Inspiration for my latest novel, ‘Pilgrim,’ came from a situation I encountered twenty-four years ago while I was a minister and missionary.

At the time of the incident in question, I was living and working at a combined mission station and plantation in the densely forested hills above Montego Bay, Jamaica. During the humid mid-summer heat, several staff fell sick with a curious, cold-like illness nobody seemed able to shake. Weeks dragged on with more falling ill. We were getting short-handed and wondering at the cause as nobody in the local parish of St. James appeared affected.

One morning, an indigenous worker harvesting in our banana grove, spotted a strangely dressed individual crouching near a spot along the site boundary. It aroused his suspicions, so he went to check. The odd figure had planted an Obeah curse. For those unfamiliar, Obeah is a Jamaican form of Voodoo that’s still illegal to practise in the country. Our team scoured the site to discover an abundance of similar curses concealed around the entire plantation boundary. Being Charismatic Evangelicals, we set about destroying the curses and engaged in spiritual warfare through prayer, praise and Biblical declarations. Make of it what you will, but recovery came on swift wings to our afflicted comrades.

Fast-forward to the present, that encounter saw me toying with several story concepts involving a mysterious hooded figure on a diabolical UK pilgrimage to desecrate sacred sites in a form of inverted veneration. Ask any seasoned author and they’ll tell you story ideas are two a penny. Translating them into compelling, three act structures of novel length is the real challenge. I find ‘interrogating’ an idea the best form of ‘plot laxative’ to get things moving.

Who is the hooded figure?

Why are they desecrating sacred sites?

Which particular sites are they desecrating, and is there a pattern with some underlying meaning?

Is this person human, or something else?

Who will tie the threads of these desecrations together (protagonist/s), and for what reason?

How do the story arcs of protagonist/antagonist intersect?

Listing multiple likely answers to questions like that, quickly leads into a three act, plot point framework. From there, an outline with detailed scenes, character and location profiles flows with reasonable ease.

At the same time I’d been bashing around other story ideas involving a shadowy cult with powerful connections, shaping and influencing society behind the scenes. Making my hooded figure part of this larger group presented many more interesting possibilities. Once I looked into the concept of ‘Spiritual Magnetism,’ which even normally atheistic socialists consider a fusion of spirit and science leading to a perfect social order, I knew I was onto something. Another aspect of ‘Spiritual Magnetism’ is Baphomet worship. As a student of church history with a longstanding interest in militaristic holy orders like the Templars and Hospitallers (predating the time those topics became fashionable), I knew accusations of Baphomet worship formed a significant part of false charges levied against The Templars. Charges heralding mass executions and the destruction of the order.

Suddenly I had a spiritual focus for the hooded figure AND an answer to which places they were desecrating. In this case, former Templar sites to hoover up negative energies from wrongful association with the androgynous deity its cult worship. Throw in some human sacrifice, a blending of chaos and sex magic, an escaped former prisoner of the cult and a homeless man turned private investigator who become fugitives from the law, plus a ‘ticking bomb’ in the form of an upcoming atrocity that must be averted, et voila – things are about to get interesting.

Like my other novels, ‘Pilgrim’ will be released in both paperback and Kindle formats, from 23^rd June. You can pre-order the Kindle version. Its page count will correct to 354, once both products go live and are linked on Amazon.