Growing up, I didn't want to be a writer; I wanted to be an artist. We lived a block away from the Metropolitan Museum of Art and I started taking Saturday morning art classes there when I was just seven years old.
I've often felt art is my religion and that museums in general, but the Met specifically, are my temples of choice. That's where I go to be renewed, refreshed and inspired. I don't think I've ever gone longer than a month without visiting there.
So its not all that surprising that sooner or later I'd write a novel with a museum as one of my main characters and that I'd pick the museum that was in my backyard when I was a kid.
But how I got idea for The Hypnotistis surprising, at least to me. Sometimes I find it reassuring. Other times frightening. See what you think.
One day about three and a half years ago, on one of my regular pilgrimages to the Met, I headed straight for one of my favorite spots. The Mastaba Tomb of Perneb is a tiny bit of Fifth Dynasty Egypt transplanted to Manhattan, a gift from Edward S. Harkness to the museum in 1913.
You can enter the limestone tomb from the left or the right. One doorway leads to the main offering chapel. I took the other, which leads to a second ritual chamber. The space is very small and only three or four people can fit at the same time. I was lucky to be in the intimate ritual chamber alone and looking through the slot in the wall at a wooden statue of Perneb in the room beyond known as a serdab. In ancient times this passageway allowed for family and priests to offer up incense and chants to the deceased.
I heard footsteps. A little girl about seven or eight had entered and came up beside me to look through the slot. She had long blonde hair and was wearing a school uniform. I watched her examine the space, giving every section careful attention.
"It hasn't changed much at all," she said finally in a wistful voice.
I asked her what she meant.
"Since the last time I was here," she said.
Something about the way she said it made me curious. "When was that?" I asked.
"When I lived in Egypt."
"You know this tomb has been on display in this museum since 1916." I said.
"I lived in Egypt way before that," she said and smiled. She was about to say something else when from outside the chamber an older woman's voice called out.
"Veronica, it's time to go. Now. Please."
The little girl ran off, quickly, without looking back, without giving me a chance to ask her anything else.
Even though I write about reincarnation, I haven't had any meaningful reincarnation episodes of my own. I don't get visitations. I've never seen a ghost. But I'm not sure what happened that afternoon.
I can picture Veronica in her navy jumper and white blouse that had a dark smudge on the collar. She had a one-inch scratch on her left hand. Her hair was pulled off her face with a silver barrette. A lot of curls had escaped. She had a child's voice but it was so charged with adult emotion.
It was that emotion which sparked the idea for my novel, The Hypnotist. And the paintings and sculpture at the Metropolitan Museum that fueled it.
If you go the Met, please go visit Perneb's tomb. And if you see a little girl there with long blonde hair and a blue school uniform... ask her if her name is Veronica... and if it is, thank her for me.
Our thanks to M.J. Rose for the fascinating insight into an amazing novel! Come back tomorrow to read Jenn's review of The Hypnotist. For further information, you can visit her website, on Facebook, or follow her on Twitter @MJRose.
Summary: An FBI agent, tormented by a death he wasn't able to prevent, a crime he's never been able to solve and a love he's never forgotten, discovers that his true conflict resides not in his past, but in a…Past Life.Haunted by a twenty-year old murder of a beautiful young painter, Lucian Glass keeps his demons at bay through his fascinating work as a Special Agent with the FBI's Art Crime Team. Currently investigating a crazed art collector who has begun destroying prized masterworks, Glass is thrust into a bizarre hostage negotiation that takes him undercover at the Phoenix Foundation—dedicated to the science of past life study—where, in order to maintain his cover, he agrees to submit to the treatment of a hypnotist.
Under hypnosis, Glass travels from ancient Greece to 19th century Persia, while the case takes him from New York to Paris and the movie capital of world. These journeys will change his very understanding of reality, lead him to question his own sanity and land him at the center of perhaps the most audacious art heist in history: the theft of a 1,500 year old sculpture from the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
International bestselling author M. J. Rose's The Hypnotist is her most mesmerizing novel yet. An adventure, a love story, a clash of cultures, a spiritual quest, it is above all a thrilling capstone to her unique Reincarnation novels, The Reincarnationist and The Memorist.
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