Meghan: Hi Noah. Welcome and thank you for joining us today. What is one word you would use to define yourself?
Noah: Haunted
Meghan: Do you see yourself as “the good guy” or the “bad guy”?
Noah: The good guy
Meghan: What does the plot require you to be? How does this requirement limit you?
Noah: My need for keeping the dark part of my life private means I cannot be honest with the ones I love and that I bring dark things into their lives.
Meghan: What is your quest?
Noah: To find a way to give my patients a fast track sure fire way to meditation. So that they can deal with depression, addiction… and the haunting and possession of dark entities.
Meghan: What do you hope to accomplish, find, or become during the course of your book/series?
Noah: To find a protocol for people who are possessed or oppressed by dark demonic entities. To keep them safe, to give them their lives back.
Meghan: What do you like about the other main characters? What do you least like about the other main characters?
Noah: Father Perry Cavannaugh, an episcopal priest, rescued me from possession when I was just eleven. He was young then, and has always been like a brother to me, and he has guided me through the dark part of my life, and I owe him everything. I love my wife, Myra, my sons. I am very fond of my friend and associate Dr Hilde-Sweetwater, and when she did not believe I was possessed as a child, and was horrified by my beliefs, it was humiliating, and I felt betrayed.
Meghan: When was the last time you lied. What made you do it?
Noah: A lie of omission. I never told my wife about the possession, and when it came back to threaten our children, she felt angry and betrayed and I had to earn back her trust or lose our marriage.
Meghan: Who have you betrayed lately?
Noah: Myra, by that lie of omission.
Meghan: Would you say that you are an optimist or a pessimist?
Noah: A hopeful pessimist
Meghan: What is your superpower?
Noah: Life experience – this happened to me, and it shook me to my core, but I survived and now I am going to help other people survive.
Meghan: What is your biggest secret?
Noah: That I was possessed at the age of eleven.
Meghan: Do you live in the right world? How necessary are you to your world?
Noah: I am in the world that I love.
Meghan: What is your role in this setting? Are you okay with this role or would you like to change?
Noah: I have everything I want. I am a neurosurgeon doing the work I have wanted to do since I was a child. I have a family I love. I have everything I want and my goal is to keep it.
Meghan: Did you turn out the way you expected?
Noah: Yes. The possession has fueled my entire life. For the better.
Meghan: What, if anything, would you change about your life?
Noah: That’s hard for me. My first impulse would be to tell you that I would like to never have been possessed. But I think this is what made me and I think my work is important. So the one thing I would change would be to have been honest with Myra about this from the beginning of our relationship. To trust her to love me, or give her the option of turning away if she did not want this in her life.
Meghan: How do you feel about your author?
Noah. I adore her. She listens to everything I say.
Meghan: If the two of you got together for coffee, what would you want to say to them?
Noah: We get together for coffee every day. Her voice is my voice.
Boo-graphy: Lynn Hightower grew up in Kentucky, and graduated from the University of Kentucky, where she studied creative writing with Wendell Berry and earned a degree in Journalism. She also teaches novel writing in the Writer’s Program at UCLA. Survival jobs include writing television commercials, catering waitress, and bartender for one day.
Her books have been included in the New York Times List of Notable Books, the London Times Bestseller List, and the W.H. Smith Fresh Talent Awards. She has received the Shamus Award, and been nominated for the Kentucky Literary Award, the Kentucky Librarians First Choice Award, and the Mary Higgins Clark Award. Hightower’s books have been published in numerous foreign countries, including Great Britain, Australia, Japan, Germany, Italy, Norway, Sweden, Israel and The Netherlands.
Hightower spends ridiculous amounts of time curled up reading, but also enjoys small sports cars and tame horses. She is married to The Frenchman, writes full time, shares an office with her Belgian Shepherd, Leo the Lion, plays bad but fierce tennis, loves to dance and is learning to Tango.
Hightower enjoys canoeing and is witty after two glasses of wine. She has studied French and Italian, but is only fluent in Southern.
Hightower is a Kentucky native, and lives in a small Victorian cottage with a writing parlor.
Noah Archer is a renowned neurosurgeon, with an impressive success record. He has a happy home, with his beloved wife Moira, their two adopted sons, and a dog who’s a very good girl.
But Noah keeps a dark secret, shared only with his old friend Father Perry Cavanaugh. When he was just a boy, he was possessed by a demon – and it was only thanks to the exorcist priest that he survived.
Now, Noah works at the cutting edge of medical science and religion, researching the effects of spirituality on the brain. His current research study – The Enlightenment Project – promises breakthrough treatments for depression, addiction and mental illness, and preliminary results are astounding.
But after a late-night emergency surgery, Noah returns to his office to find Father Perry waiting for him, with a terrible warning. The Enlightenment Project may not be closing the door to the darkness at all . . . but instead letting it in.
Demonic possession is now a recognized psychiatric condition, and the number of exorcist priests in the US has quadrupled in the last decade. As well as being a thrilling read, THE ENLIGHTENMENT PROJECT is an intelligent and fascinating view into the complex worlds of both the medical and the supernatural.
Meghan's House of Books 