New Novel Inspired by Mary Magdalene, Mind Control, Tori Amos

    WASHINGTON, DC, June 22, 2012 /24-7PressRelease/ -- Sometimes only a child has the strength to face reality. In Mary and the Invisible Scaffolding, the new novel by author David Michael Conner, eight-year-old Mary's life in Cactus, Nevada comes to an abrupt end when her mother tears her from bed in the middle of the night and relocates them to lush, strange New Orleans. Bewildered, Mary must adapt to a new world with only her memories to guide her.

"Initially, Mary was a short story inspired by the Tori Amos song 'Marys of the Sea (Les Saintes Maries de la Mer),'" said Conner. The Amos song is about the theory that Mary Magdalene may have fled Jerusalem by sea in order to protect her unborn child - the same general ideal behind The da Vinci Code, but told in a very different way.

"The line, 'Hey, there's a new Jerusalem,' triggered the idea of this story, which is set here in modern-day America...we have our own barren deserts in Nevada and our own interpretation of France in New Orleans. I followed Mary and her mother Mira there and discovered a wondrous, wild, and dangerous place," Conner said. But it wasn't enough.

"Everyone who read the short story told me there was more to it, that something significant had happened to Mary. And then I realized that, as has happened to me personally, painful, repressed memories were driving this little girl's life. I had to get into her subconscious, into the invisible scaffolding that connects everything, oftentimes in seemingly fantastical and incomprehensible ways."

The story grew organically into what Conner describes as an expressionistic novel initially narrated by Mary, but then traveling back in time to her pre-New Orleans life in the desert, where a Machiavellian mayor, a magician and the magician's blind brother are at odds with one another. "It's a strange set of characters," Conner admits, "but as in life, each person's actions affect the others, and ultimately, it all comes down to the question: What happened to Mary?"

Mary and the Invisible Scaffolding is available exclusively for the Amazon Kindle e-reader and Kindle iPad/iPhone applications at Amazon.com for just $7.99 (Direct link: http://amzn.to/MvKl58).

David Michael Conner is a writer and artist from Washington, D.C. He has worked as a health and entertainment writer at the Entertainment Industries Council, and is a contributing editorial writer for The Advocate/Advocate.com.

Conner's writing is influenced greatly by the musician Tori Amos and painter Marc Chagall, as well as Gnostic philosophy and other unconventional and rarely explored ideas. He considers his work to be both experimental and expressionist in nature. His website is www.davidmichaelconner.com, or he can be found on Twitter@ArtistLike.

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