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Your support makes all the difference.<\/strong>Read more<\/p>\n The plots of Dan Brown<\/a>‘s novels have so many turns that even the author has to make sure he can keep it all organized. <\/p>\n \u201cAnybody who writes a thriller needs to have a plan. There’s a great saying that the thriller writer who starts a book without knowing where\u2019s he’s going is just lying,\u201d he told The Associated Press on Tuesday.<\/p>\n \u201cAnd certainly these books are very complicated. One way I sort of battle, trying to keep it all straight, is to write every single day, just to keep it fresh. If I go through two sleep cycles (without writing), it starts to evaporate. And, of course, I also have what looks like a detective\u2019s chalkboard in a police station. We\u2019ve got the pictures and the yarn and the notes and the sticky notes, all that on my wall trying to keep it straight as well.\u201d<\/p>\n Brown’s \u201cThe Secret of Secrets\u201d has been published this week, a 650-page thriller and mind-bender from the author known worldwide for \u201cThe Da Vinci Code,\u201d \u201cAngels & Demons\u201d and other million sellers. Brown again combines suspense, philosophical digressions and travelogues, along with codes and puzzles and secret societies as he dispatches favorite protagonist Robert Langdon to Prague<\/a> and ensnares him in a deadly, international race for the key to ultimate wisdom \u2014 what happens when we die.<\/p>\n Besides Langdon, the Harvard symbologist who has found adventure and trouble everywhere from Paris<\/a> to Washington, D.C., Brown has brought back love interest\/noetic scientist-in-distress Katherine Solomon and a New York-based book editor with a very real-life counterpart. \u201cJonas Faukman\u201d is an anagram for Brown’s editor at Doubleday Books, Jason Kaufman, who has worked with the author for more than 20 years. Author<\/a> and editor are good friends, they say, although that didn’t keep Brown from subjecting Faukman to abduction and other un-literary experiences in his latest book.<\/p>\n \u201cI always enjoy getting manuscripts from Dan and seeing where he’s going,\u201d Kaufman told the AP recently. \u201cI have to ask him not to tell me in advance what he has in mind. He always finds new ways to surprise me.\u201d<\/p>\n Brown also spoke with the AP about how he decides on his subjects, his evolving thoughts on mortality and why Prague is the perfect setting for a few conspiracies. This interview has been edited for clarity and brevity.<\/p>\n ____<\/p>\n AP: How do you go about deciding what to write about? <\/p>\n BROWN: It\u2019s no secret that I like to write about big topics and there really is no topic that is bigger than consciousness. It is the lens through which we see ourselves. And so the real challenge was how to make a concrete urgent modern thriller about something that\u2019s so ethereal. <\/p>\n About eight years ago, my mom passed away about the time that I was thinking of writing about consciousness, and I started asking myself, \u201cWhat happens when we die?\u201d and if you\u2019d asked me eight years, ago, I\u2019d say nothing It\u2019s full stop total blackness. Over the course of the eight years that took me to write this book and all the conversations that I had with philosophers and physicists and noetic scientists, I\u2019ve come out the other side with a totally different mindset. And in fact, it sounds crazy. I no longer fear death.<\/p>\n AP: Before you worked on this book, did you consider yourself an atheist? An agnostic? How would you have described yourself? <\/p>\n BROWN: I grew up Christian, Episcopalian, but I moved away from the organized nature of religion. I\u2019ve always been spiritual and sensed there\u2019s something else, but I\u2019ve also been skeptical and said, \u201cWell, that sense of there\u2019s just something else could just be wishful thinking.\u201d It could be because it\u2019s so hard to imagine that there\u2019s nothing else that we just sort of say, \u201cWell, I sense there\u2019s some thing else.\u201d <\/p>\n And now I do sense there\u2019s something else. And that is from an intellectual standpoint. I have not had a religious experience, a spiritual experience, an outer body experience, or near death experience. This change of mind comes from looking at the science that is happening right now in the world of physics and noetics.<\/p>\n AP: Some people talk about the creative process, so to speak, as almost a religious experience, that moment the idea comes to you, whether it\u2019s the right phrase or a piece of music. <\/p>\n BROWN: It\u2019s called flow, a muse. Certainly, we writers have that experience of, \u201cAh, I\u2019ve got it. It\u2019s just flowing through me.\u201d I have certainly felt that. Not every day, unfortunately. There\u2019s a lot of trial and error, but that is the feeling that creative people are always looking for. My mom was a professional musician. I was brought up to be a musician. I thought I would be a musician. I still play piano every day. I studied music composition in university, and I\u2019ve had that experience also with music.<\/p>\n That sort of muse moment when something flows in, it\u2019s different between writing and music. Writing sort of feels like finding the right Lego piece to put in. You say, \u201cAh.\u201d It\u2019s almost like doing a jigsaw puzzle. You\u2019re like, \u201cGot it. It fits.\u201d And music is a little bit more fluid. It\u2019s like making a big brush stroke. And the melody just sort of flows in and finds its way to your hands, and then it exists.<\/p>\n AP: The cities you set your books in are so important to what you do. Do you have a kind of wish list? Like, \u201cI need to set a book in this city.\u201d <\/p>\n BROWN: I mean, there are a few of them that I won\u2019t mention because I don\u2019t want people running out, and they\u2019re sort of off the beaten path, kind of like Prague is. <\/p>\n I like to use location as a character. I want to make sure that, whatever book it is, it could only be set there. \u201cThe Lost Symbol\u201d could only be set in D.C. because it\u2019s about the symbology of D.C. \u201cThe Da Vinci Code\u201d could only be set in Paris because it is about the Roseland. \u201cThe Secret of Secrets,\u201d about human consciousness, could only be set in Prague. It’s been the mystical capital of Europe since Emperor Rudolf II (in the late 16th-early 17th centuries) brought all the mystics and scribes and alchemists to Prague. And as a character, Prague is perfect for Langdon. It\u2019s full of secret passageways and cathedrals and monasteries and all, that\u2019s his world.<\/p>\n AP: Puzzles and mystery and passageways, that\u2019s just endlessly fascinating to you? It\u2019s as interesting to you now as when you were 10 or 20? <\/p>\n BROWN: I don\u2019t know what that says about me, but yeah, I still love secret passageways. You talk about that \u201caha\u201d moment. It\u2019s kind of the same thing to say, \u201cWait, there\u2019s something here that you don\u2019t see and now you see it.\u201d It\u2019s the same kind of sensation of \u201caha.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Your support helps us to tell the story From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":413498,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3938],"tags":[3444,77,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-413497","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-books","8":"tag-books","9":"tag-entertainment","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115180815350092243","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/413497","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=413497"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/413497\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/413498"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=413497"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=413497"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=413497"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}