research | Thriller Author J.F.Penn

A Walk Through The Old City Of Jerusalem With Thriller Author, J.F.Penn

November 21, 2016 By J.F. Penn

In November 2016, I did a book research tour of Israel for ARKANE #9, End of Days. As part of that trip, I visited the Old City of Jerusalem and some of the sites that I've used in previous ARKANE books, as well as those central to the End of Days plot.

You can watch the short video below [2 min 46], or here on YouTube, and there are some trip notes below the video.

The opening picture was taken on a very windy day just before a storm arrived on the Mount of Olives, overlooking the Old City of Jerusalem. It is a popular (and very expensive) place to have a grave as Jews believe that the Messiah will arrive here at the End Times.

joanna penn jerusalem — J.F.Penn at the Western Wall & Temple Mount

The video opens at the Damascus Gate and then we walk into the Arab Quarter through the souk (market). We left the street sounds in the video so you can hear the noise of the city, from Arab street vendors to the muezzin call, from text messages to the chant of Christian pilgrims and the tune of a saxophone.

You'll see Muslims and Jews in distinctive traditional clothes, as well as a group of Christians carrying a cross along the Via Dolorosa. I make some cameo appearances taking selfies in the narrow walkways 🙂

There's an Armenian pottery, a chapel at the 7th Station of the Cross, souvenir stalls in the bazaar and then we enter the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, one of the holiest places in the Christian world. Tradition holds that it was the place Jesus was crucified, then anointed and buried, and then where he rose again.

Stone of Anointing at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre

You might see some Indian pilgrims rubbing money on the Stone of Anointing, some of the chapels within the church, and then we go upstairs onto the roof of the Holy Sepulchre.

This is where the Ethiopian Coptic church have their shrine and I actually like the open simplicity far more than the cluttered chapels below. This group of monks feature in Stone of Fire as my first visit there back in the 1990s made a huge impact on me.

We went down into the 4th-century cistern of Helena, the mother of Constantine, who was responsible for turning the Roman Empire to Christianity. There are a number of cisterns under Jerusalem, but most are prohibited for use because of the security risk. I use these cisterns as a key part of the plot in End of Days. You'll see by the size of my grin on the video how thrilled I was to be able to visit one 🙂

Then we walked on through the souk into the Jewish Quarter towards the Western Wall, the most sacred place for Jews. On top of it, you can see the Dome of the Rock, a sacred shrine for Muslims and closed on the day we visited so you just get a distant shot. People pray at the Wall and put prayers into the cracks.

At the Wall, there were a number of boys having their bar mitzvah. At 13, a boy is no longer considered a minor and should fulfil the commandment's of the Torah. The boy will read a passage from the Torah, carried in scrolls in the silver cases you can see. It's quite a celebration with sweets being thrown from the women's side of the wall.

You can see all the pictures from the Israel trip here on Flickr.

Check out End of Days, available for pre-order now and coming in ebook, print and audiobook in Jan 2017.

Behind The Scenes Of My Book Research For Gates of Hell In Granada, Spain

May 25, 2016 By J.F. Penn

On a recent trip to Granada, Spain, we visited the Alhambra which I use as a setting in Gates of Hell. In this short video, you can get a taste of the atmosphere at the Nasrid Palace along with some Spanish guitar music (which I love!). Below the video, I have included an excerpt from the scene. You can also see all my pictures from the trip here.

Excerpt from Gates of Hell. ARKANE thriller #6

The taxi sped through the city and Morgan gazed out at the streets, busy even at this late hour. Granada sat at the foot of the Sierra Nevada Mountains, and Morgan was thrilled to be back. Her father had brought her many years ago, a teenager keen on discovering more about her roots. Her name came from this area, and her ancestors had roamed these craggy mountains, only an hour from the ocean in the southeast corner of Spain. This was Andalucia; the word conjured its past, the soft fullness of the Arabic Al-Andalus, a melting pot of influences from ancient Greeks, Romans and Byzantines through to Muslims, Sephardic Jews and the Catholic Church that still dominated here.

Morgan thought for a moment of her sister, Faye, back home in England. A twin in blood, but so different in looks and personality. Faye's daughter, Gemma, looked like a Sierra, with darker skin and almost black hair, more like Morgan's child than her blonde sister's. Her own family was so mixed in origin that this multicultural area of Spain would always feel like home.

They rounded a corner and caught sight of the Alhambra, the fortress on the hill a forbidding welcome to new arrivals. The eleventh-century palace had been constructed by a Moorish emir, and even though the Reconquista of Spanish Christendom had taken the city, the Islamic architecture still remained.

They pulled up to the gates and bought tickets for the flamenco event, heading in through the wide entrance.
“Where's the dancing?” Morgan asked the ticket seller.
“In the Court of the Lions,” he said, glancing down at his watch. “The last set has just started, so you'll have to hurry.”

Morgan led Jake quickly through the terrace of the western-style palace towards the Moorish buildings beyond. The mournful sound of flamenco guitar floated on the balmy night air, and Morgan breathed in the scent of flowers from the extensive gardens. She could see across the valley to the narrow winding streets of Albaicín, where she had stayed with her father so long ago. She heard his voice telling her stories of how the cave dwellings of Sacramonte had sheltered their ancestors as blood was spilled on these streets.

They reached the Court of the Lions, surrounded by the stunning arabesque architecture of the ancient Moorish kingdom. Slim pillars in cool ivory-colored marble led towards soaring archways intricately designed with filigree geometric shapes and Arabic calligraphy. The overwhelming sensation was light and delicate, as if the stone palace was constructed of magically spun air.

The Court of the Lions was open to the night air, a courtyard surrounded by one hundred and twenty-four white columns topped with decorated archways. In the center of the courtyard, a great alabaster fountain supported by twelve marble lions spouted water, sparkling in the subtle lighting that only seemed to enhance the otherworldly atmosphere. The courtyard was filled with people, eyes riveted on the scene before them.

A young man sat on the edge of the fountain, plucking his guitar while next to him stood two older men and a woman, singing a song of the gitanos, the Romani people of Spain. In front of them, a young woman danced with the proud stamps and hand claps of flamenco. Her scarlet dress with full ruffled skirt accentuated her dark skin and her full eyebrows arched as she turned, arms raised.

Morgan saw her face in profile and recognized the young girl in the picture in Santiago's room, the granddaughter he was estranged from. Her dance mesmerized those watching, the embodiment of duende, the soul of Andalucia that undulated through her hips and the arch of her back. Morgan had heard that true duende resonated with a heightened awareness of death and a dash of the diabolical, and there was truly an edge of darkness as Sofia moved. The shadows at her feet were almost living things that she stamped back into the depths of the earth. The wail of the older woman's song grew louder, a desperate lament for the loss of their homeland. Sofia whirled, her steps faster and faster until she stood motionless at the crescendo, the guitar silenced by the applause.

She held the pose as the noise died down, waiting for quiet again. She turned and gestured to the guitar player, and Morgan caught the look that sparked between them, recognizing an intimate knowledge. This was Sofia's boyfriend, perhaps the cause of the rift with her family. He had the look of a Moroccan-Spanish Arab, his long dark hair worn loose about his face – a Muslim, perhaps, or a gitano, a man Santiago may have considered beneath his pure-blood Jewish granddaughter. The young man began to pluck the strings and one of the other men from the group stepped forward to dance with Sofia, stamping with fast heels.

A figure stepped from the crowd, standing poised on the edge of the open ring. He wore the black shirt and tight trousers of flamenco and his strong features brought to mind a toreador, a bullfighter in his prime. He had been wounded in battle, his right eye scarred and sightless, but Morgan's gaze was drawn to his wide chest, muscled arms, and his posture of dominance. She tensed at his entrance, aware of the imminent danger Sofia was in, but perhaps this man was just a member of the troupe, a plant for dramatic effect.

The man stepped forward, raising his arms, commanding attention as he stamped rhythmically towards Sofia. She turned in the dance, away from the man in her troupe, indicating her acceptance of his challenge. The man began the dance of the bullfighter, and they circled around each other as the music soared. There was a chemistry between them, and even though the man was old enough to be her father, he was attractive, a dark intensity in his gaze as he danced closer to Sofia, calling his olé as he clapped. She spun in his circle, tilting her body towards his. Morgan saw the guitar player's eyes narrow at this rival. The taut strings of attraction held the pair at arm's length, but as the music reached a crescendo and the song ended, the man reached out and pulled Sofia to him.

The young woman's eyes widened, her mouth opened in a gasp. Morgan stepped forward, suddenly realizing the threat. Then the spotlights flicked off and the fire alarm rang out, its piercing shriek echoing around the Court of the Lions as the whole area was plunged into darkness.

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My Creative Writing Process

January 5, 2016 By J.F. Penn

I am often asked where my ideas come from and how my creative process works. I recorded this for a podcast, so you can listen to the audio or read the transcript below.

Today I am talking about my creative process because I am about to start Destroyer of Worlds, ARKANE book 8, and really, I love, love, love, love, love, love this part of the process!

I wanted to talk about it because so often, I’m reductionist. I like processes and steps and I like how-to stuff. Most of the non-fiction I write is very practical and pragmatic.

But this year (2015) one of my top recommendations for books was Big Magic by Elizabeth Gilbert, which is excellent. I think magic is probably the wrong word, but the idea that it’s less reductionist, that the creative process has that edge of something almost supernatural is definitely what I find. I’ve called it synchronicity in the past in that as I delve deeper, things happen which were unexpected and that is definitely part of my process.

I’ve just written down a few notes, so we’ll just talk through them, so apologies if this is out of order. Buy hey, it’s New Year, so I hope you’re relaxing as you listen to this.

I get lots of ideas from my travels.

I travel a lot. I have always traveled a lot. I particularly like going to places with a rich cultural history.

The very first scene of Stone of Fire, my very first novel, opens in Varanasi, on the banks of the Ganges in India. I went there back in, I think it was in 2006 and I saw them burning the bodies on the burning ghats. The idea that sprung then started that first scene in Stone of Fire, when a nun meets a fiery end. What’s interesting is the idea for that came years before the actual book

I tend to find that in the stories I write, the original idea often came from years ago, unless it’s something unexpected. For example, One Day in Budapest.

We went to Budapest because my husbands’ family originally is from Hungary and we visited the synagogue where we saw his family’s name on the mass grave, and at the same time the government had just called for a registration of all Jews in Hungary and that shocked me so much that that was happening.

I decided I had to write a book about the rise of far-right extremism in Eastern Europe, that turned into One Day in Budapest, which is action/adventure with those themes. That idea was unexpected and I hadn’t thought about it before we actually got there.

But generally, going back to India, Destroyer of Worlds, I remember very distinctly seeing a statue of Shiva Nataraja in India again, in Delhi, same year I visited Varanasi. If you Google Shiva Nataraja you’ll see the exact image. It’s a Shiva dancing in this ring of fire and it’s the destroyer of worlds and the re-maker of worlds, a fascinating myth. I remember seeing that image and just really loving it, and that is what sparked this story.

So I have this kernel of an idea, and then from there, I start to research.

For me, research is going places, obviously, and visiting museums, visiting the kind of iconic places of that city or that region and soaking that up. For all of my books, the setting is incredibly important. Then I just start to find things that are more interesting.

I follow my curiosity into what I will research next. That may come from other places and other things.

I read the Guardian newspaper in the UK, and I just saw this article about the lack of vultures threatening Mumbai’s Towers of Silence. And the Towers of Silence are based on the ancient Zoroastrian tradition of disposing of dead bodies by putting them out in the air and then the carrion birds eat them. This also happens in Tibet, in Nepal, and many of these older civilizations.

It is completely natural, but it’s really interesting that in the middle of Mumbai would be these Towers of Silence. That’s really cool for me, that just makes me go, “Oh yes, that’s got to go in a book.”

So I start writing down the things that catch my eye. Mumbai is a fascinating city. I actually haven’t been to Mumbai, but I’d really like to go. I do write about places I haven’t been, but I do try and ground them in things I have. That is just one thing. That is like shopping for settings as such.

Then I will dive deeper.

Shiva Nataraja, for example. I know a surface level of information, but what I will then do is research that a lot more – research Shiva and the various temples associated with Shiva, because my books generally have multiple locations in. That curiosity drives a deeper research period, and this is what I really love, because I’m such a research junkie and find out really fascinating stuff.

At this point, I tend to read books on my Kindle and I do a lot of highlighting. I then transfer the highlights just into either a Pages/Word document or Scrivener. At this point, I generally just keep it in a general document, just layers and layers of notes on random stuff. I do write notes in my journals which I’ve got here in front of me. I also write notes as I watch DVDs or stuff on TV, TV shows.

Actually, I just watched one on the Kumbh Mela, which is incredible, the biggest gathering of pilgrims of people in the whole world. I think, I’m trying to figure out how many millions of people are there, but it’s a lot of Hindu pilgrims who meet in one place. There’s four different places where they meet and it really is crazy.

When I’m watching programs on things, I’ll just be taking notes, handwritten notes in my Moleskines.

I won’t just be writing down facts. I’ll actually be writing down colors and different things like that. For example, when I think of India, I think of the women wearing bright colors, far more bright colors than we do in the west, and how clean everybody always is. Some people have this image of India as a dirty place, but to me, it’s super clean because everybody is always washing. There is a lot of washing that goes on as part of all the religious faiths really.

That’s where I start and that’s where I am right now with Destroyer of Worlds, which is why I wanted to talk about it now.

I don’t have a plot. I do have an opening scene and I’ve had an opening scene in my head for a while, and that’s going to be in London.

That will then spark the story, but I do know that I will have these various aspects that will go into it. And the title Destroyer of Worlds obviously gives that Hindu aspect to it. Then, of course, also, the first thing people think of when they hear “Destroyer of Worlds” is Oppenheimer, “I am become Death, destroyer of worlds,” which actually is a quote from Bhagavad Gita.

Then it’s like, okay, so Oppenheimer, nuclear bombs, obviously, the links with Nazis and some of Himmler’s fascination with some of the Hindu myths, even the swastika for example, the original symbol. Those are all the things that start going into the ideas for the book.

Then what happens is synchronicity.

As I said, this is the ‘magic’ aspect that I find happens when I’m researching is that something will come up totally unexpected that makes the story work.

For example, with Stone of Fire, that first novel, it really made my jaw drop the day it happened. I was reading Carl Jung’s Red Book, which had been

Stone of Fire picture in Jung's Red Book

hidden for years by his family, it was basically a diary of his breakdown and he did all these paintings. And my book Stone of Fire has a lot of Jungian psychology in it. Morgan Sierra, my main character specializes in psychology of religion which Jung was highly into.

What I found in the Red Book, this hidden book, just shown to the public, was a painting that exactly matched my story. That painting is in Stone of Fire and I include that as part of the plot. But when that happened, I was just gob smacked.

And that synchronicity of story emerging from fascination and research still just makes me shiver a little bit, because it happens every time.

Stephen King talks about the emergence of the story. That story is a ‘found thing.’ I believe that. I think I go looking for a story in the real world and then I will twist part of the reality into the thing that’s fiction.

Stone of Fire is based on the stones of the apostles and the search begins where their bodies are buried. The places that are mentioned, the churches and resting places of the relics are true. There are bones in those places and relics, but the power of the stones, obviously, is made up. That’s what I like doing best is taking real stuff and then twisting it a little bit.

I’ll give myself quite a lot of time, depending on how much I’m into it, but a couple of weeks at least of just delving deep and following rabbit holes on the internet. But usually I will have had the idea in my head for months or even years before that.

For example, I will Google things like Nazis + Shiva, and see what comes up. I’m not going to give some stuff away, because I found some amazing cool things already that just make me go, “Ah, seriously? That is just wow.” Those are the things that happen. Of course you find a lot of conspiracy theories sites, which are for thriller writers just awesome!

Then I just let it all percolate.

Because I’m writing in the existing ARKANE series, I already have my characters – Morgan and Jake.

What I don’t have is my antagonist, because I generally kill them off at the end of each book. For this one, I obviously need a new baddy and I do have in mind who the baddy will be, and pretty cool and quite happy with this baddy.

There’s a spin-off, I’m thinking of, I want to it to be ARKANE Black Ops spin-off. What I want to do in this book is also introduce briefly a tangential character, so that when I do this next book, which I’m already thinking about…and this is the other thing, now I think about more than one book at the same time, but I will never write more than one fiction at the same time. That’s really important for me, because otherwise I get confused.

Some fascinations bleed into several books.

Those of you who read some of my books will discover my fascination with tattoos, for example, come up in several books. If you read Risen Gods and Deviance, there is some crossovers there as well with the Maori mythology.

These things can come up in multiple books. We all know that and we all have our fascinations.

Anyway, I have my characters and I pretty much know the beats of how an ARKANE thriller works. I know that there will be some kind of cool object and someone will want to destroy the world or kill loads of people, and Morgan and Jake will have to stop them. That is the essence of a thriller in general.

So we know that that will happen and there will be lots of different places they have to go and they’ll find cool things and it will be lots of fun and fast paced. But equally, I also like to have an underlying theme and often in my ARKANE books, it really is faith versus unbelief and good versus evil, really big themes.

But the main thing is that after I’ve done this research for a couple of weeks, I use The Story Grid by Shawn Coyne to create a one page outline.

You can go back and listen to the podcast with Shawn, January 2014, episode 208 with Shawn Coyne. The Story Grid is my favorite, number one writing book for fiction authors, so I now do The Foolscap Method for an outline.

I’m not someone who outlines like a crazy person, although I might be doing that more as I get into dictation in 2016, but mainly I do a foolscap one-pager. It’s essential a one-pager with the main beats of the book, the main highlights, the main twists, the main reversals, that type of thing.

From there, I start writing.

I’ll write about 20,000 words, 30,000 words, and then I will re-plot the next bits. Normally I know the beginning, I know the ending. Right now I don’t know the ending. I have an idea. It would depend on how the rest of the research goes, but I normally know the big climatic scene, but I don’t know the middle bit. So I write 20 to 30,000 words and then I will do re-plotting around the rest of the book.

As I’m doing the research, I start a book page on Pinterest.

If you go to pinterest.com/jfpenn, I have boards for most of my books. I started doing it around book four, so I have a number of boards for different things.

At the moment, my Destroyer of Worlds board has some really cool pictures of Shiva Nataraja and India and Kumbh Mela and some of the cool things associated with that, and you can also have a look at the boards for all my other books.

I always do an author’s note at the back of my books, and I include the links to those Pinterest boards at the back, and people really love them and I share them as I write the books as well.

Looking back, it’s amazing, because I’m a very visual person. Setting is super important to me in descriptions of where people are and what they’re seeing. I will be writing some screenplays this year as well, because I really would like to see these done on the big screen. Wouldn’t we all?!

But I do like having the images, because they really help set the scene as I am writing. So what I’ll do, if I’m about to write, I will spend some time really looking at pictures of the people like the Sadhus at Kumbh Mela are just amazing. Some of them are wearing ash and marigolds and the long dreadlocks and these really just fascinating things that are so different to a western church.

Compare the Church of England service with, as my husband calls it, Christian droning, because English people don’t really sing with enthusiasm, versus these Sadhus at Kumbh Mela where there’s millions of people, it’s just brilliant. I love having these images to work from as I am writing.

And with Scrivener, you can have a split screen so you can view your research as you write. So I’ll often even have these pictures up or I’ll watch YouTube videos as I am writing the scene, to bring that to life.

Then I will basically just see what emerges as I write.

One of the many things I have on my wall, is “Trust Emergence,” because what I found is sometimes things will just arrive on the page or in your brain as you are doing stuff. You don’t necessarily know that before you start writing. That trusting emergence is so important. I think that’s an important part of the creative process.

I trust emergence from the research, in that there’s so many interesting things that I could write about. I have to write about the things that my curiosity draws me to. Then, as I am writing, I have to trust in the emergence of an idea from the massive possibilities and the chemistry of what happens on the page.

Once your characters are fully fleshed out, and my antagonist will be fleshed out based on my research. He or she will be Indian. It’s so important to me to do that, and also, as I said, it is the most fun part for me. I love it.

It’s one of the reasons that I am a writer. I spent time thinking about what my ideal life would be like, and I think that’s a very important thing to do.

If you want to decide what to do with your life, consider what you want your life to look like, what would your days look like.

I wanted to spend my time learning, so I love learning and also traveling and creating things I’m proud of. Those things together do come up with writing.

I also like helping people, which is why I like doing the podcast and the blog and everything, and why I write non-fiction. I guess I’ll talk about non-fiction another time, but my creative process for fiction really does revolve around this type of deep dive into research.

I also take a lot of pictures on my journeys, and they will often spark ideas.

skulls — Sedlec ossuary, near Prague, used in Crypt of Bone, ARKANE #2

So for example, we, as I record this, we are going to Prague. We haven’t been yet, as I record this, although I’ve been to Prague before, so I know, for example, I know the Jewish graveyard there, which Hitler didn’t have destroyed, because it was meant to be a memorial to a dead race. That is a place that I remember very, very well, because it’s a very powerful thing, that it’s not a memorial to a dead race.

In going there, you remember what could have been. I absolutely know that I would be taking pictures there that somehow, ideas will come from that, and things will happen because of going to that place.

But it doesn’t have to be traveling to faraway places. It can just be around your house.

I went for a walk the other day, through the fields nearby, I’ve been training for this Race to the Stones, which is 100 kilometers over two days, and so I’m going to be doing a lot of walking.

While I was walking, I got a lot of ideas about a character that I’m thinking, the spin-off, as I mentioned, the ARKANE Black Ops thing. The character who that will be around is a man and I got a lot of ideas about him as I was out walking, just looking at various things. And I’ve some ideas as to how I want a trilogy of books to be set around this particular character and what role he plays in the world as such. And so that was just walking out from my house for a couple of hours.

That’s the thing. I don’t want you to think that you have to travel to faraway places in order to get these ideas. For me, that’s how I write, that’s what I love to write, but especially if you write family drama, you can write that close to home.

I think the important thing is that we get ideas from anywhere.

I don’t think I mentioned that I use my Things app on my phone. I don’t always have my Moleskines, because I have the A5 size Moleskines. I also like Leuchtturm notebooks.

On my phone, I have the Things app, which is a to do list app, but I also have a folder for fiction ideas. So if I’m watching TV with my husband, for example, watching a show or if I’m reading, I’ll often read on my phone, I’ll put a note in.

For example, I’m just in the folder now as we are talking, I found an article on the abandoned libraries of the Sahara, and I just put the link there into the phone. I don’t know when that will come up again, but the abandoned libraries in the Sahara is something that makes me interested. I want to know more about that.

Here’s something I saw on the website for Bath Abbey nearby. So I’ve just written a short story about Bath Abbey for a Stephen King competition and I saw this on their website, so it’s a direct quote. “The adviser on the paranormal can be contacted through the Diocesan office,” and this is on a Church of England website, so I think I just thought that was really cool.

So I just write down different things as I see them and I put links to articles. Here is another one, Cordyceps, fungi that grows inside live animals. That’s really cool. I just write down things.

Who knows when this stuff will come back into my conscious mind?

Or it might not, it might just emerge on the page and I discover later that I’d actually written a note about something and forgotten it, but it came up back into my head.

I guess what I’m saying, and I’m rounding up now, before I just waffle on for hours, is that my creative process does have that touch of magic or that touch of something that’s not quite in my control, even though I’m somebody who is quite controlling in many ways, which is probably why I’m an Indie author.

I like the control we have over publishing and book marketing and all that, and I like being able to write whatever captures my curiosity. That really is how I write fiction. It has to be something I’m personally fascinated with. I pretty much assume that if I’m fascinated, then there will be other people who are interested in it and that will want to read this type of book.

There you go, that is my creative process for fiction and how I get my ideas and how I work them into a book. Thanks for listening and I will see you next week.

How Does The Physical Body Define Us In Life … And In Death? My Research For Desecration, London Psychic Book 1

August 13, 2014 By J.F. Penn

In this video, I go through some of my research for Desecration, London Psychic Book 1. You can also see it in slideshow format at the bottom of the article.

Death isn’t always the end.

Research and Inspiration behind Desecration, London Psychic Book 1 by J.F.Penn

The idea for Desecration came from a visit to the Hunterian Museum in London, where anatomical specimens line the walls. It made me wonder about how the physical body defines us in life … and in death.

Jamie Brooke is a British police detective who struggles against the rules and yet remains passionate about bringing justice to the dead. Jamie’s escape into tango comes from my own obsession with this ‘vertical expression of a horizontal desire.’

Blake Daniel, the reluctant psychic who helps Jamie on the case, works at the British Museum as a researcher. My writing always has an edge of the supernatural …

The anatomical Venus figures, like the one found at the crime scene, were popular teaching devices as well as pieces of art.

Teratology is the study of ‘monsters,’ abnormalities in physiological development, often caused by genetic or environmental factors. The Victorian ‘freak shows’ were made up of people born misshapen and the medical museums are full of their remains. But what if they were created deliberately?

The Bodies exhibition in New York gave me the idea for Rowan Day-Conti and his macabre corpse art sculptures. Researching that alternative world led me to body modification and the Torture Garden nightclub. It’s fascinating to see how people use the body as a canvas to define themselves.

This tattoo was the inspiration for the exotic dancer, ‘O.’ Seen at the National Gallery, London, Seduced by Art Photography exhibition.
Richard Learoyd's Man with Octopus Tattoo II, 2011

A visit to the Hellfire Caves of West Wycombe, rife with rumours of Satanic ritual and sexual depravity, inspired some of the climactic scenes.

Desecration is available in ebook, print and audiobook formats. More images at pinterest.com/jfpenn/desecration/

Sample or Buy Now in Print or Ebook formats

Desecration research from J.F. Penn

Pentecost, An ARKANE Thriller. The Research Behind The Book.

December 27, 2013 By J.F. Penn

My aim is always to write a thriller that could be real, because it is so grounded in real places and real historical events. There's an edge of fiction that takes you further, but you should be wondering what that is.

In this video, I explain the research, ideas and inspiration behind Pentecost, an ARKANE thriller (Book 1).

It was originally recorded for a book club, but I think you'll find it fascinating if you enjoy travel and religious places around the world.

There are no spoilers, just some insight into my thought process and the places that inspired me.

My trip to India back in 2007 and how Varanasi gave me the idea for the opening scene on the burning ghats, where bodies are burned on the edge of the Ganges. How my travels are a source of inspiration for me.

The original title of the book was ‘Mandala,' based on Carl Jung's Red Book, which at the time had just been released for the first time. It contains Jung's personal diary and paintings, made during a time of breakdown. Some of the images within the book inspired me to think of an idea around a stone and a pillar of fire.

During a trip to Venice one flooded New Year, I visited St Mark's Basilica which has the amazing Pentecost dome. That mosaic forms an important part of the plot.

I talk about my MA Theology at the University of Oxford, Mansfield College 1994-1997 when I studied the early church, and how I became fascinated with the Apostles. Where did their bodies end up after they were martyred? The Pitt Rivers and the Bodleian both make it into the book.

Scenes feature the Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela in Spain, which has the bones of St James, and St Peters in Rome, both likely places for adventuring on the hunt for the Apostle's stones.

I talk about Jerusalem and the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. How Israel is my fascination and my addiction, and how it appears in practically all my books. Morgan Sierra was brought up there, and in Pentecost, she visits again as part of the hunt.

Jung and Freud were in the USA during the 1920s and I was able to use that as part of the plot, taking the hunt to America and into the electric storms of Arizona and the Biosphere.

Why sense of place is so important to me

The first in the ARKANE series, PENTECOST is a fast-paced thriller that explores the edges of faith against a backdrop of early Christian history, archaeology and psychology.

Available in print, audio and ebook formats at Amazon.com, or for free in ebook format at Kobo.

Full transcription of the video

Hi, everyone, hi Rhonda and the book club, I’m really excited to be here today. I’m Joanna Penn, writing as J.F. Penn, and I’m really excited that you’ve chosen “Pentecost” as your book club read, so I hope you’ve all got your copy or on your e-book reader.

And today, I’m just going to talk a little bit about the ideas and inspiration behind the book, because I love research, and I hope you’ll find some of this interesting. Now, there’ll be no spoilers, I promise, so if you haven’t started the book yet, don’t worry, I will just give you some insight into some of the places and things that you’ll experience along the way.

So, the very first inkling for the ideas for “Pentecost” came when I had a trip to India, back about five years ago now.

And that’s me, sitting at dawn in Varanasi. Now, Varanasi’s on the Ganges, so it’s a holy city, and also, if you die in Varanasi, basically, you get to heaven, you escape the circle of life, as such. And that’s the Burning Ghat there. Now, visiting that was quite confrontational, I guess, those bodies being burnt openly there, and that scene, being there, really inspired me. And if you’ve read the opening of the book, you’ll know that that is the first scene.

And actually just as an aside, whilst you’re doing your book club, at the moment I’m back in India, I’m cycling in South India, so that’s pretty exciting. I love to travel, and my travels are a real source of inspiration for me.

So, when I got the idea, at this point the book was going to be kind of about Eastern stuff, and it was going to be called “Mandala,” because the other thing that was happening at the time was this book. Now, any of you who know a bit about psychology, Carl Jung is obviously huge in psychology, and this book, the “Red Book,” it’s huge, it’s like a huge, huge, oversize, full color, lovely pages book. It’s actually his personal diary of a kind of breakdown that he had, and he did art therapy whilst he was going through this. And this is one of his mandalas.

The book was going to be called “Mandala,” it was going to be an exploration of the kind of unconscious, and having crimes and thriller stuff as well, but in terms of the theme behind the series. Now, Jung’s “Red Book” had been kept secret by his family for many years, and had only just been released to the public, so these drawings were available to the public for the first time, and this sort of burst into my consciousness.

So, the book was going to be “Mandala,” and then, I saw, this image. The one on the right, both of these are within the book, and the snake there, with its gorgeous, gorgeous artwork that he did, all himself, but the one on the right, if you can see at the bottom left there, there’s a man prostrating himself before a small object–could be a stone–and a pillar of fire coming out. Now, that phrase ‘pillar of fire,’ if you’ve read the Bible, is essentially at Pentecost, the pillar of fire in Exodus, with God in the desert, but the tongues of fire coming down on the Apostles at Pentecost is what kind of came into my head, the tongues of flame. And when I looked at this, I thought, “Well, what if, that would be really interesting, if there was some object that could have this effect.”

So, again, another travel, my travels just seem to inform my ideas, and then they all sort of mush up into some kind of crazy thing, but I was in Venice, and you can see there that that’s me in my puffball jacket, because it was freezing, we were there for New Year, and it was flooded, so flooded Venice being beautiful but quite tragic, in a way. But inside St Mark’s Basilica is this tremendous gold dome, and on it, you can see there some of the figures of the Apostles, with the tongue of flame alighting on their heads from the throne of heaven. So it’s the Pentecost Dome.

And when I kind of put all these ideas together and thought about, “OK, well what if each of those Apostles had a stone that they kept in memory of their time with Jesus, and what if they were buried with the bodies of the Apostles,” because, of course, the history of the Early Church, which I studied–I did Theology at the University of Oxford, Mansfield College, which also comes into the book.

Essentially I thought it would be really interesting to look at where did the bodies of the saints end up? And could there be something mysterious, hidden with the bodies?

So, I just mentioned Oxford, but there’s some of the places there that I talk about in the book. That’s the Pitt Rivers Museum, which is amazing, this mad, Victorian explorer went around the world, kind of taking stuff from tribes–terrible, really–but an amazing museum full of interesting things. And the Bodleian, where I used to study, that’s the Radcliffe Camera, where my actual library was, the Theology Library, and once you get into the series, you’ll see later on, that there’s a sort of virtual library with arcana, and that’s modeled on the Bodleian. So that’s quite exciting.

When I was doing my research around where the bones and the relics of the saints ended up, the really famous one and the most obvious one is St James in Santiago de Compostela in Spain. There’s a brilliant cathedral there, and they have this amazing bottafumeiro, it’s called, it’s an 80kg big incense swinger, and it swings over the congregation, and it’s very famous, and I really wanted to get that into the plot, so, when you get to that bit, I hope you’ll enjoy how I wove that in.

But it was fascinating to me to kind of look at what is real, or at least belief, for a lot of people, and then weaving that in to a thriller, how can I make it so true that you think it could possibly be real? That’s kind of my aim. And what’s quite amazing about many of the things as I researched, was the synchronicity, which is also a Jungian kind of thing, that things happened, more than coincidence, let’s say. Slightly more than coincidence. I’ll come back to that in a minute.

So, obviously St Peter in Rome would be another obvious place, the bones of St Peter lie underneath the cathedral, and there’s some amazing stuff in St Peter’s which I obviously needed to bring into the story, and there’s me outside there. And on the left, that’s actually the Feast of Epiphany, when we managed to get into the Basilica and see the Pope, which was pretty exciting, before he abdicated, of course.

I love Rome, I love Italy, and I love Israel.

So, if you do get into the series, you’ll find that Jerusalem and Israel come into the book over and over again, and Morgan Sierra, my main character, was brought up in Israel–her father’s Jewish. I love to weave that in, and Jerusalem is a very important place to me, it’s probably my spiritual home, I would say. I obsess about it, I read about it all the time, I would love to live there for a while. I’m really fascinated by the place, and the Church of the Holy Sepulcher is just mad. I couldn’t find any pictures of the stuff on the roof, which is in the book, which is the Ethiopian Coptic church, which is just really interesting, and obviously very poor, but, the church is just a mish-mash of all the different denominations of the Christian religion: it’s fascinating.

So, a fascinating place. Then, talking back again about synchronicity, when I brought Jung into the story in various ways, after starting with the “Red Book” and the mandala, and bringing him in to the story later on, I found some amazing synchronicity in the fact that he was in America, that’s a famous picture, that’s Jung and Freud, at Clark University, and essentially, they launched psychology in America in the 1920s, and this famous meeting, I was able to use in the book. And only kind of found that after I went into the research of where he would have been at different dates and how it would have fitted in with my story, so an amazing piece of synchronicity there.

And this is the Biosphere in Arizona, another place that has been in my mind for many years, and really fascinated with the storms, electric storms that you have in America.

So, I hope you can see that I kind of weave in all of this stuff into the book, and that that adds a kind of layer of intrigue and interest and sense of place to the book. I am an obsessive traveler, so all my books feature interesting locations.

OK, so I hope you found that interesting, and what we can do is if you’ve got any questions, Rhonda will email me those, and I’ll do you another little video, answering any other questions that you will have about anything, whether it’s the book, or the writing life, or being English, whatever else you fancy.

The series is available, “Pentecost” is in print, e-book and audiobook, as are the other ARKANE books. “Prophecy” is about the hunt for the Devil’s Bible, which contains curses that will basically do evil things to mankind, and it has, again, a psychological edge to it, the psychology of obedience, when Abraham was going to sacrifice his son, or when people do things in the name of God. So, I’m really interested in those, the Stanley Milgram experiments from America in the 50s, there’s a lot of interesting stuff in “Prophecy,” in terms of psychological research behind the thriller.

And then “Exodus” is about the hunt for the Ark of the Covenant as the Middle East counts down to a religious war, and in that one I did a lot of research, obviously, about where the Ark of the Covenant might actually be, and that was brilliant, I really enjoyed that, and going to Ethiopia and Jordan and fascinating places like that.

And then “One Day in Budapest,” which has just come out as you watch this, is more of a political thriller: if you like Daniel Silver, you might like this book. It’s got a political edge, it’s kind of a day of terrorism by neo-Nationalists, in Budapest, and Morgan Sierra just happens to be there, delivering some ancient objects back to the Synagogue, as it all kicks off. So it’s a very high-paced novella.

But anyway, those are my books. You can also sign up for my list, if you’d like to get specials or giveaways, that type of thing, at jfpenn.com/list

OK, well, I hope you enjoy the book. I look forward to hearing from you all, and thanks for having me, Rhonda, and thanks to all of you in the book group.

One Day In Budapest. The Research Behind The Book.

August 21, 2013 By J.F. Penn

In November 2012, I visited Budapest with my husband for a research trip. The resulting novella, ‘One Day In Budapest' is now available on Amazon, Kobo and all ebook stores.

In the video below, I explain the inspiration for the story – both from the political angle as well as the historical. You can also view the video here on YouTube. Below the video is the description and the buy links.

A relic, stolen from the heart of an ancient city.
An echo of nationalist violence not seen since the dark days of the Second World War.

Budapest, Hungary. When a priest is murdered at the Basilica of St Stephen and the Holy Right relic is stolen, the ultra-nationalist Eröszak party calls for retribution and anti-Semitic violence erupts in the city.

Dr Morgan Sierra, psychologist and ARKANE agent, finds herself trapped inside the synagogue with Zoltan Fischer, a Hungarian Jewish security advisor. As the terrorism escalates, Morgan and Zoltan must race against time to find the Holy Right and expose the conspiracy, before blood is spilled again on the streets of Budapest.

One Day In Budapest is a chilling view of a possible future as Eastern Europe embraces right-wing nationalism. A conspiracy thriller for fans of Daniel Silva, where religion and politics intersect.

The novella features Dr Morgan Sierra from the ARKANE thrillers, but is stand-alone and can be read separately from the ARKANE series.

Sample or buy now in ebook, print and audio formats

Audiobook on Audible.com and on iTunes

Full transcript of the video

Hi, everyone, I’m thriller author J.F. Penn, and I’m here today to tell you a bit about my research process and the ideas behind “One Day in Budapest,” my novella, which is out now and available on all e-book platforms. And I promise there’ll be no spoilers, so don’t worry about that if you haven't read the book yet.

So, the story opens as Morgan Sierra is returning some items back to the synagogue, the Dohany Street Synagogue, which is the main one in Budapest. Now, these items were taken from the Gold Train which was a train, obviously, that was taken from the Nazis towards the end of the Second World War, so this is actually true, and I love to involve a lot of true stories in my books.

So, the Dohany Street Synagogue is one of the first places that I visited in Budapest, when I went there in November 2012, for partly a research trip, and also partly more of a personal trip. My husband is half-Hungarian, and also Jewish, so we were visiting the synagogue to have a look at his family history. So, it was a personal trip, it was also a deeply moving trip. And what you can see here is the gorgeous Dohany Street Synagogue, which is in the kind of Moorish style, beautiful architecture. And was kind of scary, this window, the rose window there you can see, is actually where Eichmann sat as they decided on who would go to the camps and who would stay in the ghetto, and this was where the Budapest Ghetto was. So, a kind of deeply disturbing historical area.

And the tree there, it’s a weeping willow tree in silver that is a memorial to the Jews killed in the Second World War, and behind there is actually a really amazing memorial to some of the Righteous Among Nations, who were the non-Jews who helped the Jews during that time.

So the Jewish history in Budapest is, is pretty sad, and you can see here a list of names, and the graveyard there–which is actually within the synagogue grounds, very unusual–is a mass grave for those people who died within the Budapest Ghetto, and they are actually buried there, within the synagogue grounds. And this brought home in a much more detailed manner, I guess, the deaths of the Second World War. It’s very hard to imagine millions of people, but you can imagine the thousands that are within these mass graves.

So that was a really deeply moving experience, and also, that memorial there, the shoes you can see, is some shoes cast in metal on the banks of the Danube. And that’s called The Shoes on the Danube, Memorial, which is within the book–I won’t tell you how. But it is basically a memorial to the people who were killed, the Jews who were shot by the Arrow Cross fascist militia, again in the Second World War. And again, they were just shot–told to take their shoes off and then shot, and their bodies fell in the water.

So, obviously, this was not a happy trip as such. Going back into this kind of history is very emotional. And when I was there, I really wanted to tell a story somehow that would bring in this history and would talk about the history of Budapest and this community, as well as the other people who’ve suffered, which I’ll come to in a minute. So, it’s I guess a dark history in Hungary. But what’s kind of interesting is it’s not just the history, and this is where the ideas behind the book come in.

These are some screen prints from The Guardian, which is a newspaper in Britain. And this is 2012, some of the news around Hungary’s right-wing neo-nationalists. And, essentially, in November 2012, which was while I was in Budapest, one of the Hungarian politicians actually called for a register of Jews in the country. And it was just so stark a contrast to me, seeing this synagogue, and the graves, and hearing about what had happened in the 40s, and then hearing news that was essentially what was happening before all of that. And in my head it was just kind of, well, what if this could happen again. And this party could very well become the dominant party in Hungary. It’s not just Jews: in the same way as the fascists in the past, they also target Roma and other kinds of ‘undesirables’ in quotation marks.

So, really interesting, and shocking, that there is this kind of neo-nationalist, anti-Semitic feeling, amongst some people in Hungary–not just Hungary, of course, it’s a worldwide issue. But what I wanted to do with my book was to kind of imagine what could happen, if a party like this got into power: what would happen. And so that’s the kind of political angle. It is also a kind of religious angle, but this is essentially political.

So that was the basis for the story, and then, as I’m a travel junkie, I really love to involve amazing places and interesting bits of history in my books. And here’s some pictures here of the Basilica of St Stephen, or St Istvan, as he’s known in Hungary. And you can just see in that picture of the shrine there, that is called the Holy Right. Amazingly interesting: this is the actually the holy right hand of St Stephen.

Now, the, the story goes that in, in around 1000A.D., St Stephen was the king of the Hungarian Empire at the time, and he was dying without an heir to the throne. And he called to the Virgin Mary, lifted his right hand and said, “Holy Virgin, look after the nation, become Queen of Hungary and look after them for me,” and then he died. But his right hand–this is over 1000 years old–this mummified fist, cut off at the wrist, it’s really, really cool, is there in the Basilica. And again, in the opening scenes of “One Day in Budapest,” you will see what happens with the Holy Right. But I love, relics, I think they’re fascinating, and the church is, is beautiful, so highly recommend a visit there.

Again, a very important place in Budapest, and quite stunning, because Budapest is really kind of showing this dark history, there’s a museum now, it’s called the House of Terror, and they’ve even got the big word ‘Terror’ over the house, it’s quite amazing. But inside, this is the tank inside, and a wall with all the victims. This building, 60 Andrassy Way, was actually the headquarters of the fascist Arrow Cross and the Fascist Party, as well as, then, the Communist Party, and some of the other awful things that happened to Hungary in, in the 50s.

So what was so amazing to me, or so distressing, I guess, was how many layers of suffering there have been in Hungary, in even the last 100 years. It’s a fascinating history to look at, and we think, “Ohthis is historical, this could never happen again,” and that’s why I wanted to write this story. But really, this House of Terror was fascinating. It’s been, sort of recreated and kept in the same way, and you can actually go into the rooms with all the records and a fascinating place to learn about what was happening there.

And then, of course, you have to bring in Castle Hill: that’s a, a view from Castle Hill over to the Parliament, at night, obviously. And that bird there is actually on the castle itself. It’s called a Turul–I’ve probably butchered the pronunciation, but the Turul is this magical bird from Hungarian myth. It represents power and strength. You might think it’s an eagle, but it’s actually a Turul, and it comes from the Magyar history and it can fly between the different worlds. And I wanted to bring in this sort of Magyar myth, it’s really fascinating. So I bring in a bit of shamanism and other things there.

And under Castle Hill is actually a cave system and tunnels, and a labyrinth, which unfortunately was closed to tourists, but I was able to research a lot of that on the Net with videos and pictures and things. So you’ll see how I bring that into the story. But, essentially, the, the whole city of Budapest has got these layers of, of intrigue and historical facts and just a fantastic place. So I wanted to really bring the city alive in the book, as well as try and talk a bit about the kind of political possibilities of the political future.

OK, so that is “One Day in Budapest,” a thriller novella, now available in e-book format everywhere. And you can also check out the ARKANE series, which is in print, audio and e-book. You can also check out my website at www.jfpenn.com, and I have a list, and you can get giveaways and all kinds of things, so yeah, come and check me out.

Thank you, I am thriller author J.F. Penn.

A Walk Through The Old City Of Jerusalem With Thriller Author, J.F.Penn

Behind The Scenes Of My Book Research For Gates of Hell In Granada, Spain

Excerpt from Gates of Hell. ARKANE thriller #6

Buy the book now in ebook, print and audiobook formats.