So Sun Myung Moon, founder of the Unification Church, is dead. His church was really a cult, IMO, and inspired my first novel, The Prophet Motive.
The origin for the novel was a personal run-in I had as a twenty year-old kid in Austin, Texas many years ago now with members of the Unification Church, a cult more commonly known as the Moonies. That nickname is based on the name of the cult’s founder, Sun Myung Moon of Korea. I was walking on usually busy Guadalupe Street or “The Drag,” at the edge of the UT Austin campus one winter afternoon while most students were home for Christmas break. Youths being ripe targets for cult recruiters, I was a rare specimen–I realize now–in that place and in that time of year. My recruiter was a youth herself, a brunette of normal appearance who approached me on the sidewalk and invited me to a party about to begin, she said, in a private home a few blocks away. She was persistent and flirtatious, and I accepted, though more interested in the prospect of booze and other women than in her, I’ll admit.
The whole experience I had with the Moonies that day lasted no more than a single hour, but it turned out to be unforgettable, and I’ve studied and followed the cult phenomenon ever since.
[edited for length - MODERATOR]
Twelve years later, when I was contemplating writing a novel for the first time, I remembered this day, added a good deal of imagination, and the rest is for you to read . . .
http://www.amazon.com/The-Prophet-Mo.../dp/B003UBTWDM