Mary Rowland, a psychologist from Australia, came all the way to a small town in Virginia to give a talk about 1600 patients who came to her for help with trauma from being abducted by aliens.  Her practice of hypnosis uncovered detailed stories. I learned that there is a severe stigma surrounding this experience, and family and friends are likely to commit you, or fire you, if you speak of it. “Aliens! You’ve lost it!”

Rowland’s book, Awakening (2002), and about thirty others grabbed my heart, mind, and soul as I explored this forbidden territory. I learned that there are many species of aliens, and that one of the most benign are the Pleiadians, who allegedly can appear occasionally much like humans on Earth. Their philosophy, or “message,” has been channeled and told by dozens of people, most notably Barbara Marciniak (Bringers of the Dawn, 1992). Their intention is (allegedly) protection of the human species and the earth, and nurturing the spiritual evolution of humans.

I have never been a fan of the horror genre or science fiction. But true stories about “that which must not be spoken” have a lot of appeal. Go ahead, TELL ME.

Part of my research was to attend AlienCon, a national convention of UFO and extraterrestrial afficionados. People of all kinds queued up at a microphone to tell their story of abduction, many sobbing from the trauma. I have a photo of an actual scar on a man’s body, from alien intrusion.

My novel Pip came out of the challenge of mining “real” stories of alien contact for material. Also, I wanted to embed “the Pleiadian message,” and to incorporate other New Age ideas, like reincarnation and the paranormal.

Pip is the name of my actual dog. The town of Sedro Woolley became part of my personal geography and I discovered that it had housed the Northern State Hospital for the mentally ill. The hospital grounds are now a creepy landscape of crumbling buildings since it closed in 1973. Thus I added as a theme the social stigma of mental illness, with stories of isolation, social shunning, involuntary commitment, and false accusations of “crazy.” The Hospital, like others like it, hired immigrant doctors who were not yet licensed in the USA, thus adding a population that was isolated, and “strange and alien.” To add to the mix, my characters include a black and white couple who met in a commune in Oregon and encountered hostility from white supremacists who also populated rural Oregon—adding the tensions of racism to the story.

I visited the Northern State Hospital and took photos which are used as illustrations in the novel.

My featured character is a psychic and healer who exits this dimension, willingly. Two children wander around speaking to a secret club of animals through telepathy. One of them has regular contact with benign aliens.

It was difficult to identify the genre. Many themes surrounding social stigma belong in adult genres. Two main characters in Pip are children navigating some social hostilities. Apparently, the Young Adult genre forbids religious themes. In my research, I learned that there are many “cross-over” books (books that are both YA and adult). (For example, Madeleine L’Engle’s A Wrinkle in Time.) I pitched the novel to a few agents and got: “Huh, I don’t know where to put that.” Since I’ve self-published about thirty books for myself and others, the self-publishing route was fun and easy. I do all my own design and technical work.

The novel has not sold in any impressive numbers. My marketing consisted of frequent tweets on Twitter, with hash tags related to the book’s topics. Not much traction there. The Sedro-Woolley Museum welcomed a donation of copies for them to sell. 

My Buddhist novel, White Bird (2014) and this novel about aliens (2019), and my long-time interest in New Age spirituality led me to my most recent project: writing non-fiction, a two-year effort that resulted in New Age: New Answers to Deep Questions (2021). All of these appear on my website, www.momox.org

I hope visitors to the Author’s Lounge find this story behind the story interesting. Our subconscious, and the creative process, can take us on strange journeys.