A Quick Overview of CROSS Gate Book One

'The Family in Turmoil' are the Severs, consisting of David the father; Cassie, his daughter; Jeff, his son; and Carolyn, his estranged wife. David and Cassie have some latent abilities they used to play with when she was a child. They toyed with getting 'inside' one another, skirting the fringes of a technique known as dream-walking, though they had no label, nor any depth of knowledge about it.


Now in the present day, they find themselves doing it again, coinciding with dreams David is having of a mysterious circular cross shape and a Templar Knight. David's eccentricities surrounding his dream world is wreaking havoc in the marriage and family unit. Carolyn seeks out new age church alternatives as her solution, while David is having no part of it, as the bent of his faith is that of a traditionalist. 


Cassie, a rebel teen, has little interest in either, but is fascinated with her father's dream world, and begins to share in it, while her brother seeks only what best serves preserving the family as a whole. This leads him to more of an alliance with his mother and her new-found 'mentor,' charlatan church leader, Murro Vogt. As Murro takes Carolyn and Jeff 'under his wing,' his true motives in targeting this family because of their ancestry to the line of Knights Templar, slowly begin to emerge. 


Cassie's allegiance to her father and his resistance towards Vogt brings the two sides headlong on collision course, eventually leading to Cassie's introduction to Sandra Nikells, a psychic consultant to the local police department. Nikells becomes involved when a stark tragedy of Vogt's making strikes the family, felling both Carolyn and Jeff. Eventually, she becomes their coach in the art of dream walking and the use of 'dream gates'. As these skills are honed, so too is the mystery of David's dream cross circles. They also are revealed to be 'gates' in their own right. Gates of cross-over passage to the other side!


It is ultimately to this end, a mission pre-destined to the family Severs by their connection to the Templar Grand Master deSevery, that their road of discovery leads. And once upon it, there is no turning back. The very author of the faith they so desperately struggle over is the ONE who sets them forth on a tumultuous journey into the spiritual realm. Fraught with dark dangers and entities, they march into the unknown not only to rescue mother and son, but many other souls lost in a black beyond! 




       

The Shepherd Lives!

I thought I'd had a completely original notion when coming up with 'the Shepherd' reference to the persona of Jesus in the CrossGate books, but this very day I discovered, not to my chagrin, but to my delight actually, that Christ, as 'the Shepherd' appeared in scripture! Not in the Cannon, and included in the New Testament, but in a 'Lost Gospel of the Bible,' a book called 'Hermas.' (I've been reading these 'Lost Books' for a while now)


In Hermas II, 1-3 it reads:
When I had prayed at home, and was sat down upon the bed, a certain man came in to me with a reverend look, in the habit of a shepherd, clothed with a white cloak, having his bag upon his back, and his staff in his hand, and saluted me.
I returned his salutation, and immediately he sat down by me, and said unto me, 'I am sent by that venerable messenger, that I should dwell with thee all the remaining days of thy life.'
But I thought that he was come to try me, and said unto him, 'Who are you? For I know to whom I am committed.' He said unto me, 'do you not know me?' I answered no. 'I am,' said he, 'that shepherd to whose care you are delivered.' 


Had I made this discovery in other than some form of scripture, I may not have been quite as giddy over it. But, being from 'inspired writings,' I find I am - more inspired myself! Justified, confirmed, whatever you like to call it. Thus, even if not in an 'accepted' New Testament book, The Shepherd indeed has a First Century reference as Christ himself! Whoo-hoo, how about that! Amen?!