What was the most challenging part of writing the book?

One challenge was I had to stop and take a long break after researching weaponry used in Iran during the late 1970s. The heaviness of the topic was too much for me.

And a bigger challenge was that this third book actually began as a screenplay! I was taking a screenplay writing class at UCLA taught by the amazing Bill Boyle in 2009. As an exercise for class, I adapted my first novel, Harem Sister, into a screenplay. The page count grew as I tried out new, more visual/visceral methods of storytelling; some of which were unique to screenplay writing.

To my initial dismay, my screenplay Meetup group requested more current-day characters, insisting that dusty ancients wouldn’t interest modern-day moviegoers. Their feedback resulted in a 120-page script being pared down to ten good pages to move forward with, after six months of writing.

To my delight, I discovered that by adding a modern story layer to my ancient tale, and reincarnating my original characters yet again, new life was breathed into my fictional family. Those “ten good pages” traveled with me from LA to San Francisco where I was determined to reverse-engineer the screenplay into a novel.

A year of writer’s block followed, from all the editing, auditing, and striving for marketability that goes with screenwriting, as well as the truncated, haiku-like style that is required to create the technical document called the screenplay. I could only write in shorthand for a while; stretching my creative wings in other new directions with paint and canvas.

Eventually, my writing muse returned, and the roadblocks that I’d perceived as hindering that part of myself disappeared. I realized I am at heart a novelist with my love for flowing, embroidered prose, and that I was at last ready to rework what was a screenplay back into the writing style I love most. The third novel was born!

What inspired me to make the leap into the fantasy realm with this book?

Fantasy is a new genre for me starting with this third novel. A fan of Charles de Lint, Mary Renault, and Neil Gaiman, I was inspired to draw on my own magickal experiences before and after becoming an initiated Wiccan priestess and shamanic practitioner in Marin County, CA. When truth is better than fiction, why not start there? Loosely based on people, beings, and nonordinary places I’ve encountered in my 25 years of shamanic study, the second half of The Secret of the Cylinder takes a detour down the rabbit hole and brings delightful surprises where I let my magickal muse run free.

What sets The Secret of the Cylinder apart from other books in its genre? And what is its genre?

I’m a Renaissance person, and so like many things I do, this book doesn’t fit into just one box. It is romance, fantasy, historical fiction, adventure, chick-lit and drama all rolled into one! Not only appealing to feminists, pagans, and history enthusiasts, this book will intrigue mothers, daughters, grandmothers, brothers, fathers, and grandfathers alike. Anyone who might be affected by war and all its consequences. It’s very timely as its setting is a volatile Iran, in 1979, during the Muslim Revolution; when all the efforts at westernizing the country were undone by a new regime.

Meticulously researched, The Secret of the Cylinder takes the reader on a magic carpet ride through intrigue, danger, love and chaos all amidst the backdrop of a culture and country unravelling. As the Middle East currently becomes more and more under the control of non-Western, non-Christian ideology, here is a firsthand glimpse of choices by Ground Zero stakeholders—what’s motivating them, and what they’re feeling. What sets this book apart is that it suggests our strongest weapon against darkness is love. And in this case love is hard-coded onto magical clay that was obtained from a star-traveler, into an instrument of peace. Love and peace are ideas. Ideals we feel very strongly about. By giving them physical form, and having this object, the cylinder, be a sort of relay-race baton, used by people and then nations to restore balance and harmony, I am planting the idea that we have what we need to ensure the longevity of our planet and mankind. Maybe with a little divine nudge. And the divine in this book isn’t bound to any belief system except love and healing.

Why did I set my new book, The Secret of the Cylinder, in 1979 Iran?

I was 19 years old in the US in 1979; just starting to spread my wings and enjoy the freedoms of adulthood in a Western nation. My world was expanding. By contrast, 1979 in Iran was a time of diminishing human rights, especially for women. Granted, Iran was westernized because of US interference and manipulation, as is done with so many other countries. We’re enjoying the fallout of this now, with the rise of Daesh. 

Back in 1979 Iran, women protested having to wear the hijab (headscarf). Today, a new generation has grown used to wearing it, and some prefer it. The contrasts intrigue me. I feel so lucky to have chosen in this lifetime to be born in the US, with all the freedoms we take for granted. Anoush takes is upon herself to try to protect those freedoms, by saving the cylinder and Inanna statue from clerics of the incoming regime, who would certainly destroy them. One because it bore the story of a woman; which would be blasphemy in a patriarchal era. The other, the statue, because it was a reminder of the power of the feminine. Then, as in some places even now, men were afraid of women and their true power.