Goodreads asked Barry H. Wiley:

Where did you get the idea for your most recent book?

Barry H. Wiley My most recent book. A Spirit of Fraud, on Kobo, is an occult novel set in 1876. I wrote the biography of the novel's protagonist, Annie Eva Fay, for Hermetic Press in Seattle, in 2005. In about 1909, Annie Fay was called "the greatest female mystifier" by Harry Houdini, and in 1877, was described by detective Alan Pinkerton as "a woman possessing a terribly fascinting power and capable of any devilish human accomplishment". She was called The Indescribable Phenomenon, which is the title of my biography.
Having gotten to know Annie Fay very well, including interviewing the last man alive who had actually known her, one very wretched afternoon in the south of England. The interview was one of the most amazing times I have ever spent.
In any case, it felt time to go back to Annie's time and match her against a well known British occult brotherhood whose objective, following the apparent direction of the archangel Uriel, was to take over America, at a time when America was truely defenseless.
It was a fun book to write. The plot includes several historical characters in addition to Annie, as President U.S. Grant, Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli, Robert Alan Pinkerton, and others.
I am now working on the third novel in my Adventures in Second Sight series with my seventeen, now eighteen year old heroine, Kyame Piddington which hopefully will be completed around the first of next year, while finishing some promised short projects along the way.

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