Interview with mystery author Penelope Holt

Today’s special guest is Penelope Holt to chat with me about her new spiritual romantic thriller, The Angel Scroll.

During her virtual book tour, Penelope will be giving away a $25 Amazon or Barnes and Noble (winner’s choice) gift card to a lucky randomly drawn participant. To be entered for a chance to win, use the form below. To increase your chances of winning, feel free to visit her other tour stops and enter there, too!

Bio:
Penelope Holt was born and educated in England and now lives in New York. She is a novelist, playwright, business writer, and marketing executive, whose work has been performed at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, York Arts Center, and New York’s American Folk Theater. In addition to writing fiction, The Angel Scroll, and The Apple, based on the controversial Herman Rosenblat Holocaust romance, Holt is a prolific writer, editor, and co-author of non-fiction, including Business Intelligence at Work A Personal Operating System for Career Success, Singing God’s Work, the story of the Harlem Gospel Choir, and many other works. She is married with two children.

Welcome, Penelope. Tell us about your latest release.
The Angel Scroll is a thriller with a spiritual romance at its core. The novel takes readers on a journey to uncover three miraculous paintings believed to bring spiritual enlightenment to a struggling world. Through romance and mystery, the story explores the intersection of ancient truths, the modern world, reincarnation, and the spiritual realm.

Claire Lucas, a widowed artist, channels a stunning painting of a Christlike figure at the deathbed of a young Indian woman whom he fails to heal. The masterpiece gains attention in New York. When Claire meets Richard Markson, an antiquarian, she learns that her artwork is part of an ancient prophecy from the Angel Scroll, a Dead Sea artifact. As the pair travel across America, Europe, and the Holy Land, they encounter enigmatic spiritual teachers as their growing love is overshadowed by dark secrets. They face malevolent forces as Claire unravels a prophecy that could bring healing to the world but may spell disaster for her.

The novel challenges readers to expand their understanding of reality, blending metaphysical ideas with spiritual exploration, sacred artifacts, and mystical traditions.

Excerpt from The angel Scroll:
Hilde. Simply to think of her was to feel her presence, vibrant, beautiful, inviting. She had brought color, excitement, and warmth to his somber life of rigid routines and serious study. No matter how hard he tried, Richard couldn’t stop the memory of Hilde’s beautiful face and perfect body from moving through his memory a hundred times a day. He saw her blond hair, cut in a shimmering, sophisticated bob. He pictured how she pushed the hair on one side behind her ears and stroked her neck, as if to remind him how exciting her touch was. He remembered how she would arouse him by absentmindedly caressing him throughout the day. She gave him lingering kisses hello in the morning, and trailed her fingers in a light touch across his back when he was lost in study. She sometimes ran her palm down his arm with an exciting pressure as they talked. And at night, her hands felt for him hungrily beneath the sheets, as he wrapped himself around the beautiful body he had craved all day and finally took his pleasure.

Richard had memorized every inch of his wife’s lithe, petite frame that radiated so much sex appeal. She was vivacious, the center of attention in any group, but languid and seductive when they were alone. Mostly it was her laugh, throaty and full of easy warmth, that haunted him. Her cornflower blue eyes would brighten, and her lovely face would soften and transform itself with an even lovelier smile to accompany that unforgettable laugh. How could he speak of Hilde when it hurt so much just to think about her?

What part of the writing process do you dread?
Beginning. Getting the first words on the first page is always the hardest for me. But once it’s done, the inertia is overcome and the creativity begins to flow, slow at first, and then with gathering momentum, the spell is broken and the writing begins, sometimes herky-jerky in fits and starts. Sometimes fast and free flowing. Fine sanding later drafts of any piece of writing is a pleasure, but getting started is tough.

Do you ever suffer from writer’s block? If so, what do you do about it?
I do suffer from writer’s block, but I know the trick for cutting through a writer’s inaction. I learned it from the Great American writer Ernest Hemingway. Ernest was a world traveler, intrepid war correspondent, lover of Spanish bullfighting, sailor, adventurer, hunter, and renowned boozer. After action-packed days in war zones followed by raucous nights of revelry with compadres, he was often the worst for wear come sunrise, but he had a rule: Every morning, he would rise at 5 am to sit at his typewriter. No matter what his condition or the circumstances he found himself in, he would commit to writing 300 words, never abandoning his typewriter till it was one. Often Hemingway crafted many more words, but never fewer than 300. He knew the trick. Just get the engine revving, the wheels of creativity turning. Turn on the spigot and let those first words and morning pages flow.

Three hundred words each day is 2,100 words per week, 8,400 per month, almost 100 thousand words per year. That’s a book. A whole book flowing from a simple but iron-clad commitment to write a minimum of 300 measly words per day. Now arranging those words so they sing, stir readers, and move the imagination to take flight is another story. But completing just 300 words is a great trick for kick-starting the writing process, especially when confronting that first blank screen.

Do you ever wish you were someone else? Who?
If I were to escape my life for a day and be someone else, there are quite a few characters from different walks of life, humble and exalted, that I fancy being for all kinds of reasons. But to experience the power of formidable genius that has survived the ages, I would choose to be Michelangelo as he sculpted the “Pieta”, his famous rendition of Mary cradling her crucified son as he lies across her lap. The master worked the marble to create the illusion of a thin almost gossamer veil for the Madonna and sculpted the exquisitely detailed foot and sprawling limbs of a lifeless Jesus.

Visitors to St. Peter’s Basilica wait in long lines to stand in awe before the sculptor’s work of towering genius. A genius that was still in force well into his 90s when he designed the famous cupola or dome atop St. Peter’s superhuman structure. Known to everyone by only his first name, Michelangelo is the personification of genius. His work, paintings, sculptures, and architecture, contribute to the splendor of Rome, the eternal city, and just one of the many sacred places that create a backdrop for the unfolding mystery of my novel The Angel Scroll.

What did you do on your last birthday?
I went with my family—husband, son, and daughter for the weekend to Rhinebeck, NY. Home to the Franklin Roosevelt Presidential Library, it’s a Hudson Valley jewel with a long, colorful history that’s artsy and boho with fun restaurants, arts, crafts, and boutiques.

We stayed a couple of nights at the Beekman Inn, which dates back to Colonial times and is America’s oldest operating Inn. In 1704, William Traphagen established a traveler’s inn, the Traphagen Tavern, at the town crossroads. Back then, Ryn Beck was a small settlement being carved out of the forests and initially inhabited by the Sepasco Native Americans. The area had been colonized since the 1680s by the Dutch, where the King’s Highway, now known as Route 9, intersected the Sepasco Trail, winding its way down to the Hudson River. The Beekman Arms was added to the original tavern in 1766 and has been operating ever since.

I was born and educated in England and grew up surrounded by a rich history dating back thousands of years. I went to University in York, a walled city where the Romans, led by Julius Caesar, established their capital after they invaded in 55 B.C. Beyond the Roman roads and excavations are others dating back to the Vikings who came after. I love touring and exploring ancient places that give up their secrets from the past. “The Angel Scroll” includes a tour of ancient and sacred places like Glastonbury Tor, home to King Arthur, the Celts, and their priests, the Druids; Jerusalem, Rome, Paris, and the medieval Italian town of Siena are also important locations in the book.

So, despite it being January, my family and I enjoyed walking and discovering Rhinebeck in the sunshine followed by dinner in the old Beekman tavern with its original plank floor and wooden booths. I had the chicken pot pie—a house specialty. The next day, we splurged on a massage at a local spa and then stopped by actor Paul Rudd’s cozy candy store called Samuel’s Sweet Shop to pick up old-fashioned candy made on the premises. I’m not a big sweet eater, but I sampled the shop’s Signature Bark, dark chocolate with cherries, almonds & sea salt.

My husband topped off the weekend with a special gift. A handsome anniversary clock from an antique shop. It’s one of those brass affairs that sits in a glass dome and only needs winding once a year; hence its name: anniversary clock. I love it but calibrating the mechanism so it tells the exact time seems nigh impossible. Like everything else, it’s not always possible to hit the target precisely, so the clock runs either a couple of minutes fast or slow.

Links:
Website | Amazon

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