The Making of a Horror Writer – Dark Places of the Soul

About The Unholy

"A young curandera, a medicine woman, intent on uncovering the secrets of her past is forced into a life-and-death battle against an evil Archbishop. Set in the mystic land of Aztlan, the Unholy is a novel of destiny as healer and slayer. Native lore of dreams and visions, shape changing, and natural magic work to spin a neo-gothic web in which sadness and mystery lure the unsuspecting into a twilight realm of discovery and decision."

PAUL DeBLASSIE III, PhD, is a psychologist and writer living in his native New Mexico. A member of the Depth Psychology Alliance, the Transpersonal Psychology Association, and the International Association for Relational Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy, he has for over thirty years treatedsurvivors of the dark side of religion.  

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The narrative of The Unholy twists and turns and sets the top of the head on fire. Vivid imagery of landscape and dark places of soul usher the reader into hair-raising predicaments. Excitement pulses as Claire Sanchez finally discovers the reality of evil cloaked in religion. The reader keeps reading to find out how and if she’s going to make it.

For over thirty-two years I’ve treated survivors of the dark side of religion. The Unholy is a fantastical rendition of the stories of countless souls I’ve treated who’ve been caught in the grip of toxic religion and discovered that destiny is both healer and slayer. The symbols and images in The Unholy have arisen out of the dreams of myself and patients who have fought through the battle facing Claire Sanchez, the novel’s protagonist.

Claire Sanchez, 25 year old medicine woman, curandera, is a young woman who has lost her mother when she was five years old, witnessed her murder at the hands of a black robed man. She is a woman of tremendous courage and resolve. Fear tries to get her by the throat and squeeze the life out of her. There are so many times that she fought not to give up, to surrender to despair. I find her so human here, the draw to give up and make oneself disappear when confronted with evil. Evil, the real thing, can be so overwhelming, big and mysterious, and appear to be way out of our influence or control. She is one person, a very young and inexperienced person at that, up against a veritable force not only of society but of nature gone bad. To feel the odds stacked against you and yet know that you can’t be true to yourself, to your life, and to go on with life without getting answers and doing what you need to do to find those answers, no matter what, is sheer inspiration. Courage is courage only when it is face to face with one bad ass enemy…Archbishop William Anarch! If she dies then she knows that she has done what she has needed to do. Death is a real possibility for her. She knows this and yet has to risk it in order to be true to herself as a woman. To risk everything, life itself, in order to be true to self…that is courage and this is a lesson to be learned.