Going and Coming (The Minnow Saint James Metaphysical Adventures #1)
by Christopher Stone
Release Date: January 22, 2016
Goodreads Link
Publisher: MLR Press
Going and Coming: A Brief History
By Christopher Stone
Several decades ago, when Christopher Stone was little more than a Pebble, I had the honor and privilege of studying with Carmen Montez, a Beverly Hills-based psychic advisor/meditation and metaphysical teacher.
It didn’t take long for Carmen and my relationship to morph into a close friendship. This larger than life metaphysician was among the people I most treasured in my life. But Carmen Montez was much more than a sage spiritual teacher. My metaphysical mentor was also a character straight from Charactersville. She had worldly friends in high places. Just for openers, she drove a T-Bird with leopard skin upholstery, a gift to her from another student: a rather famous one, Elvis Presley. Her constant companion was a white, tear-stained toy poodle, named Marlon, a gift from yet another student from the Hollywood Walk of Fame, Marlon Brando.
Although Carmen’s often hobnobbed with the rich and famous, and her metaphysical teachings were out of this world, she had a basic, Earth Mother way about her. Even her taste in food snacks did not bespeak her spiritual understanding.
Rather than caviar and champagne, my Carmen’s snack of choice was pepperoni and crackers. And while my amazing teacher hailed from Barcelona, Spain, she made Italian spaghetti second to none.
But it was from Carmen’s lips that I first heard terms such as, The Eternal Now, Simultaneous Time, and the Eternal Nature of Personality. All of them are featured prominently in my new novel.
I was young and new to my writing career. But, even then, I knew that I’d make metaphysics my avocation. With Carmen, I frequently expressed my desire to someday fold metaphysics into a work of popular fiction.
At one point, that desire became a pledge to my mentor.
Carmen Montez passed from this world many years ago.
Through the years, I’ve thought often and long about my promise to Carmen: Someday I’ll write a pop fiction with metaphysical ingredients. I even started such projects several times. But they never felt quite right to me, and so I abandoned them mid first drafts.
I was maturing, and finding success elsewhere: first as an entertainment and lifestyle journalist for national print publications, and then, as a nonfiction book author. My first book, Re-Creating Your Self, was a personal development bestseller, and my three hardcover books of guided meditation, co-authored with the lavishly talented Mary Sheldon, were big hits, too.
It was only Spring 2014, when I was putting the finishing touches on my second novel, The Dark Side of Stardom, that I hit upon this idea: I could well use the character of a Past Life Regression therapist as a springboard to write about every metaphysical theme I wanted to explore.
Eventually the Past Life Regression therapist became Dr. Minnow Saint James, and his first book adventure became Going and Coming, because Dr. Saint James’s work has him going into his patients’ past lives and coming back with the past life origins of present-day challenges and traumas.
For the book, I even created a character, Carmen Montel, based primarily upon my Carmen. She becomes a psychic bridge between Dr. Minnow Saint James and his patients. She was the most difficult character in the book to write because I so much wanted Minn’s Carmen to reflect closely my real-life mentor.
The book is dedicated to Carmen Montez, and I hope she’d approve heartily of what I’ve done.
I suspect she does.
Blurb
At forty, Dr. Minnow Saint James, “Minn” to his friends, is a gay, metaphysical sleuth who, through Past Life Regression therapy, spans time, space, dimensions, and the entirety of God’s Creation, to discover the past, or future, life origins of his patient’s most challenging present day problems.
But Minn is also a bestselling nonfiction author. His book, In a Past Life, I…. is an international publishing sensation.
Going and Coming is the story of how Dr. Minnow Saint James became the person he is today.
In chapters that alternate between 2007-2008, and 2015-2016, we learn exactly how “Minn” transitioned from an atheist who is a slave to his five physical senses, into a professional metaphysician with a true belief in the Divine Mind we call God.
Readers may find themselves mesmerized as Dr. Saint James hypnotically regresses Ramona Burford, a student volunteer at the UCLA’s Parapsychology Lab, to a past life where, she describes everything that happens from a person’s physical death in one life, until they are reincarnated in a new body. Many readers will be surprised to learn that Pearly Gates, Judgment, Heaven and Hell, have nothing to do with what really happens.
In addition to reincarnation and the eternal nature of the personality, readers, along with “Minn,” explore metaphysical concepts including Simultaneous Time, and the erroneous physical beliefs in sickness, sin, and death.
Along the way, Going and Coming may just shatter your strongest beliefs about the very nature of reality.
Pages or Words: 80,000 words
Categories: Contemporary, Gay Fiction, Mystery, Paranormal, Thriller, Humor, Metaphysical
Excerpt
Who am I?
My name is Dr. Minnow Saint James. My family and friends call me Minn. To everyone else, I am Dr. Saint James.
I was born and raised in Beverly Hills, California, amid swimming pools, movie stars, and private schools. My parents are Sheila and Russell Saint James. Father owns and operates Saint James Cadillac, six highly successful Cadillac dealerships in the San Fernando Valley. Mother, known simply as She to one and all, is Lady Bountiful to Beverly Hills at large, conceiving and coordinating many of its most prestigious charity events.
Want someone to coax an antisocial celebrity into hosting a Republican fundraiser? Mother is your go-to gal.
A youthful forty, I now live and work in Hermosa Beach, California, one of Los Angeles County’s loveliest South Bay beach cities.
Minnow, now there’s a moniker you don’t hear every day. That is, unless you happen to be me. Jokes about my first name haunted my school years. But these days, when people speak of Dr. Minnow Saint James, there’s no mention of his quirky first name. They talk about my professional achievements: You see, nowadays, I have a wildly successful practice as America’s leading Past Life Regression therapist, and I’m also the founder of the Institute for Mental Health Through Past Life Regression Therapy, -now an international organization – with my friend and former professor, Dr. Adrian Finkelstein, as the Institute’s CEO.
But what exactly is a Past Life Regression therapist? I am in the business of going and coming – that is, going into my patients’ past, and sometimes future, lives through hypnotic regression, and coming back with the other life origins of their present life challenges.
My work is cutting edge and evolutionary. Let me put it this way: medical marvels such as artificial limbs, Titanium plates and other metal joints, and pacemakers, have already transformed humans from biological organisms into creatures that are biological and technological hybrids.
Similarly the science of psychology, will soon come to understand the necessity of treating the individual’s entire mental gestalt – including what we think of as past, and even future, lives – in order for the person to achieve mental health.
In my practice, I’ve been treating that entire gestalt for the past seven years. I’m the future of good mental health; science’s better way and brighter tomorrow. But to Psychology Today, and to most of the mental health community, the jury is still out on past life regression therapy, and so they claim my work is not science based.
Nonetheless my success rate, in excess of eighty-five percent, not only speaks for itself; it is the envy of the “scientifically sound” therapies. My services are sought out by people from all walks of life, and from all over the world. My private practice has a six-month waiting list.
Quite simply, while Mother is the go-to woman for Charitable Beverly Hills, I’m the guy ya gonna call when you believe the challenges of your current life may be rooted in a past, or future, one. Often my therapy represents the last, best hope of patients who have tried and failed to achieve mental health through traditional treatments.
The profession has many perks. For one, it is much easier dealing with other people’s issues than with your own. I have a good excuse, if not a good reason, for leaving my own challenges and shortcomings unexamined.
That is how I’m able to avoid pesky questions. Questions such as: Why, at forty-years-old, am I without a spouse, a boyfriend, or even the steady hook-up? I like to think the lack of romance in my life, and the absence of booty in my bed, are products of the spiritualization of my thought, gained in the eight years since my personal transformations. That is what I like to think. The truth may vary.
Buy the book: Upcoming at MLR Press
Meet the Author:
Born in Bronx, New York, and raised in Fresno, California, Christopher Stone’s early years were dominated by school, watching television and motion pictures, bicycling, skating, and reading avidly. Summers were spent swimming, and doing whatever it took to survive the oppressive San Joaquin Valley heat. But he also remembers fondly the yearly summer trips to New York, to visit family and friends – and to see Broadway shows.
Christopher left Fresno, for Hollywood, California, during his college years after being accepted into the Writers Guild of America’s Open Door Program, a two-year, scholarship, training ground for aspiring screen and television writers. As it happened, rather than a teleplay or screenwriting gig, his first professional writing job was in journalism – as the Los Angeles Editor for Stage Door, at that time, Canada’s equivalent of the U.S. entertainment trade weekly, Variety.
Christopher would later use his Writers Guild of America training to co-author and sell the original screenplay, The Living Legend, with Jon Mercedes III, to the Erin Organization, and later, and also with Mercedes, to write two seasons of The Party Game, a Canadian TV game show.
As a young freelance entertainment journalist, he contributed to many Los Angeles-based publications, among them The Advocate, for which he wrote a breezy film column, “Reeling ‘Round,” and the Los Angeles Free Press. During this time, he became a member of the Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle.
Christopher dipped his toes into the world of motion picture advertising and publicity, as assistant to the West Coast Director of Advertising and Publicity for Cinerama Releasing Corporation, in Beverly Hills. At the same time, he also did special advertising and publicity projects for 20th Century-Fox. Christopher went on to become an Account Executive for David Wallace & Company, a public relations firm specializing in entertainment accounts – and located on West Hollywood’s legendary Sunset Strip.
Returning to his first love, writing, Christopher became a full time freelance contributor to national consumer publications including Us, Good Housekeeping, Family Circle, McCall’s, In Cinema, and The National Enquirer, among others. Many of his stories were syndicated worldwide by the New York Times Syndication Corp.
Another important area of endeavor for Christopher Stone was Re-Creating Your Self. A Blueprint for Personal Change that he first developed for himself, the journalist went on to teach the principles and processes of Re-Creating Your Self to others – first, in private sessions, later, in workshops and seminars, and, finally, for California State University Extended Education. Eventually, one of his students suggested he write a book version.
Re-Creating Your Self was first published in hardcover by Metamorphous Press, and subsequently published in a trade paperback edition by Hay House. It has since been published in Spanish, Swedish and Hebrew language editions.
When not writing, Christopher used his longtime interest in, and study of, metaphysics, to teach meditation and psychic development classes – first in Beverly Hills, then later, in Manhattan Beach.
He went on to co-author, with Mary Sheldon, four novellas for a Japanese educational publisher, and then, also with Mary Sheldon, the highly successful The Meditation Journal trilogy of hardcover books. Subsequently, he returned to journalism, this time, contributing hundreds of print and online entertainment features, columns and reviews to magazines and websites. For eight years, Christopher was the Box-office Columnist for MatchFlick.com, a popular online motion picture site.
In his private life, Christopher Stone met David M. Stoebner on May 17, 1994, and they have been together ever since.
In 2008, they were married in Los Angeles.
They share a home with their three pets in Coastal Los Angeles County.
In 2013, Christopher’s pet project has been transforming their rarely used kitchen table area into a killer, retro 1950s Diner Nook, complete with a 1952 Seeburg Table Top jukebox, a neon diner sign, and a malt machine.
Christopher’s first novel, Frame of Reference was e and print published, in fall 2012, by MLR Press. A short story, Sweet Homo Alabama was published by MLR Press, December 19, 2012.
Stone spent much of 2013 writing Frame of Reference 2: The Dark Side of Stardom, a sequel novel to Frame of Reference, as well as, Abracadabra, and a short story, published at Halloween. But the indefatigable scribe also found time to contribute weekly reviews, columns and interviews to Queer Town Abbey.
On December 11, 2015, Christopher will introduce readers to the Past Life Regression therapist, Dr. Minnow Saint James, the subject of his new series, The Minnow Saint James Metaphysical Adventures, in the Christmas short story, Shaking the Holiday Blues Away, MLR Press. Going and Coming: The Minnow Saint James Metaphysical Adventures, Book 1, will be released by MLR Press, January 22, 2016.
Where to find the author:
Tour Dates & Stops:
22-Jan: Scattered Thoughts & Rogue Words, Love Bytes, BFD Book Blog
26-Jan: Molly Lolly, The Novel Approach
28-Jan: MM Good Book Reviews, Happily Ever Chapter
2-Feb: Elisa – My Reviews and Ramblings, Hearts on Fire, Divine Magazine
4-Feb: Velvet Panic, Prism Book Alliance
9-Feb: A.M. Leibowitz, My Fiction Nook
11-Feb: Lee Brazil, Inked Rainbow Reads, Bayou Book Junkie
16-Feb: Book Lovers 4Ever, Havan Fellows, Emotion In Motion
Giveaway
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Title: Rustic Melody
Nic Starr lives in Australia where she tries to squeeze as much into her busy life as possible. Balancing the demands of a corporate career with raising a family and writing can be challenging but she wouldn’t give it up for the world.
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