Michael Brown's Blog

Tom and I had an adventure last week. A Mexicano, with flawless unaccented English, started a business that ferries three people at a time in his Nissan Kick to Brownsville, Texas for booster shots. It was eight hours up and eight hours back with an overnight stay for recuperation and a little shopping. It was ... Read more

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Several of the scenes in The Toltec Conspiracy take place on the rooftops of San Miguel. The photos don’t match the scenes exactly, but show the beauty of this place. “The restaurant was atop a new boutique hotel that mixed Colonial Mexican and Moroccan influences. However, from here on top, all she saw were the ... Read more

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Clark Ransom’s Three pyramids Stanford Archaeologist Clark Ransom’s journey through his trilogy takes him to three pyramids in search of clues to solve the central mystery. I took the photos below. Even though the pictures don’t capture the surrounding aura, they sparked the inspiration for the trilogy: Cañada de la Virgen Elvita drove as far ... Read more

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The two thrillers that I liked best last year were The Woman in the Window by A.J. Finn and The Flight Attendant by Chris Bohjalian. I’d give a slight edge to The Woman in the Window, because I thought the psychology and motivation of the main character was more gripping. Note: All books mentioned in ... Read more

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What does work mean? Does it mean telling someone they’ll be rich or marry well? Many people wanted me to read their cards to learn just that. I always disappointed that group. Or does “work” mean that the Tarot offers another means of self-discovery? There are a couple of scenes in my novel Defiled: The ... Read more

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I promised to tell you in my last email—which if you haven’t read or don’t remember, here’s a link: What Happened Riding the Red Line from Harvard Square?—what was inside that booklet. I picked it up. Its title was something like An Introduction to B.O.T.A. I opened it and discovered that it was an offer—to ... Read more

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I often ask myself, why do I enjoy Anne Rice or Stephen King? Why do I explore supernatural elements in the thrillers I write? I guess, because I’ve lived through amazing (amazing as in Amazing Stories) and inexplicable events. I’ve wondered if such events were coincidental. Or was Jung’s synchronicity principle at play? What’s synchronicity? ... Read more

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The Mesoamerican civilizations: Mayans, Incas, Aztecs, and the lesser known Toltecs centered their understanding of the universe around the building of pyramids. The hero of my trilogy, Stanford archaeologist Clark Ransom, explores these pyramids looking for a secret that could well change the world for the better. In the first novel, The Toltec Conspiracy, his ... Read more

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Since I write supernatural suspense, I thought I’d start today with a definition. “Paranormal or Supernatural thrillers bring in an otherworldly element, overlapping the ‘horror’ genre, though usually in a restrained fashion. Often the hero and/or villain has (or at least claims) some psychic ability. Umberto Eco’s novel Foucault’s Pendulum is fantastically complex, and touches ... Read more

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Last email, I said I would tell you why I have written several versions of my novels in The Clark Ransom Trilogy. By versions, I mean different novels, with different plots and characters. I’m hoping the effort will cause a more exciting and fun read, and that I have not gone through an elaborate exercise ... Read more

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