The Diary(A)

This diary describes my progress towards completing and publishing the
final draft of Enoch's Thread. While researching the story I got mixed up with
some people who were using occult practices to further their own agenda. With the help of
my friend Peter we put a stop to most of it.  In addition to reporting my progress with the
book (yes, it does involve the occultists and my friend Peter), I will also keep you
posted on the aftermath of our efforts as well as whatever I can discover concerning
Peter's whereabouts. Regarding the other pages on this site and their various links:
They are meant to be cryptic and like certain religious texts will be fully understandable
only after they come to pass – namely after reading the book.
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June 11. The draft is now 260 pages. I have completed the first pass on about half of the pages. I expect significant expansion of the text as I fill in skipped over sections in the last half. I got an Email from Peter. He was in some Internet cafe with a ".UK" address. Of course he didn't say where he was, but he's fine and not overly worried that anyone might be following him. I expect in the final draft I will condense the time line for this period, the time from completion of the plan to submission of the manuscript for publication, to maybe just six months - even though with the few hours every week that I'm actually writing, I'm figuring I'll be lucky if I get this done within the next year.
June 12. Alteri called today, he wanted to know how the manuscript was coming. He tried again to get me to change the title. He hates the connection to the Book of Enoch. He wants the title to be a reference to both John Gardner and the Mormons. He insists that if Gardner truly did access supernatural powers as Maier implies he did, then there's no need for the Enoch cliche in the title. He suggested I directly quote the end box to the Maier article in my text. I don't think there's any need to be so blatant. He did do me a favor though, he said he had found a great example of the kind of contradictions that are inherent in the Gilgamesh translations. Just before dinner he emailed me a link, suggesting these kind of ambiguities may very well be the very key to Gardner's powers. I don't know, I still favor the idea that Gardner got all he needed from the Joseph Smith letter.
June 15. Had a good weekend making text revisions. I just may get this manuscript finished. I think I'll be sending the URL for this page to James, after all he's the one who suggested I consider using the Internet as a tool to help get published, not to mention his tip about John Gardner. As I went over the manuscript yesterday I couldn't help but think that Peter and I had been on the road to developing a pretty good friendship. I can't believe he felt he had to go into hiding. What good would it do for anyone to go after him now? What's done is done. Not to mention that Erica and he (I changed her name to Alice for the book) seemed to have a certain chemistry. Doreen confirms that Erica wanted to get to know him better. Jesus! Think of it, two scientists and two witches. Tell me that makes any sense at all. I was also thinking that Peter never really did follow up on those animals. It's hard to believe there might have been two different Chupacabra type deals going on simultaneously in two different parts of New York—that's a synchronicity that'd be too much even for a Larry Talbot.
June 21. Another Email from Peter. He met some people in Amsterdam. They are all scientists and they have some secret group. He told them about his issue with the Foundation. They were very interested. Seems they have a way to take on political power with some mojo of their own. Peter said they are totally onto Jim's decline of magic concept. They independently came up with the same idea as us and apparently are making things happen. They took Peter in after knowing him for only a couple of days. That makes me nervous—him identifying himself and all, could make it easier for the Foundation to locate him. We'll I guess it's his choice to make. I got a call from Talbot on Wednesday. He wants to have dinner. He's got some wacky idea about the large scale synchronicity problem. He wants my reaction. You'd think after the mustached man experience he wouldn't be so enthusiastic. Anyhow, should be a 'fun' dinner next week.
July 7. Dinner with Larry last week was boring. I should get him to talk to Doreen. She’d give him an interesting perspective on his synchronicity obsession. I drove by Peter's house yesterday. There were guys in some kind of utility uniforms out in the front yard. I wonder if they were legit, probably not. Maybe they were trying to get into the house. Anyway, I wasn't going to be stopping. I'll let Peter know next time I hear from him.
July 15. Things are happening. I've been keeping an eye on Peter's place. The day after I saw the uniformed guys in his yard there were half a dozen vehicles parked along the curb in front of his place. There was a Hummer, a black Denali SUV, and a couple of vans and some cars. There were clearly people in the house. Meanwhile, no word from Peter at all. It's now been a month since his last Email. What surprises me is that if it was the Foundation at his house, how could they legally get access? Either they have some high powered consulting clientele giving them assistance or they're breaking the law.
July 28. Still no word from Peter. I'm starting to worry for his safety. It's hard to not let whatever is going on with him de-focus my work on the web site and getting the story published. But I'm going to try, I have to get this book out. The rest of today's post will be directed just to the web site which I expect is going to be a critical component for marketing the book. Here are my plans: I am going to take the pages that I've assembled so far and turn them into sort of a puzzle. Specifically, I'm thinking of setting up maybe three levels. Access to the inner two levels will require the reader to input information found elsewhere on the site and in the links from the site. In the final level there will be significant clues about the plot of the story as well as some of the information Peter and I discovered regarding access to the occult power source. Of course I'll never be able to reveal it all since Peter has said after the dust settles and he gets back, he wants to reassemble the collective—meaning all the players, even Richard and Jim—and even Larry for God's sake! He thinks he can use what we've learned to predictably access power. He wants to form a permanent collective that begins to direct its energies to achieve specific ends.
August 10. Erica received a text message, apparently from Peter. Her caller ID didn't recognize the number but who else would text a message with the numbers: 081608, 0800, and a phone number with a country code of 229. It's for a country called Benin. I had never heard of it before. I looked it up. It's in Africa, adjacent to Nigeria. I wonder how Peter got to Africa. Erica and I will place the call in the wee hours of next Saturday morning assuming the time zone is Benin. If that doesn't work, we'll try again at 8 am EST. Meanwhile I'm trying to learn javascript and HTML coding so I can begin to make the website interactive. This turns out to be a bit more work than I was counting on. Regarding the manuscript: It's over 300 pages now. I'm trying to work on a voice for the John Gardner character who is the main character in the interior novel. This has led me to re-read On Moral Fiction, which I believe is a good example of Gardner's perspective on the potential for Art to change reality. The connection between his views on Moral Fiction and occult power is inescapable.
August 18.. The Call. We got the call through at eight o’clock EST. Unfortunately we also had had to try the earlier time as well since we couldn’t be sure what time zone Peter’s original text message referenced. You can imagine our relief when we heard Peter’s voice on the line. We had him on speaker phone and Erica broke into a grin so wide she had trouble talking for a few seconds. Peter assured us he was in no danger and has even come to believe the Foundation isn’t after him. He was so positive about it that I didn’t have the heart to tell him about the strangers poking around his house. The reason he gave for his being out of touch is that this group he’s fallen in with is very secretive and they were putting him through some sort of an initiation over the last month or so.
            While there is a perfectly reasonable explanation for his period of silence, the story he told us on Saturday morning presents a real problem for further posts on www.enochsthread.com. Specifically, while as you may imagine, I have changed up all the actual names and many of the other details in this diary, the gist of what I have written here is the God’s truth.   Now for a variety of reasons it is critical Peter keep his actual identify secret from his new acquaintances. If I continue to reveal details, no matter how much I try to disguise them, there is always the chance one of these people may see this site and realize to whom I am referring using the name Peter. That could have disastrous consequences for Peter. One other point though, as I mentioned in previous posts, Peter’s situation and the potential risks involved all have to do with the practice of occult power. I also suspect if Peter gets in too deep with these people it make take some mojo on our side to help him out. Anyhow I can’t keep openly writing about this but it did occur to me that by virtue of the fact that I have gotten my website included in the Enochian webring, it is possible I may get some interest in this story from some actual practitioners. That could prove useful both as insurance against Peter’s future as well as for my own scholarly interests. So I think it would be useful to make contact with any actual practitioner I could (nothing against Erica and Doreen). So here’s what I’ve decided to do.  I will continue on with a journal of Peter’s contacts but only post it on a high security page of this website (once I get it established). I will arrange access to the journal somewhere on he existing site in a manner that will allow me to screen for actual practitioners before I admit them into the security area. Going forward, I will continue to use this open journal page to report progress on other items of general interest regarding less weighty matters (such as getting the book published).

December 11. I continue to revise the first draft of the novel and it's looking very good. I have completed a pretty thorough editing of the first ninety pages. My guess is that the final draft will be about 500 pages. Also I have been in touch with Peter. For those who qualify and can get through security, I will resume posting all that I have heard from Peter by August of 2009.
February 2. The First Draft of the Novel is complete. It is 511 pages. Now the re-writes begin, as does the selection of an editor.
July 2009. Many revisions are now done. Probably worth it to do a few more, but I think it best to let the manuscript rest for a few weeks. I will try to finish up the website before the end of this month. I am hoping readers will find Peter’s continuing story as fascinating as I have.

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