Steve Alten
Grim Reaper: End of Days
Dedicated with love, to my teachers
Eliyahu Jian, Yaacov Bourla & Chaim Solomon
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
It is with great pride and appreciation that I acknowledge those who contributed to the completion of GRIM REAPER: End of Days.
The concept for this series began five years ago during brainstorming sessions with my friend and fellow writer Nick Nunziata. After a three-day excursion in Manhattan, where we “walked in the shoes” of our characters, we pieced together a beat sheet that would eventually become a script. Although the screenplay was solid, I think we both instinctively knew there was a far deeper story to be told. Sixteen months later, I began penning the novel you are now reading, not realizing it would be a two-year journey, one I could not have completed without Nick’s insights and creativity. GRIM REAPER remains our creation.
My heartfelt appreciation goes out to the great people at Variance Publishing: to my friend and owner Tim Schulte, his assistant Stanley Tremblay, and to my copy editors, Bob and Sara Schwager. My gratitude and appreciation to my editor, Lou Aronica at the Fiction Studio (laronica@fictionstudio.com) whose advice was spot-on; and to my literary agent, Danny Baror of Baror International, for his continued friendship and dedication. Thanks as well to his tireless assistant, Heather Baror.
Special thanks to Erik Hollander (www.HollanderDesignLab.com) for his amazing cover art, and to artist John Toledo, who must have channeled the late great Gustave Dore in creating the original interior drawings. Thanks as well to publicist Lissy Peace at Lissy Peace and Associates, along with reader/editors Barbara Becker and Michael McLaughlin.
My extreme gratitude to two individuals who define the word “patriot.” First, to attorney Barry Kissin, who continues to battle the windmills of injustice as he attempts to protect humanity by exposing a covert US biowarfare program that threatens us all. Second, to Captain Kevin Lasagna, an eighteen-year veteran whose experience training soldiers helped lend authenticity to the military passages included in the hero’s journey. In Kevin’s honor, and on behalf of all my fans in the military I offer this: The themes in this story may be interpreted as antiwar, but they are not anti-soldier. As such, I have not hesitated to bring up the darker side of issues that we need to bring into the light… for everyone’s sake.
A very heartfelt thanks to my Kabbalah teachers, Eliyahu Jian, Yaacov Bourla, and Chaim Solomon, along with the entire Berg Family; Rav Philip S. Berg, his wife, Karen, and their sons Yehuda and Michael, who succeeded in mainstreaming a four-thousand-year-old ancient wisdom and whose books and teachings so profoundly influenced my life, my writing, and the characters in this book. Finally, to my soul mate, Kim, our children, and my parents, for their love and tolerance of the long hours involved in my writing career.
— Steve Alten
www.SteveAlten.com
Author's Note
On May 5, 2009, at approximately 8:15 P.M. on a Tuesday night, I was vegging on the couch, recovering from a daylong writing session of Grim Reaper, resting up for a midnight edit. My six-year-old son was asleep in my bed; my fifteen-year-old daughter was at a neighbor’s house being tutored.
I had been working on the novel you now hold in your hands for two long years, doing extensive research while coming to embrace a newfound sense of spirituality. With only two more weeks of writing anticipated, I felt excited to be in the home stretch of a book that contained a message I honestly believed could change people’s lives.
What I had no way of knowing was that, within a span of minutes, reality would come crashing in, bringing me dangerously close to the very story I was writing.
Less than five miles away, my wife and soul mate had just entered a health-food store located in a strip mall close to our home. As she spoke to a clerk about her merchandise, two armed men wearing hoods and ski masks entered the store. One of the men aimed his gun at my wife’s head…
Bad things happen to good people every day. Tragedies befall families. We search for meaning, we question God. Our faith is tested. Two years earlier, I had been diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease at the age of forty-seven. No family history. I never blamed God; I simply thanked Him for not making it something far worse. There are so many people suffering in this world… how could I ever feel sorry for myself?
That night as I sat on the couch pondering my hero’s fate, my wife was being held hostage, her arms and legs bound with duct tape as two men committed an act of evil that placed her life in their hands. After stealing her purse, jewelry, and the contents of the store safe, the armed robbers left. The police arrived. My wife called me, sobbing hysterically. Thankfully, no one in the store was hurt.
It was a bad night, but of course it could have been far worse.
This book is about good and evil, the choices we make, and why we are here. It draws wisdom from a two-thousand-year-old text that literally decodes the Old Testament, providing scientific explanations about existence and spirituality without the burden of religious dogma. My wife had involved me in these studies a year earlier, setting me off on my own spiritual journey. The information revealed to me in books and lectures provided answers to questions about life and death that were as simple as they were astounding, yet so clear that I instinctively knew it to be true. It also became clear to me that Grim Reaper was intended to be something far more than just a thriller. And yet, had the events of that fateful Tuesday night turned out differently, you might not be reading this book.
I’d like to think differently. I’d like to believe that my faith would remain unshaken had my wife been murdered and that, eventually, I would have finished the book in the light it was intended. Then again, I could just as easily have grown angry and torched the manuscript in a fit of rage, having learned nothing from my studies, or my own hero’s journey through Hell.
Thankfully, my wife came out of it all right, and I was spared the test of grief. After a brief respite, Grim Reaper was completed — my own spiritual journey having taken on a new sense of purpose.
How should I interpret the events of May 5, 2009? Did God intervene? Did my wife’s faith keep her safe? Were we simply lucky? Was the incident intended as a reward or punishment for some past deed? I have learned that cause and effect is made deliberately confusing to ensure free will; otherwise, we’d all be animals performing for our master.
But, who knows — perhaps one day the man who held a gun to my soul mate’s head will pick up this novel and garner the spiritual tools he needs to transform his own life.
That would be nice.
Either way, I’m grateful to have you reading the book. I sincerely hope it brings Light and understanding into your life, as writing it has done for me.
— Steve Alten, Ed.D.
“The earth was also corrupted before God and the earth was full of violence. God looked upon the earth and saw it was corrupt, for all flesh had corrupted their ways upon the earth. And God said to Noah, ‘The end of all flesh is come before Me for the earth is filled with violence because of them. And behold, I will destroy them with the earth.’”
"The hottest places in Hell are reserved for those who, in times of great moral crisis, maintain their neutrality."