The Joys of Binge Reading

Lynn Hightower is a New York Times best-selling author whose latest thriller has been described by Lee Child as a spooky suspenseful masterpiece that’s super recommended.

Hi there, I’m your host Jenny Wheeler, and Lynn’s long awaited new supernatural thriller, The Enlightenment Project, combines cutting-edge science with demonic possession. Noah Archer is a renowned neurosurgeon with an impressive success record and a dark secret. It’s a not-to-be-missed read.

As usual, we’ve got a free book to give away. One of Sylvia Price’s cozy mysteries, set in Canada’s picturesque Cape Breton Island, it’s perfect for those who enjoy new beginnings and countryside landscapes. Details are in the show notes for this episode on www.thejoysofbingereading.com.

DOWNLOAD BOOK

Link at: Download here: https://dl.bookfunnel.com/xrhpw7zcpq

And don’t forget, for the cost of less than a cup of coffee a month, you can get exclusive bonus content, like hearing Lynn’s answers to the Five Quickfire Questions, by becoming a Binge Reading on Patreon supporter.

We’ve got a new feature starting on Patreon in June. Encore is a once a month short chat with authors who’ve already been on the show, talking about their latest book.

First up in June is popular historical fiction author Deborah Challinor, talking about The Leonard Girls a story of two sisters going off to the Vietnam War in the late 60s. One is a nurse, one a protestor….And the experiences they have there will change heir perspective forever. Details at patreon.com/thejoysofbingereading.

SUPPORT BINGE READING ON PATREON Links mentioned in this episode:

Deborah Challinor: The Leonard Girls; https://www.harpercollins.co.nz/9781775541813/the-leonard-girls/

M Scott Peck: The Road Less Travelled: http://www.mscottpeck.com/
https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/3061.M_Scott_Peck
The Exorcist: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0070047/
Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders: https://psychiatry.org/psychiatrists/practice/dsm
Stanford Medical Center: https://stanfordhealthcare.org/

Where to find Lynn Hightower:

Website: https://www.lynnhightower.com/
Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/156659.Lynn_Hightower

What follows is a “near as” transcript of our conversation, not word for word but pretty close to it, with links to the show notes in The Joys of Binge Reading.com for important mentions.
And now, here’s Lynn.

Introducing author Lynn Hightower

Jenny Wheeler: Hello there Lynn, and welcome to the show. It’s great to have you with us.

Lynn Hightower – ‘spooky suspense’ highly recommended by Lee Child

Lynn Hightower: I am delighted to be here, and I cannot wait to talk to you.

Jenny Wheeler: Great. You are the bestselling author of numerous thrillers that have been included in things like the New York Times list and the London Times bestseller list, but this latest one is also recommended by none other than Lee Child. It’s called The Enlightenment Project. It’s a supernatural thriller and Lee Child called it a suspenseful masterpiece, super recommended. That must have given you a nice little jolt of achievement.

Lynn Hightower: Absolutely. I love him and I love his books and I love how kind he is to novelists like me.

Jenny Wheeler: That’s great. As we’ve mentioned, it’s a supernatural thriller, and it’s got an unusual twist. It’s cutting-edge science meets demonic possession, and it gets into exorcism. Where did this idea come from?

Lynn Hightower: Two places. One was when I saw The Exorcist, which most of us have seen and read. It really scared me. I reacted on a very visceral level, and I couldn’t help but wonder what happened to the boy it was based on and when he grew up, did he tell anybody? If you’re dating do you say, by the way, when I was a child I was possessed but it’s all okay now? I think that would be a real relationship ender.

‘Exploding’ scientific research on exorcism

I started doing research, and the research on possession and exorcisms is exploding these days. It’s a recognized psychiatric condition in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. The difference now is that it is recognized as non-pathological, as not a mental illness but from without.

It used to be recognized as a pathological mental illness, but now they see that there are times when it is not from inside you. It’s something spiritual from without which means the treatment is totally different. It’s really pretty scary to realize they recognize that, and these days medicine is more integrative, so they’re treating the spiritual, the physical and the mental illness side.

Then I started studying neurologists who were telling people to meditate. I thought that was fascinating. Then there were the neurologists who were worried that maybe meditating was good and could also open the way to dark things. Once I read that, I was off and running.

Jenny Wheeler: It is fascinating. I didn’t realize until I read your book that there’s been a tremendous amount of research going on with neurology and spiritual states. They are looking at the brain and seeing what happens when people pray or meditate. There are a lot of sites around that now.

Lynn Hightower: Yes, there is a field of neuro-theology where they are studying religion. What I’ve learned is that there are various spiritual neurons all through your brain, not just in one place. When my hero, Noah Archer, comes up with The Enlightenment Project to stimulate all these neurons in the brain, it’s a huge success. People are cured of addictions and chronic depression, but of course it opens the way to the dark side.

Current research showing new info

Just this year at Stanford Medical Center, they’re doing almost exactly what Noah is doing. Not that I’m an expert in it, but it looks like they’re doing the same things, stimulating the same neurons. They have a five-day protocol for people who have chronic depression and have had no relief, and it’s working.

Jenny Wheeler: Wow. And there’s this antique thing, some sort of helmet, is it the Persinger helmet?

Lynn Hightower: Yes, the God helmet. I am not sure how that worked. A lot of scientists treated it as a joke. I’m not sure. I don’t think it was stimulating neurons. I think it was just putting you in a place of complete isolation, but I don’t know. I think there might have been a lot more interesting aspects to that, but nobody took it very seriously.

Jenny Wheeler: It looks like a Roman helmet in a way, doesn’t it?

Lynn Hightower: Yes it does. I can see why they laughed it off, but I don’t know. I’m a novelist. I can believe six impossible things before breakfast.

Jenny Wheeler: In your book you take it one step further in that they attempt to put somebody under this kind of analysis. I would almost call it an MRI, but I’m not quite sure if that’s what it is.

Lynn Hightower: It actually is an MRI.

Jenny Wheeler: An MRI while the exorcism is going on to see what is happening in the brain while this priest is doing an exorcism. I doubt that’s ever been done, has it? That was your novelist’s imagination.

Lynn Hightower: That’s my novelist imagination. I took it to the next natural step. I think it would be a good idea to try it and to see how a person’s brain changes and to do MRIs, because what happens if someone is completely possessed, they no longer want to be helped, they don’t want an exorcism? How has their brain changed after they come to that decision? I think there will be physical changes in the brain for sure.

Renowned author and his experience

Jenny Wheeler: Yes. In this book Noah, as you’ve mentioned, has this experience as a boy and it means that he becomes fascinated with that whole area. When he becomes an adult, he becomes a neurologist and he wants to specialize in this area. He has developed a very close relationship with the priest from his earlier childhood experience, so the pair of them are almost like the rescuers for people who are looking for special treatments. They have a very close relationship and the whole book revolves around them and what happens with The Enlightenment Project.

One of the things the reviewers have mentioned is that it helps us to understand what it’s like to go through one of those experiences. It’s very real, the feelings and the actual brain experiences that you translate into the story. Did you find first person accounts? How did you know that’s the way people felt?

Lynn Hightower: I got everything from research. I read account after account of exorcisms, most of them written by the exorcist priests. I found out, and this astounded me, that M Scott Peck performed two exorcisms during his career. He was the psychiatrist who wrote The Road Less Traveled, and I was shocked.

He said in his book, Glimpses of the Devil, that he absolutely did not believe in anything demonic until he ran across these two patients. He himself did the exorcisms, and it was his hope, which has happened, that the psychiatric community will start taking it more seriously. He described in great detail what his patients told him afterward and during. He had them do a lot of writing about how they felt and how upset they were.

A recurring theme in Lynn’s work

One of are the things he said that really interested me was, the person who is possessed is doing the work. I’m assisting, but it’s like when you have a baby. The obstetrician isn’t delivering the baby, you are. You’re doing the work. You have the physical pressure and the physical difficulty and the exorcist assists. I found that absolutely fascinating. I have also talked to some therapists and psychiatrists about how they would treat people, how people felt, and that gave me a lot of insight too.

Jenny Wheeler: It seems to have been a theme that’s fascinated you even before this book. You have got other detective series and stand-alones, obviously you’ve been writing for quite a number of years, but they tackle edgy themes. In one of those series, the Lena Padget series, for example, the book that was a Seamus award-winner was called Satan’s Lamb. This darker side seems to have been something that’s attracted you before this book.

Lynn Hightower: Yes, I find it so fascinating. This is the other side of it, the criminal side of it. That’s where I started because at the time I wrote the book there was a lot in the news about satanic cults and their connection to crimes in Santeria. I did a lot of research and found out there are a lot of criminals in gangs that used satanic, dark religious protocols as a cover for their crimes or to lure people into their cult and to give them the feeling of a dark, spiritual strength. They can prey on people who are hungry spiritually and alone.

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Being in the cult, and being in the gang, makes them feel like they belong and they’ll adopt pretty dark rituals to justify the crimes they commit. Man, that’s interesting. So Lena Padget was born. I’m not saying Santeria is a religion of criminals. That is not at all what I meant. I just meant it is a very interesting religion that brings in a lot of ritual, some Catholic. It’s an interesting religion with a lot of protocols that seem very supernatural.

Jenny Wheeler: Lena Padget is on the trail of serial killers, isn’t she?

Lynn Hightower: No, the serial killer is Sonora Blair and her first novel is called Flashpoint. I wrote that because I wanted to write about two things. One, a female serial killer. This is a scary woman. She’s a psychopath from birth. I know someone who treats children like that. You wouldn’t think it could happen in someone that young. Those children are terrifying.

This is one of those children who grew up and she’s quite a predator. She’s quite twisted. Her victims are men and they’re all good guys and none of them deserve to die. When they stop and help this small, vulnerable, very dangerous woman, she will handcuff them to the steering wheel of their car and set them on fire. That makes her happy. I thought that was fascinating.

Jenny Wheeler: Satan’s Lambs makes me think of Hannibal Lecter. That name, I don’t know quite why. That was an award-winning book that was recommended by both Jonathan Kellerman and Tony Hillerman, so you have certainly had some heavyweights come in at your back.

Endorsements from major authors

Lynn Hightower: I have, and they were so kind because they didn’t know who I was. I was a little bitty author and I just wrote them. But I wrote to novelists whose work I love. I have read all of their books and I loved all of their books and they were so kind to me. They read the book, they sent me letters talking about the book and they gave me quotes for the book. I am eternally grateful.

Jenny Wheeler: That’s terrific. You’ve got another series, the David Silver series, with the theme of alien invasion, which once again is out there a little. Tell us about that one.

Lynn Hightower: That first book, Alien Blues, was born because I had sold my first novel. I had worked eight years and written novels and finally got an agent, finally got a novel sold. It was in the production process and Random House bought out the publisher and axed their whole line.

I was crushed. I was in a bad mood for an entire year. I guarantee you, a whole year of a bad mood, and I thought, if I am going to be a failed novelist, I am going to enjoy it. So I wrote a book that had everything I loved. It had aliens, it had cops, it had serial killers, it had tunnels, it also had a ghost. They made me take that out, but it had everything else I love. I sent that to my agent after just the first six chapters, and I said, I’m having some fun with this. I don’t even know if you’d like it.

The long road to getting published

He read it and he called me and said, I love it. It’s great. Keep writing it. I’m going to send it to the editor who’s looking at that other novel of yours. She called him a week later and said, I don’t like that other novel, but I love these six chapters. I want to buy it, and I want to know if she’d like to write a series.

Does she have any other ideas? I lied and said yes. He said, that’s great. She’s going to call you in 10 minutes to discuss it. I’m like, oh, that’s wonderful. I don’t know what I said. We had a great conversation and it became a series, so those are near and dear to my heart.

Jenny Wheeler: You came up with a whole lot more ideas in 10 minutes?

Lynn Hightower: One thing I do really well is lie and make stories up. I am a natural novelist, so that’s no problem for me. What I learned for all writers to know is that you do your best work when you tell the story you wish someone would tell you, because that’s what I was doing. I was like, all right, fine, I’m a failure. I’m going to write a novel that I’ll love, and that’s what I did.

Jenny Wheeler: I loved the review somebody gave that one. They said the crime is out of The Silence of the Lambs, the cops out of Lethal Weapon and the gritty future out of Bladerunner.

Wendell Berry a mentor and hero

Lynn Hightower: I know, I love that. It was like all my influence. I’m like, yes, I love that and I loved that one and I loved that one. Absolutely great compliment. That’s what I was trying to write, so I was very happy with that.

Jenny Wheeler: I noticed on your website that you studied with the iconic man of American creative art Wendell Berry when you were doing a Masters in Creative Writing. Tell us a bit about him and consider that our audience is 40% non-American so there are quite a number of people who may not know who Wendell Berry is.

Lynn Hightower: Okay. I was actually working on a journalism degree. I started college at 16 and I was storming the campus looking for every single writing course anywhere in the university, and of course I went to Wendell Berry. Wendell Berry is a brilliant novelist and philosopher who was writing about farm to table 40 years ago. He is a poet, he’s an SAS. He’s gotten every award and he’s won every accolade.

He was such a wonderful teacher and he was a legend on campus. He was revered, and of course I’m like, who in the heck is this Wendell Berry?

But I take his classes and read his books and I realized, this guy’s the real deal. He was so intelligent. It was a little scary because there would be no nonsense in class, but he had a lot of gravitas and a lot of wisdom. He was very generous with his time and he was very kind to me. He put up with millions of questions.

Lynn Hightower teaches writing classes

Sometimes I would go in his office and ask him everything under the sun, from farming to characterization. He would sit and answer my questions. He was quite wonderful, and I feel like who I am as a writer, how I write, my process, my craft, anything I do right, stems directly from him.

Jenny Wheeler: You teach master novel classes yourself now. Tell us about that work.

Lynn Hightower: I love working with other novelists. I think I learned from working with Wendell Berry. I love the dynamic of novelist to novelist, so when I work with my students or clients, we are working novelists together. I’m very pragmatic and everything I teach, I pretty much model all of my classes and all of the work I do on how Wendell Berry conducted his classes, because he’s the master. If I’m doing it right, it’s because of what I learned from him.

It is absolutely thrilling to watch people’s novels grow up and to see them find their way, because there is so much information out there and novelists have to be very careful who they listen to. It is actually quite simple. If someone tells you something about writing and it rings true and it feels like what you needed to hear, then listen to them. Otherwise, maybe don’t.

A lot of people who are very smart and have good intentions but who aren’t novelists, are looking at things from the outside in. Sometimes they’ve got really good insights and sometimes they just box people in, because they don’t understand how it was done and they can’t separate the threads, if that makes sense.

The biggest impediment for beginners

Jenny Wheeler: From your experience working with less experienced writers, what is the biggest impediment to them getting a successful, finished manuscript?

Lynn Hightower: Number one, there is so much information out there that they’ve got a lot of noise in their head and they have to learn to set it aside. Then again, tell the story you wish someone would tell you, follow your instincts and work steadily. People think, I’ll get two weeks in a cabin in the woods and I’ll write, write, write, but you won’t because you haven’t built your momentum up. I always say, small, regular work sessions to keep that momentum going.

A lot of novelists feel like they’re not allowed to write because they’re not published yet. I would say, writing is a decision of the heart. You don’t need anybody’s permission, but if anybody out there does need permission, I, Lynn Hightower give you permission to get out there and write. You fold it into your real life. One thing Wendell Berry taught us that was very helpful was, everyone has the idea that you have to stop your life for your art and your art must be number one. That’s not very practical. You have kids, you might have a job, you might have a farm, you might have a dog that needs to be walked. That is the joyous part of real life. You don’t abandon it. You fold the writing in.

Jenny Wheeler: You mentioned at the beginning that you had eight years and then that crushing disappointment when you finally did get into a publishing house. What were you doing in addition to your writing in those eight years?

Fitting writing around family life

Lynn Hightower: I had three children, little bitty kids under five, so I was taking care of them. I would write when I got them all coordinated to take a nap at the same time. I had like an hour and a half a day. I started out as a nap time novelist, and I would be so tired that I used to hold a cup of coffee while I wrote. Sometimes I would fall asleep and I would know from how cold the coffee was how long it had been.

My kids always woke up at the cliffhanger, right when the chapter got interesting, and so I always ended my chapters on a cliffhanger. The chapters were really short, and then I went to another one. In interviews people would say, that’s such an interesting style, that short, quick cliffhanger style you have. How did you develop that? Do I admit that it’s because that’s when my children woke up from their naps, or do I just say that was my literary inclination? But it was one of my kids woke up and that’s how I developed my short chapter style.

Jenny Wheeler: They always say that the best place to leave off when you’re writing is a cliffhanger because you come back to something really interesting.

Lynn Hightower: I know. Every single time it got interesting, one of them would wake up.

Jenny Wheeler: Are there any manuscripts from those eight years you would resurrect?

Lynn Hightower: Oh, yes. I wrote a book called The Piper about phone calls from the dead and I’d like to revisit that. I have another exorcism novel in mind. It’s based on true events which I find quite terrifying.

‘Being stubborn’ secret of her success

I’ve got words in my head on that one and I’m doing a little research, but it’s quite scary. It is sourced in one particular place and I’m thinking, should I go there or not? I’m probably going to, but I may keep a distance because it’s evidently still a very active, dark place. I wouldn’t have believed this story if it hadn’t been told to me by someone I trust implicitly, so I’m pretty fascinated with that.

Jenny Wheeler: They both sound fascinating. Looking at your wider career, if there’s one thing you would attribute as the secret of your success, what would it be?

Lynn Hightower: The secret of my success is that I’m so incredibly stubborn, and I refuse to give up. I think the more stubborn a novelist is, not about doing it their way but about not giving up, the more likely they’ll be to get published.

A lot of us who write are going to do it either way. We are going to be writing our novels and telling our stories, and hopefully they’ll make their way out into the wide world into the hands of somebody that would like to read them. But you don’t give it up. It’s what I do. Great to be published, but I’d be writing novels either way.

Jenny Wheeler: That’s interesting because there’s another question I like to ask and that is, what was your main goal when you started out? It sounds to me, as you’ve said, that it was simply to write a story you’d like to read and that being published was almost an add-on to that.

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Lynn Hightower – Spooky Suspense