flow
of the narrative. There is quite a bit of that in this book and it
bugged some readers to no end. My only excuse for having done that is
that the book could actually be classified as “experimental” in terms of
style and construction. As I mentioned before, no other novel (that I’m
aware of) has used gematria as a primary vehicle to drive the story.
That presented me with the problem of having to impart a lot of
information that I knew would be strange and unfamiliar to most readers.
So not only are there sections where the “information dump” slows down
the pace of the story, I also repeated some of it here and there
throughout the story. I did that because there were so many unusual
terms and concepts introduced to the reader and I thought repeating some
of them occasionally (although mixed well into the character’s
conversations) would help the reader recall what some of those things
meant.
Apparently I was wrong. Well, not
entirely wrong. There were actually some people who appreciated it
because it kept them from having to search back through several chapters
to find the information if, indeed, they did want to refresh their
memory of some details. If I could do it all over again, I think I’d
probably figure out a way to trim those “dumps” down to a minimum and
include an addendum at the back of the book with expanded details for
readers who might want to delve deeper into the information.
Now, getting back to what I said about subject matter being a selling point:
Remember The DaVinci Code?
What was the big motivating factor underlying the phenomenal sales of
that book? Was it the great writing? No. In fact, many readers thought
the writing was just mediocre at best. I thought it was pretty good,
myself. But I digress. The big reason behind the book’s success was its
controversial subject matter. Jesus survived the crucifixion, married
Mary Magdalene, sailed to France and had kids? What? Well, that’s sort
of what motivated so many sales of The Ezekiel Code.
It was both the controversial subject matter and the timing. Remember
all the hoopla about 2012 being the end of the ancient Mayan calendar
and the beginning of catastrophic earth changes? There was even a huge
block-buster movie called "2012". You probably saw it. That whole
doomsday scenario was my book’s big controversial selling point. Not to
mention that the title (The Ezekiel Code) implied some connection between 2012 and the ancient Biblical prophet.
Even though I started writing the book
back around 1997, I already knew about the coming end of the Mayan
calendar on December 21, 2012. I was pretty sure that was going to
become a global cultural phenomenon so I made that the primary premise
for the story.
Eventually, dozens of books about 2012 were coming out and filling the bookshelves. But they were all non-fiction. The Ezekiel Code,
on the other hand, was one of the very few works of fiction, based on
the 2012 phenomenon, that appeared on the market. With a few targeted
(and creatively worded) promotional ads on a couple of popular
2012-related websites, and a lot of enticing Tweets on Twitter, it
didn’t take long for The Ezekiel Code to start selling like
crazy. It was released first in paperback and, a few months later, on
Kindle. And, by the way, the Kindle edition (at $4.95) outsold the
paperback about 10 to 1. (The current price for the Kindle edition is
now just $2.99)
So, there you go. I could say more about what The Ezekiel Code
experience taught me about writing a novel but I should save that for
another article. I’ll just say the experience was worth it. After The Ezekiel Code, I spent a lot of time honing my craft and learning the writing ropes. I think it shows in my latest novel, Ash: Return Of The Beast,
a supernatural serial-killer chiller drenched in occult lore and
inspired by an actual mystery concerning the missing crematory ashes of
Aleister "The Beast" Crowley, history's most notorious practitioner of
the Dark Arts. The enthusiastic reviews, so far, are confirmation
of my growth as a novelist. So I actually owe a debt of gratitude to
those who criticized my first novel and who had the unmitigated gall to
tell me what they didn't like about it.