Joining an Exclusive Authors' Club

I have joined the ranks of Dan Brown and Salman Rushdie. Unfortunately, it doesn't mean that I've hit the bestseller lists or I have their income. What it does mean is that I was recently targeted by someone who apparently does not know the difference between fiction and reality.

My Black Swamp Mysteries series features a psychic spy, Vicki Boyd. I came across the use of psychic spies during the Cold War when I was combing through some of the CIA's declassified documents. I'd been asked to do a series for several years and realized that a psychic spy could provide limitless opportunities for plots that are unique, with changing locales and missions.

I have never claimed to be a psychic and I am certain if I was ever personally put to the test, I would fail it miserably.

But this didn't stop me from researching the use of psychic spies so the series could be as realistic as possible. I enjoy weaving fact with fiction and hope that I do it seamlessly enough for the reader to abandon disbelief and immerse themselves in the books I write.

With my weekly series on The Making of a Psychic Spy, I share some of that research with the readers. I've found there is a lot of interest in it and in my research and each week, I receive a lot of emails based on the information I've shared.

Unfortunately, the pastor of a fundamentalist church thinks I am a modern day witch. In a state I've never been to, in a town I've never seen, in a church I've never visited, this pastor has taken it upon himself to try and save my soul. I've been stalked on the Internet and have had to block this individual from Twitter feeds, Facebook and other social networking. All because he thinks that I am a psychic, and all psychics should be condemned to death if they don't renounce their filthy ways.

It's fiction, folks.

Yes, our government does employ psychic spies. So does Israel, Russia, China, Japan, and a host of other countries. But none of them employ me. If they did, I wouldn't be writing a series about it. I'd be living it.

The information I share on this blog is meant to give the readers of my books an inside look at how psychic spies are trained. I'm sharing part of the research I've done in helping to make the character of Vicki Boyd, the fictional psychic spy, more realistic.

I am no more a psychic myself than Charlaine Harris or Anne Rice are vampires. Oh, yeah. I suppose they targeted them, too.