Welcome to The Mystical Underground

When we were recently on Kat Hopson’s FATE Magazine show, she asked us for a mind-blowing synchronicity. I had honestly forgotten about this one until Rob mentioned it.

1987. We were in Caracas, Venezuela, at the Maiquetia Airport, and were waiting in line to have our personal belongings checked. At the time, the drug trade between Venezuela and Colombia was rampant, and young soldiers – in their late teens- were standing guard with weapons drawn. The atmosphere was tense, fevered.

The man in front of us held just a leather briefcase, wore a three-piece suit and tie, and looked like a businessman on his way home.  Or maybe he was a drug runner posing as a businessman? As the guard asked him to open the briefcase, we strained to see what it held. Coke? Weed? Heroin?

But it held just one thing: a paperback book by Alison Drake.  For a moment, I just stared at it in shock and disbelief. Alison Drake was one of my pseudonyms. This book was the second in a series  and I had used a pseudonym because my editor at Ballantine, Chris Cox, had suggested it.  In those days, if you had two different series as an author the publisher often wanted two different names.

We were leaning over to look inside the briefcase and so were the armed guards on the other side and we all saw the title: Fevered. It described the tense atmosphere perfectly. I wanted to tap him on the shoulder and tell him it was my book, but the situation was too uneasy, edgy, and those teens with their guns were too close for comfort. So I never said anything.

The man continued on out to the tarmac and the plane and once Rob and I got through the line, we hurried along, eager to catch up with him. But we never saw him again.
This whole mind-blower took place in less than five minutes. Even now, 37 years later,  the message seems to be that the title of the book was an absolutely accurate description of the situation. But on a deeper level, for me personally, that fact that it was my novel thrilled and awed me.  What were the odds that the only thing a man in a South American airport security line  carried in his briefcase was a paperback copy of my novel?

So this mind-blower worked both collectively and personally.