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The story behind THE EZEKIEL CODE:

The seed that eventually grew to become The Ezekiel Code was actually planted many years prior to having any notion of writing a novel.

Back in the late 60s I decided to read the Bible from cover to cover. Interestingly, having had an interest in the UFO phenomenon since the age of about 12, some of the passages in the Bible struck me as being somewhat similar to reports I'd read about UFO sightings. I first noticed it in the story of the Israelite's long journey through the desert. They followed a "pillar of cloud by day" and a "pillar of fire by night". That struck me as a rather curious phenomenon. Added to that was the Ark of the Covenant which functioned to somehow serve as a communication device between "God" and Moses, the leader of this band of wandering Jews. I wondered, could the Ark be some sort of a wireless communication technology so "God" (or whatever it was!) could talk to Moses from his "ship", the pillar of cloud by day, lit up at night? Then in the book of Numbers this "cloud" that carried "God" actually landed on the ground. Then there was Elijah who was "taken up" in a "whirlwind". It was becoming curiouser and curiouser. Then came the hammer that hit me on the head. It was the book of Ezekiel. His descriptions of the object that came down from the sky seemed much too mechanical to be anything of an ethereal or otherwise spiritual nature. His incredibly detailed descriptions seemed to me like the way someone of his time, with a priestly background and absolutely no knowledge of advanced technology (beyond a cart pulled by a donkey), would describe a technological craft.

Some years later I discovered a book called The Spaceships of Ezekiel written by a former NASA contract engineer by the name of Joseph Blumrich. His son had noticed the same things about Ezekiel's descriptions that I had noticed and, knowing the nature of his father's work with NASA, he told his father about it. Blumrich didn't believe it at first but the more he studied it the more intrigued he became. The book is his professional analysis of what it was that Ezekiel may actually have encountered. After reading that book I was left with not a shred of doubt that Ezekiel had experienced what we now call a Close Encounter of the Fourth Kind.

Fast forward to sometime in the mid-90s:

My friend, Julie, and I were sitting in an all-night diner at about 2 o'clock in the morning and the conversation drifted into the UFO phenomenon. Once again, this idea about Ezekiel came to mind and I told Julie about it. I mentioned that the idea would make a great theme for a movie by someone like Spielberg or Lucas. The more I thought about it the more I liked the idea but I knew I had no way of getting the idea to either of those guys. Then it hit me. Why don't I write a novel based on this idea? I was all ready half way through the writing of another sci-fi novel at the time but this idea struck me as so extraordinary that I immediately shelved the other novel and began sketching out ideas for this new one which, at the time, had a working title of Ezekiel's Wheels. So how and why did it change from Ezekiel's Wheels to The Ezekiel Code? That was a two-part process.

Part-1 of the process:

At about the time I started working on the book I was also well into the beginning stages of another little exploration that eventually began to take over my life. I had, quite by accident, stumbled onto the idea that the English alphabet might be naturally or artificially "encoded" in some manner so as to correspond with our base-10 numbering system and that, somehow, the number 9 and the phenomenon of "synchronicity" were key to the whole thing. That, in itself, is a long story and the work is detailed at www.secretofnine.com. The bottom line is that this work was so ingrained into my consciousness that it almost naturally began to flow into my ideas about the plot of my book. It provided a perfect plot device to propel the story. Not only did I recognize how well it would work I also knew it was so original that it would be unique among anything else that was out there.

Part-2 of the process:

I was not at all happy with the working title, Ezekiel's Wheels. It wasn't dramatic enough. It wasn't very catchy. Then one day, maybe around 2003/2004, I heard about a book by one of my favorite "alternative" researchers, Gregg Braden. His book was called The God Code. That reminded me of the title of Drosnin's best selling book, The Bible Code. And Julie had recently purchased a book called Healing Codes of the Biological Apocalypse (a book, by the way, in which the co-author had made the same discoveries about the English alphabet that I had made a few years earlier!). At the same time came the phenomenal best-selling novel, The DaVinci Code. All of these books were best sellers in their respective categories. Clearly the public has a thirst for anything with the word "code" in the title. How fortuitous for me! My book definitely had the code element going for it so I latched onto the idea and changed the title to The Ezekiel Code. As soon as I made that change all the little things that kept blocking my progress regarding the direction of the plot just fell away and the story began to write itself. Nearly nine years and 676 pages later The Ezekiel Code was finished.

Good guys, bad guys, romance, mystery, murder, metaphysics and mankind's date with destiny: 2012. All of this and more is packed into the unique adventure called The Ezekiel Code (www.ezekielcode.com).