I know how to write fiction,
but I don’t know how to make up stories. Well, I don’t know how to make up
stories out of whole cloth, I should say. Mystical, real cloth, yes,
whole cloth no.
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My novels, like my life as a
take-no-prisoners, tell-the-truth columnist for the New York Daily News have both begun with an actual event. And then
like the investigative reporter that I am, I followed the trail until I found
out the truth behind the event or (in my case) bizarre experience into which
I’d been thrust.
Then and only then can
I begin to create a story—a tale built around the truth.
But I’m not giving enough
credit to the stars here. See, I believe that both of my novels, The Sixth
Station published in 2013 and Book of Judas, out September 19, 2017,
almost had nothing to do with me. They’re sort of like a news event that I
cover—I’m in it, but didn’t start the damned thing.
For each book I was led by the
hand like a willing lamb to slaughter. And after going through what I went
through to dig out the truth in both cases I do feel like I almost was being,
if not slaughtered, well, at least put through hell.
With all the craziness I’m
about to tell you about, I had to keep one thing familiar to me. That would be
my character, Alessandra Russo. She just happens to be a New York City
Russo can’t help getting
herself mixed up in bad situations any more than I can. It’s the nature of a
journo: Investigating a story can sometimes be dangerous, and is always wrought
with complications and risks, but you do it because, well, because that’s just
what you do to breathe.
The
Sixth Station
began when my husband and I took a road trip. But not a road trip like normal
people to Disney World or anything. We took a road trip through Turkey Ephesus
Being in that house knocked me
flat. I started having visions and was told from somewhere or other that I had
to track down this story whatever that would be.
The research took me six years in which I
drove through five countries alone, climbed a mountain in France twice, was
escorted through parts of France by a motorcycle gang, stayed with monks in a
monastery in Manoppello Italy, and spent time with a crazy, cloistered nun who
lives up the mountain from that monastery. Oh, and right, I also took another
road trip; this one through Italy
with an 84-year old exorcist priest from the Vatican
I did all this until I believe
I found what I’d been searching for: a relic in that monastery with the DNA of
Jesus on it.
Then the hard work began—the
research that doesn’t involve adventure—just intense concentration to detail
and an unforgiving quest to find out the truth behind what I believed I’d
discovered.
What I discovered too,
however, oftentimes discouraging because, well, it’s tough to get half-way
through writing a novel, only to find that truth gets in the way of fiction.
I’d discover something that would throw my whole story off and I’d have to
start again.
Sure it’s easy to just say,
well, hell it’s fiction after all, but when you’re a reporter, you just can’t
get past that sticky habit of making sure your facts actually are facts and
haven’t been debunked somewhere by someone.
My new novel, Book of
Judas, began in an equally bizarre way. I’d seen a book on a shelf in a
house I’d owned for 12 years and had never seen before even though it was
sitting right there. Nobody in my family could have brought it there because it
was I, Judas by Taylor Caldwell and Jesse Stern and it was 40 years old!
Intrigued ,I began to read it
and was surprised to discover that not everyone thought Judas was an evil
villain. Huh?
A few days later, while
perusing a bookshop on a girl’s getaway weekend, I saw on the front table,
another book about Judas. Weird? Not as weird as it was about to get. The book was
about the discovery of the real Gospel of Judas, which had been
discovered in the 1970s in a cave in Egypt
Where was it found? In a
safety deposit box in a bank in Hicksville ,
Long Island. Dear God! I grew up in Hicksville, Long
Island .
Weirder still, that Citibank
branch turned out to be the very same bank branch where I’d had my first bank
account as a teenager!
Judas, scarier even than all
the mobsters, and criminals I’ve interviewed in my career, was calling. Who in
hell—literally—was I not to answer that call?
My research took me into a
3,000 year old hidden burial cave in Israel
But I did it, because hey, I
didn’t expect that Judas was going to take me out on a nice dinner.
LINDA STASI,
the popular and well-read columnist for the New York Daily News, and
previously for the New York Post, is also an on-camera TV
co-host with Mark Simone on NY 1 -Spectrum “What a Week!”
Brash, funny
and opinionated, the acerbic Stasi’s first novel, The Sixth
Station, published in January of 2013 by Forge Books was hailed as, “A
helluva religious thriller,” by Nelson DeMille, while Steve Berry said, “You’ll
be grabbing the pages so tight your knuckles will turn white!” Booklist said
of the book, “Dan Brown and Steve Berry fans have another controversial novel
in which to lose themselves.” For The Sixth Station, Stasi was
selected as a finalist for the Mary Higgins Clark Award.
Stasi’s
anxiously awaited sequel, Book of Judas, has received acclaim from
mega bestselling authors such as Sherrilyn Kenyon, who calls it, “An innovative
masterpiece!”
Stasi has
appeared on TV talk shows and news channels such as The Today Show,
Good Morning America, The O’Reilly Factor, Hardball, Good Day New York, and The
View, as well as CNN, Fox News, MSNBC news shows, and many others.
She is a
regular guest on iHeartRadio’s nationally broadcast Mark Simone
Show, Boston
Stasi has
also authored the non-fiction books – Looking Good Is the Best Revenge,
A Field Guide to Impossible Men, Simply Beautiful, Boomer Babes, and Scotto
Sunday Suppers.
Not afraid
to say what’s on her mind in her popular Wednesdays and full-page Sunday
columns in the New York Daily News, her readership has reached
more than 600,000 in
a single day.
She was
named “One of the Fifty Most Powerful Women in NYC” and has won numerous awards
including Best Columnist by the Newswomen’s Club of NY, Best Humor Columnist,
and Woman of the Year by the Boys Town of Italy for her charitable work such as
driving a tractor-trailer in an 18-truck convoy from NYC to the gulf states
with relief supplies for Hurricane Katrina victims.
