Experience Affords the Best Stories

I believe experience still affords the best stories for any audience. Truth is stranger than fiction, and all that. Experience is born of doing; taking risks, making mistakes, learning new ways of doing something and sometimes, quitting.

I’m an author who also identifies as a marketing manager. My day to day is filled with photography, video, advertising, blogging, analytics, ROI, planning, budgets, professional interactions, website management and many other duties which keep me in the position I have built for myself.

But as I said, I am an author first. Remember? I said: “I’m an author who also identifies as a marketing manager.” As you can imagine, it helps that I am a writer in my current 9-5 position. Content is King.  But filling my bank account and fulfilling my purpose is at odds with one another at the moment. I love to write. I love developing stories and characters and seeing where it all ends up. You can’t really achieve that writing blogs about machines. Sure, the case study is fun; writing about the origins and then the application of something used in a world-famous act, but those are few and far between in my industry.

So, on my time, I write what I want to read. I’ve said this many times before because I think it is an all-important facet to any author’s writing: Write what you would like to read.  So, what are my interests? I am a spiritual person. I’ve taken a course in Reiki, been hypnotised twice – once to relive past-lives, experienced a drum circle, lived through an out of body experience during a session with a very talented healer,  attended a tapping lesson, read and reread the Buddhist Book of Living and Dying, read the Bible, been confirmed in the Christian faith, renounced Christianity, believe science and spirituality support one another, feel we’re not alone in the universe, believe in positive thinking - even when I have to attempt it through my own battles with depression or anxiety. I believe in living with compassion and non-judgement (but it’s near impossible not to judge). I believe my ego is the devil and yet I can’t seem to separate myself from it. I try to make decisions and choices consciously, knowing that regret and consequences are reactions to unconscious decisions. I want to be a better version of myself and when I read a story, I want that story to feel real. I want characters who are real. Even if I’m in the middle of a far-future sci-fi, whatever events arise, I want the human aspect to shine through. The struggle. The lows, the highs. The victories and defeats.

Not a bad collection of inspiration to pull from, right? So, with my writing, you get the truth, as I see it. You get reincarnation in your space opera. You get suicide in your apocalyptic fiction. You get Armageddon in your children’s picture books. You get the science of your spirit in your educational series. You get emotions in your short stories. You experience suffering in your chic lit. I apologize for nothing and write for those who want to read my message. My Apocalyptic trilogy is my most polarizing writing to date. The first book, The Judas Syndrome - people either loved it or truly hated it. So, as you would expect, it sits at just above a three-star rating. The next two books of the series were received much better, having filtered out those who hated book one; those who want to read what interests them most.

My most recent series, which will have three books in a few months, is a near-future science fiction series where humanity has perfected A.I. in bipedal, human-like robots. Soon they discover these artificially intelligent creations are claiming sentience through past life experiences. Impossible, but true. If you've experienced past life regression, or just believe in it, and love science fiction, then this Sci-fi puts an exciting new spin on what it means to be human. 

With 11 books and another on its way, I have discovered a theme throughout which makes me pause and reflect on my writing.  Even through multiple genres, I still manage to deliver the same message: Death isn’t then end, in fact, the word death is something of a misnomer. Death: the destruction or permanent end of something.  Investigate that statement with me and pick up one of my novels. I believe you will be pleasantly surprised.

Reincarnation and an author's journey

Have you ever considered  that a genius or savant in music or mathematics, or any basis of study is so because they have lived a past life which followed their present life's interest? “Consider an example like Mozart; who wrote his first symphony at the age of eight. How could he have accomplished such genius without having the wherewithal to remember a past where he was involved in music and its pursuits?” (Excerpt from Her Past's Present)

In an interview with Michael Poeltl, author of Her Past's Present, he had this to say:

I’ve always been open minded where the paranormal is concerned.  After plenty of desktop research I decided to write a book on the subject of past-lives but knew I would have to experience the process in order to give it a sense of authenticity. I was admittedly excited to get started and after further research looking for a past-life regression therapist that felt like the real thing; I got started.

I lived three lives in the three hours I was under my therapist’s hypnotic suggestion. She would begin each new life by asking me to look at my feet. In my first example I was a little girl, maybe 12, living in France, in a cabin in the woods with my father. He was a woodsman. One day a military escort came and took him away. I never saw him again and died alone in that cabin. My second life was that of an English soldier in WWI. I was dying on the field. Everyone around me was dead. I recognized one of my best friends as the enemy soldier who stabbed me with his bayonet. I died alone amongst the wet muck and barbed wire, thoughts only for my wife (who, as it turns out, is my mother in this life). My third past life lived through this process was as a black slave, chained by the ankle to a line of my people; being marched to a slave ship en route to America. The slave driver whose eyes met mine revealed my daughter, in this life. This was especially disturbing  as after each life lived my therapist asked me to forgive those who’d wronged me; the army for stealing away my father, my enemy for stabbing me through the stomach, and my slaver for obvious reasons, but also because that slave ship sank in rough seas and my wife and child were aboard as well. I died alone in the bowels of that ship, desperate to hold my family once more.

Each life I lived was an emotional experience, each taught me a lesson, the lesson I needed to learn in this life, at the time of my regression. That lesson was to be comfortable with being alone…

Michael Poeltl

Five Star reviews for Her Past's Present

The new novel by Michael Poeltl is receiving very favourable reviews on Amazon. Poeltl's most recent work of fiction has garnished nothing but five star reviews thus far on the worlds leading book seller site and there seems to be no indication this activity will stop any time soon. With a dystopian edge, Her Past's Present offers insights into past-life regression, a topic that has begun trending with the release of The Gargoyle, by Andrew Davidson, another Canadian author who won 1.25 million for his book rights in 2008. Cloud Atlas was also made into a movie last year and Her Past's Present is the newest offering into the general fiction genre which deals in past-life regression, and the universal link we all have to our past-lives. To see the reviews coming in check into www.mikepoeltl.com or go directly to the book page on amazon.

Michael Poeltl