THIEF OF SOULS

Perry Spellman didn't want to be a thief, he simply ended up that way to make back all the money he lost on a bad business investment. Only three houses, and then he can stop. Except it seems like someone is running a scam on him, trying to frighten him into turning himself in. Perry believes it is his old business partner, the one who took off with all his money. But soon he comes to find it is something much worse, something that won't leave him alone until he repents. Or dies.

Sometimes writers get ideas in the strangest of ways. Several years ago I happened to

 discover that the word 'taboo' has its roots in the Polynesian word 'tapu,' which refers to a "spiritual restriction' or "implied prohibition." The Polynesians had many things that were tapu, ranging from social don'ts to religious rules, all of them decided on by the gods. And that got me thinking about Polynesian masks, the scary faces you see everywhere now on tiki mugs, Hawaiian shirts, and other party paraphernalia. What if those gods existed, and really did inhabit the ancient carvings? And what if someone stole one of them? After that, it was just a matter of coming up with a plot around that idea.

For this book, the cover was actually influenced by a fake tiki god statue that sits on my shelf, and the Samhain artists turned it into a ferocious demon.

 

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