Staccato House- latest novel published

I am very pleased to announce the publication of my latest novel, Staccato House. It is available to buy at Amazon as a paperback here: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Staccato-House-Steven-Mace/dp/152276416X

and also in Kindle format here: http://www.amazon.com/Staccato-House-Steven-Mace-ebook/dp/B019E88514

I started writing Staccato House a long time ago- as far back as 2004. The basic premise initially was about a central male character who was taken to a stately mansion and where various entertainments and staged theatre were being acted out for his benefit- while secretly he was being manipulated and could not trust a single person he met there. Just as those he encountered were 'puppets', so was he. The antagonist was the sinister 'puppet master' who was behind it all.

As the story and plot evolved over the years, I added 'thriller' genre elements rather than surreal 'fantasy' elements- for example the link to organised crime with a loan shark; I also introduced references to popular conspiracy theories and the occult, so it became an allusive piece of 'weird fiction'.

I completed a novella version of Staccato House in 2011 which was short-listed for Contact Publishing's Page Turner prize for thriller fiction, before I adapted it into a novel. I suppose there are three main influences on this book: The novel The Magus by John Fowles; the film Eyes Wide Shut directed by Stanley Kubrick; and the website Vigilant Citizen with its periodic updates and explanations of popular conspiracy theories and secret cults. It's unlike Fowles' novel or Kubrick's film but nevertheless these shaped what Staccato House became. While being my own original work (the essential plot and the novella version was written in 2011 even before I discovered the Vigilant Citizen website, for example)- it would be impossible to deny these influences and inspiration, primarily in terms of these themes: secret societies and hidden cults, a narrator or central character manipulated by unknown mysterious forces.

On a surface level, Staccato House is about a freelance journalist who stumbles across a mystery, and when he investigates further, his life spirals out of control. The reader can enjoy the story and take it at face value as an occult thriller and mystery/psychological novel, and an entertainment.

It's important at this stage to state that Staccato House is a work of fiction, based entirely on the imagination of the author, but that the 'logic' or 'structure' that is behind the workings of the plot, derives from numerous urban myths, conspiracy theories, and arcane occult knowledge that can be found in libraries or on the Internet. That's not to say they are universal truths- esoteric lore and arcane knowledge does not tend to be studied in schools or taken too seriously by most people, and such ideas or beliefs have of course not gone unchallenged. Staccato House is a novel that includes some of those concepts as plot elements. If you're interested in reading further for a richer understanding of my novel, then let me introduce some of them. Should this pique your interest, then here is a list should you wish to delve deeper- although it is not exhaustive by any means-but please do not assume the author subscribes to any of them, or is himself part of any such 'secret organisation'! I found these ideas and theories intriguing and simply used them to enrich the details of my fictional novel:

First, the very famous example of the 'Illuminati conspiracy':
https://www.toplst.com/top-15-facts-about-the-illuminati-conspiracy/ and
http://www.gotquestions.org/illuminati-conspiracy.html

The Illuminati and the 'Mothers of Darkness'; also the so-called 'Mothers of Darkness' castle, the Chateau des Amerois in Belgium:
http://illuminati-bloodlines.blogspot.co.uk/2009/07/chateaux-des-amerois-mothers-of.html I borrowed the name 'Amerois' and slightly altered it for the name of a character in my novel.

The Monarch and MK-Ultra conspiracy theories:

http://conspiracy.wikia.com/wiki/Monarch_Mind_Control and http://conspiracy.wikia.com/wiki/Project_MKULTRA

The Kabbalah (discussed in my previous post):

http://stevemace.blogspot.co.uk/2015/12/the-kabbalah.html

These will give you the main background, but here are more obscure references and allusions in Staccato House and links for starting points for reading further should you wish:

Staccato= http://www.thefreedictionary.com/staccato

The Eleusian Mysteries= https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eleusinian_Mysteries

The Green Dragon Society of Japan=

http://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/vida_alien/warheaven_warearth12a.htm

Adrenochrome (drug)= https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adrenochrome

Baphomet/ Goat's Head of Mendes= https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baphomet

Enochian Magic= https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enochian_magic

The phrase 'Ordo ad Chao/Order out of chaos', the slogan of the 33rd degree of Freemasonry= http://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/sociopolitica/atlantean_conspiracy/atlantean_conspiracy49.htm

The phrase 'As above, so below'=

http://www.themystica.com/mystica/articles/a/below_above.html

Cultural hegemony= https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_hegemony

Socionics= https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socionics