Questions & Answers about Incarnation, by Laura Davis Hays

Laura speaking with Linda Durham at Book Launch Celebration - April 1, 2016, at Everyday Center for Spiritual Living in Santa Fe, NM

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​Q: What led you to start writing Incarnation?
 
A: In 1984 I read Shirley MacLaine’s book, Out on a Limb, in which she explores the concept of reincarnation. I don’t believe I’d thought much about reincarnation at that point, or only in that casual way where a certain period of history fascinates, or a place on earth feels resonant, or someone becomes an instant friend. That was a time when many people were talking about psychics with powers ranging from talking to the dead, channeling entities, predicting major life events through reading cards, or seeing auras, and so on.
 
I always liked magic as a child, and magical worlds like Oz, and so these talents and coincidences and mysteries and powers caught my interest.
 
The accounts of past life regression in Shirley’s book, while interesting, left me hungry for more. I wanted to feel these experiences from the inside out, I wanted to see a past life full on, I wanted the memory to be in the present moment and so vivid I felt I was there.
 
They say write what you want to read, so I did.
 
Q: What was the process of writing Incarnation like?
A: I’d not written fiction since high school, and though I’ve always read a lot, I did not really know how to write a story. I took a few writing classes and just started writing. I went over to Bandelier National Monument in the Jemez mountains, and the place set my imagination on fire. What would it have been like to live in a cave on the side of a cliff in a primitive culture? Then I went further back to my fear of wolves and forests, perhaps a very snowy place in Russia or the Scandinavian north, then further back still, to my fascination with the ocean, my fear of waves, and my love of sunshine and sand and calm turquoise waters. There was a time, I was sure, that was both ancient, and advanced in spirituality and technology. So I found Atlantis.
 
I wrote a 1200 page first draft alternating my modern character Kelsey with my Atlantian character Iriel. A lot of the words poured out and though I had a sense of the structure—Kelsey dreams Iriel, Iriel taps Kelsey for help with her karma—the book was still in its infancy, and much too long. I attempted to cut it, mainly by editing out excess words. It was not until I met a “psychic agent” at a writers conference who told me cut the book in two, that I got the idea that I had more than one book.
 
Q: Who are your characters?
A: Kelsey, the main modern character, is a young scientist who is having nightmares that often involve tsunami-like waves or strange talking fish, and then suddenly, after she moves to New Mexico to take a job working at BioVenture, a research firm headed by her father’s former student, the dreams become waking. She hears voices, she sees things. The voice is mysterious and seems to be pleading with her, warning her. Then when she meets a charismatic lawyer named Stan, things begin to come clearer. Stan is somehow connected and the visions become completely vivid.
Kelsey sees this other world, this ancient world of Atlantis, through the eyes of Iriel, a 13 year-old girl. She gets access on a need-to-know basis and always through contact with Stan. With the help of her therapist, Marigold, Kelsey seeks to discover who Iriel is and what she wants. Despite her natural skepticism, she begins to accept that Iriel is a past life self with some very difficult karma to resolve and that Stan was once a spurned suitor in that past life.
 
Q: Who is Harrison and what is the scientific storyline?
A: Harrison works at BioVenture and is Kelsey’s friend. The company is testing a genetically engineered organism that is designed to feed on pollutants, evolving as need-be as the chemicals being dumped into the ocean change. These microscopic animals prove to be unstable and uncontrollable as the project moves down to a Belizean island that was once both a pirate hang-out and an ancient Mayan burial ground. The team of men, plus Kelsey, eventually come to terms with the unethical shortcuts taken by her boss, Myron Crouch, who by-the-way has a vendetta against her professor father who is long dead at the onset of the story.
 
Q: What is the Atlantian Material?
A: The Atlantian Material is a series starting with Iriel’s coming of age story on an outlying island in the Atlantian chain. There have already been two cataclysms and the continent has broken up. Iriel and her family live in the town of Yabeth on the far shores of an outlying island. Their culture is isolated without trade, communication, or knowledge of the rest of the world. This was decreed by their founder, Lyticia, who both caused and escaped the last cataclysm. The second book of the series is Lyticia’s story, and the third follows Iriel to the mainland where she is the Chosen One, prophesied to save the land from the final destruction.
 
Q: What is the importance of crystals in ancient Atlantis?
A: Crystals were potentially psycho-active, powered by those, such as Iriel and her grandmother, Muamdi, who have a talent for them. Some are used like machines to power flying cars, or weapons, or household gadgets. They can be used for healing and telepathy, etc. They can be useful or dangerous—perhaps like the little organisms in Kelsey’s story—and are not easily controlled.
 
Q: How did you research Atlantis?
A: The only source I read was Edgar Cayce. He was a clairvoyant and healer who lived in the early part of the 20th century. He performed over 14,000 readings in his lifetime, many mentioning Atlantis. According to Cayce, Atlantis stretched from the Mediterranean to the gulf of Mexico, and there were three major destructions ending in the final deluge about 10,000 years ago. The destruction was attributed to greed and crystal technology (likened to quantum technology) and there was genetic engineering to create a race of slaves that were mixtures of animal and human. Star beings originally inhabited the continent.
 
Some of what I read sank in on a subconscious level and has come out in my writing about Atlantis. Further details I would claim to have channeled, evidenced by some similarities in my writings and that of Taylor Caldwell, an author who wrote about many times in history including Atlantis.
 
Q: Do you believe in reincarnation?
A: I’d like to. Our instinct is to cling to life. I love being on the planet for the many sources of joy available to us, whether through the beauty of the earth, the love of fellow man, the moments of enlightened revelation. Of course there are the lessons we face, some harder than others.
 
The possibility of reincarnation means the chance to live again, to wake up in a baby body, rather than an old one that may have suffered disease or disability. It means that we may get to see a loved one again, although in a different form.
 
My father died at the young age of 40, and I was only 13, so I have a vested interest in seeing him again, in knowing his soul still exists. If there is an afterlife, or angels, I could be with him again. At any rate, that is a certain comfort.
 
Q: What is the final theme and message of Incarnation?
A: Agape love and forgiveness of the unforgivable are the ultimate answers. If we can understand another person’s heart, we can feel compassion. Forgiveness benefits the forgiver, rather than the forgiven. A burden is lifted. Isn’t that what we all seek? An unencumbered heart and the peace that brings?