Do You Believe in Magic(k)? (Cheap Day Return) by Bob Freeman, Author of Descendant: A Novel of the Liber Monstrorum ~ @OccultDetective #Occult #Fiction #Horror

Welcome to a blog tour that will bring you thrills and chills in the heart of the holiday season with the Descendant Blog Tour featuring the Occult Detective himself, Bob Freeman!

A supernatural thriller that readers of horror will also love, Descendant includes several original illustrations from Bob Freeman! The novel is interrelated with Bob’s short story collection First Born: Tales of the Liber Monstrorum, but can be read on its own.

A great opportunity to explore fascinating subject matter with a true expert who is a highly-respected lecturer on paranormal & supernatural topics!

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Please welcome Bob Freeman to the blog today!!!

Do You Believe in Magic(k)?

(Cheap Day Return)
by Bob Freeman

  

Time and time again the sacred words are spoken, passed from one wordslinger to the next, like an arcane mantra from a dark and distant age. “Write what you know,” they say. All well and good, but when you’re traversing subject matter as weighty as black magic, sorcery, and necromancy, where does that road even begin?

For me it began in the early seventies with a forgotten hermetic tract I found in the bottom of an old steamer trunk in my grandparents' second floor spare room. The trunk had been my great-grandmother’s, an ancient woman by the time I met her, eerily silent and confined to a nursing home. We visited her nearly every Sunday throughout my childhood, delivering graham crackers and well wishes.

Stranger was that mysterious trunk, silent and confined in its own way, tucked into a corner and buried beneath a veritable mountain of old quilts and crocheted blankets. Within its musty cavity was a treasure trove of books and pamphlets, mostly dealing with herbs, medicinal plants, and astrology, all dating to the thirties and forties. It was an intriguing find for an eight year old boy who’d already become accustomed to sneaking out of his parents' house in the dead of night to while away the hours in a nearby boneyard.

But the true treasure found in that trunk, at least for me, was the aforementioned tract. Penned by the philosopher and mystic Manly Palmer Hall, Unseen Forces was a revelation. It was, after all, my first book of esoterica, my metaphysical primer, if you will, and it opened up a world of possibilities to me. This slender pamphlet, which had belonged to my own flesh and blood, quickly became my most prized possession. Through it I was introduced to the denizens of the invisible worlds and our connection with them, including the ‘Dweller on the Threshold,’ elementals, nature spirits, thought-forms, ghosts and spectres.

I was already consumed by the likes of Dark Shadows and The Night Stalker, and I'd just begun to read Poe and Blackwood and Wheatley alongside The Hardy Boys, The Three Investigators, and Marvel Comics... and now here was a book purporting that the world out there was far stranger than it appeared on the surface, that there was an esoteric and wondrous (and frightening) world that existed in the shadows?

I had to know more... Of course, growing up in the rural Midwest, occult books were hard to come by, especially for an eight year old boy, but not impossible. I managed to get my hands on books by authors such as Hans Holzer, Sybil Leek, and Gavin and Yvonne Frost, and even managed to score a tattered copy of Gerald Gardner's Witchcraft Today.

It was all eye-opening to say the least. Unseen Forces added fuel to my interest in the preternatural, the occult, and the hermetic sciences — an interest that is still alive and well today.

I had continued my studies through high school, college, and beyond. I became obsessed with the works of the magicicans and alchemists of the Elizabethian era, the Golden Dawn, Thelema, Gardnerian and Alexandrian Witchcraft, and later the Discordians and Chaos Magic, and I kept abreast of advances in parapsychology and physics.

When I decided to become serious about writing fiction it was only natural that I would turn to this lifelong study and interest as source material for my stories. It was, after all, a time honoured tradition. Hell, the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn alone was virtually a who's who of famous authors of occult and horror fiction, including Algernon Blackwood, Arthur Machen, Aleister Crowley, Bram Stoker, and Dion Fortune, to name but a few.

"Write what you know"? Well, they, like so many before and since, certainly did.

Writing successful occult fiction requires a certain amount of verisimilitude. Having an intimate understanding of the esoteric sciences adds weight to your stories. If you want to write about the fantastic, you must make it live and breathe. You have to cast a spell on your audience, so that even if it's just for a little while, they too will believe in magic.

About the Book:

Descendant is a supernatural thriller filled with daring action, adventure, and artifice set against the backdrop of a very familiar world – but it is a world in which preternatural entities, clandestine magical orders, ancient bloodlines, and unholy alliances converge within the shadowed recesses of our darkest imaginings.

Federal Agents Selina Wolfe and Martin Crowe are called in to investigate a series of bizarre deaths in a small rural community. What first seems to be a misadventure involving black magic and satanic ritual soon takes on even more deleterious overtones, as the agents become embroiled in a plot by a sinister cabal intent on unleashing Hell on Earth.

Meet the Author:

Bob Freemanis an author, artist, and paranormal adventurer whose previous works include Shadows Over Somerset, Keepers of the Dead, and First Born.

A lifelong student of mythology, folklore, magic, and religion, Freeman has written numerous short stories, articles, and reviews for various online and print publications and is a respected lecturer on the occult and paranormal phenomena.

He lives in rural Indiana with his wife Kim and son Connor.

Author Links:

Twitter:@OccultDetective

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/authorbobfreeman/

Website: www.occultdetective.com

Amazon: https://amzn.to/331o8XK

Tour Schedule and Activities:

11/18 Dark Bites www.darkbites.ca Guest Post

11/19 Armed with A Book www.armedwithabook.com Guest Post

11/19 Sheila’s Guests and Reviews http://sheiladeeth.blogspot.com Guest Post

11/20 Sahara Foley https://saharafoley.com/blog/ Author Interview

11/20 Honestly Austen http://www.honestlyausten.com Review

11/21 Jazzy Book Reviews https://bookreviewsbyjasmine.blogspot.com/ Guest Post

11/22 The Book Junkie Reads https://thebookjunkiereadspromos.blogspot.com Author Interview

11/23 Sapphyria’s Books https://saphsbooks.blogspot.com/ Guest Post

11/24 The Seventh Star Blog http://www.theseventhstarblog.com guest post

11/25 Carol Preflaish, Mystery Author http://CarolPre.blogspot.com Author Interview

11/25 I Smell Sheep http://www.ISmellSheep.com Top Ten’s List

Purchase Links for Descendant:

Kindle Version: https://www.amazon.com/Descendant-Novel-Monstrorum-Bob-Freeman-ebook/dp/B07XNSLQBW/

Amazon Print Version: https://www.amazon.com/Descendant-Novel-Monstrorum-Bob-Freeman/dp/1948042878/

Barnes and Noble Link: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/descendant-bob-freeman/1028498347?ean=2940160816678