How long did it take you to write Whence They Came: The Beginning?
A long time. I initially started writing the book in 2012. I wrote down about 30,000 words before I realized that it was too convoluted and the settings moved around too much to be a viable book. At that point, I put it away to think about it some more. I also realized in 2014 that I did not have the skill as a writer to write such a novel. I mean, I’m trying to interpret the bible from the devil’s side while sticking to the same language you might find inside the bible. It’s extremely difficult. When did you start writing Whence They Came again? I opened the book again in late 2017 and reread it. My initial thoughts on the text were the same. It was too convoluted and scattered, and it moved too far forward. I ended up cutting all but about 10,000 words and basically starting over. From that point, it took me perhaps three or four months to finish it. What were some of the words you could not use in order to stay true to the source? There were a lot of words I couldn’t use. We’re talking about 4,000BC. There’s a lot of things that simply don’t exist in that time-frame. They didn’t call houses, houses, and tools and things like that were extremely limited. To complicate matters, the bible uses a lot of euphemisms to describe things, specifically sex, and the bible actually contains a ton of sex. Every time you see the word – Begat – it means sex. They also use terms like flower and ocean and river. It’s never cock or penis, pussy or vagina, it’s always something else. What was the concept for the book? The concept of the book was to tell the story from the side of evil, which it does. Everything in the book is told from either Lilith or Asmodeus’ point of view. It’s not really told from Adam and Eve’s point of view. And obviously, it'll be a series. You can't cover all the bible in one book. It'd be hundreds of thousands of pages long. What kind of research did you have to do for the book? Quite a bit. Obviously, I had to read the bible again. I also had to look up early Mesopotamia and early cultures to try and figure out the setting, clothing, tools. Everything we take for granted every day, I had to look up. I also had to remind myself of Lilith’s history and find a good demon that could travel with her. How far in time does the book travel? The book travels from the beginning of the world to the point where Caine establishes Enoch and has his son. Was there any set time during the day when you wrote Whence They Came? Usually, really late at night from about 1:AM until 3 or 4:AM, and I usually had to be in a really bad mood to write it. It's evil and dark and you have to be in that mindset. What will the next book cover? The next book will move forward from the City of Enoch to probably the flood. I’m not sure if it will include the flood, or it that will be in the third book. It depends on what the overall length looks like.
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AuthorJosephine Leonard is a biblical horror author. Archives
May 2020
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