Everyone has a story to tell, but not everyone is willing to hear it. Combined with a wordsmith’s imagination, that story piques curiosity, spreads like wildfire, and reverberates like a familiar song in your head. That’s the tale we all may not want to hear, but it will be too late to say no. We are held captive at the mercy of the sly raconteur.
Xlibris Author Geoffrey Clayson has so far held many readers captive with Clayson’s ancestry-inspired novel titled The Apology soon to be released by the leading Indiana-based self-publishing company Xlibris. Their “victims,” who have had a glimpse of the story from online writing community Authonomy, have succumbed to their captors’ charm for storytelling.
The Discovery That Started It All
I was born in Derby, England. Fascinated with my family history I learned that my ancestors had fled Europe in the early 16th century to escape the Roman Inquisition. Intrigued, I yearned to know more.
For over 30 years I have been researching my ancestors. I have felt a strong connection to them, and have often had incredibly realistic dreams that I have been back there in 16th century Brugges. My visit to Bruges in 2001 was very dé ja vú.
My daughter, having listened to my story over the years, insisted on paying for me to have regression hypnotherapy, at first I was not at all interested, but persuasion finally won over. I was apparently a difficult patient to be put under hypnosis. During the soft background music, and very soft talking female hypnotherapist, my mind was elsewhere, until she explained to me that I was walking down a very steep cliff, with a drop on the left hand side and that I must concentrate on keeping to the right for my own safety, when I finally reached the bottom of this steep descent, I came to a wooden door in the hill side, I was told to enter, which I did, and found I was in a very old library with books everywhere; I was then told to choose a book with my surname on the cover.
I could not find a book with Clayson on it anywhere, and then I came to a book with the CLASON so I chose this book. I was told to open the book which I did. What happened next I have no idea how, but I found myself in what looked like a small village with people all around dressed in medieval type clothing, crying and screaming. I saw in the distant a fire with two people tied to a stake, I was to learn this was the execution of two females tried for witchcraft and heresy.
Apparently it was now obvious to my therapist that I was in a very distraught state so I was brought out of my hypnosis. I had been under nearly two hours, unbelievable – it seemed like five minutes. To add to the mystery surrounding this hypnotherapy, the language I was speaking while under hypnosis was not English, I was to find out much later it was Flemish.
Now to move forward a number of years, the Clayson family tree was written for me by Dr Colin Chapman, a renowned British Genealogist, whose mother’s maiden name was Clayson. Now in my family tree we have two unanswered questions from my hypnotherapy experience. First, the origin of my present surname, Clayson: in my family tree, prior to 1760, my ancestors surname was CLASON. The same name printed on the book I opened in the Library during my hypnosis many years earlier! Truth is stranger than fiction, as the saying goes.
Second, in Dr Chapman’s notes that came with the Clayson family tree, he mentions that our ancestors left Europe, he believes from Belgium, (where they were probably tailors by trade) to escape religious persecution – this all correlated with the experiences encountered under hypnosis.
The facts written above, plus Dr Chapman’s Clayson family tree, has led to a compulsion to tell a story, some of it from researching my ancestors, some of it from the annals of history, and some of it purely from my imagination.
For example, the wooden chest which in our story contained manuscripts detailing all the Roman inquisition trials, plus the Catholic cardinals, priests and monks, also the names of the innocent people executed for crimes they did not commit dating back 600 years or more. My Grandfather did actually own an old wooden chest, but it did not contain the ancient manuscripts. This was brought about by my imagination.
Read more of Geoffrey Clayson’s revelation on the second installment of his Xlibris Blog.
We congratulate you, Xlibris author Geoffrey Clayson, on all the good reviews your book has been getting. With this early success, we’re sure many readers can’t wait for your book to hit the shelves soon!
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