To Hell and Back by Carl East

Kindle Price: $2.99
Available from: Amazon, Smashwords, B&N





When a man wants to prove that his parents went to heaven after they died, he's prepared to do just about anything to find out. Anything in this case means travelling to hell to prove that heaven exists.

Bio:
I was born In Hull, Yorkshire, England in 1956. I started to write at the age of 44 in the year 2000 and I wasn't very good. I slowly learned over the years that followed, mainly from people online who gave up their time to help me. I chose to write imaginative things and sometimes allowed my own imagination to get away from me. I started with erotic tales before going onto more serious stuff, although having said that my erotic stories have been popular.

The first book I published was "The Second Apprentice" followed closely by "The Talking Sword" both of which are sword and sorcerer type tales. My favorite release though was "Hell's Gate" and that one's doing very well now.

I now live in America and have done for the past 5 years. I'm very happily married and intend to stay that way.

Excerpt

Ten years, that’s how long I have left to live. It’s now the 16th of November 1998 and I’ve been to Hell and back.

My name is Geoffrey Morgan and my tale is one of disbelief but true never the less. I consider myself an expert in the paranormal, in that I have explanations to give on quite a number of subjects such as the occult and the spirit world.

For some years now I’ve been trying to prove the existence of Heaven, in part to set my mind at rest that that was where my parents had gone when they were taken from me. Well before their time I might add.

I’d interviewed countless people who had claimed they saw the light at the end of the tunnel during a near death experience. The stories all had one thing in common, none of them ever reached the end of that tunnel, so they couldn’t tell me what was beyond the light.

I studied ancient texts on the subject hoping that before the time of science people had known and seen things that couldn’t be explained away logically, and therefore had a better understanding of what might await us all after death. Once again, I came to a dead end, after not finding anything worthy of describing the afterlife.

I’d gotten to the point where I was feeling the only true way of finding out if Heaven existed would be to wait until I died. That of course was unacceptable, but what else could I do?

It was during those days of doubt that I suddenly had an idea. I surmised that if I couldn’t prove Heaven existed, how about proving that Hell did. My logic was quite simple, if I could prove that Hell existed it would validate my opinion that Heaven must exist as well. The more I thought about it, the more I believed that that was the only course left to me. So now, I had to prove the existence of Hell as a place rather than an idea, and knowing a lot about the occult I had quite a few places to start from.

I visited an old friend who had the most extensive library of ancient texts anywhere in the world, and all to do with Hell. He was only too pleased to allow me access to his collection, once I told him what I was doing. He already believed that Hell was a place you could visit, but didn’t have the courage to find out for sure.

He did come in handy however, because he directed me to a text that talked about bargaining one’s soul with the devil. I didn’t think I wanted to go that far, so I kept on looking for anything else that might prove useful. In the end though, I came back to that first piece of text repeatedly until finally I decided that I would read it and find out the truth.

It spoke of an ancient sorcerer who devised a way of summoning demons within a pentagram, a pentagram that made it impossible for the demon to cross into our world and was obliged to answer whatever questions the sorcerer asked. The text went on to say that, the demon had to speak the truth, or he couldn’t return to Hell.

At the bottom of this text was a very rough picture of the pentagram in question, and the words to summon the demon with. Fortunately I didn’t have to depend on the picture itself as it had faded over time and wasn’t that legible, as there was also a written description of how to draw it and what to use.

I talked all of this over with my friend first, wanting him to know what I was doing in case something bad happened to me. He tried to talk me out of it, as he was convinced that I was messing with things I didn’t understand. I assured him that I knew what I was doing, and he helped me set the pentagram up in the basement. I think if the truth were known he was interested in what would happen.

Chatting with Carl East

What will readers like about your book?
It’s different from the norm and original.

Why did you self publish?
I enjoy writing and saw an opportunity to cut through all the red tape that was needed to get published.

What is your writing process?
I like to think up ideas and play with them a little, sometimes this produces a good story and others a load of rubbish. lol

How long does it take you to write your first draft?
Anywhere from three months to six, I’m not a quick writer.

What inspired you to write this particular story?
I was sat thinking about the existence of Heaven when the idea for this story came to me.