Do you love the joy of a good thriller that gets your blood pumping and your mind racing? I'm inviting you to join me on the wild adventure that is my novel Ludwig--A Spiritual Thriller. It explores the terrifying realm of the multiple personality that was Beethoven. It exposes conspiracies fashioned hundreds of years ago by men in elitist societies who were intent upon manipulating world events to their own ends and destroying human freedom. They still are to this day. What can I tell you about Beethoven himself? How do I talk about Ludwig who obsessed my own life, demanding that I turn completely away from my own life to tell his tale? HERE'S HOW IT BEGINSIn a peasant's cottage outside Vienna, an old woman presents a man named Michael with a parcel. The parcel contains a manuscript. From the moment he takes possession of it, Michael embarks upon a life-threatening journey. For the manuscript carries the devastating power of the spirit of Ludwig van Beethoven and of the Illuminati, who attempted to use him in the way today's corporate controls attempt to manipulate all of us destroying the planet in the process. At once disturbing, dark, brooding and gripping, Ludwig is a spiritual thriller powerful enough to leave you haunted by its spirit and uplifted by the truths it tells.MAN OF INTEGRITYMichael is a much-decorated Special Forces leader. He's led actions in Indo-China. He's directed covert operations in Central America for the CIA. A tough idealist, he turned his back on the glamorous world of the American Samurai when he discovered how corrupt the causes to which he had pledged his life had become, and how powerless he was to change things. What he cannot know, until the old woman hands him the manuscript, is that this gift--which he wants nothing to do with--will not let him ignore him. What he does not know yet is that he is about to do battle with a life-changing challenge--a power far greater than any he once faced in the killing fields. The novel takes you back to the final ravaged days of Beethoven's life. We learn that Michael is not alone in being haunted by Ludwig and by the controllers who are attempting direct his life and take over his music. MY EXPERIENCE WRITINGThe first inkling I had that I would become obsessed with Ludwig had come decades earlier in a dream. I dreamed I was standing in the midst of a magnificent garden--like a garden in one of those fabulous Persian miniatures, it was filled with a myriad of flowers and trees covered with blossoms in luminous colors. There was a great pond in the midst of the garden and Beethoven's music was playing. It was nothing of his I had heard before, and yet I knew that it was Beethoven. I stood in the garden enraptured by the colors and the sounds. As the music reached a crescendo, the trees and flowers, fruits and sky became transfigured with light. The hand of God--as in the God of Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel--came down from the heavens, its index finger touching the center of the pond, sending ever-increasing circles outwards. It was more than I could bear. I closed my eyes and put my hands over my ears. When, moments later as the music began to descend from its climax, I removed them and opened my eyes, the garden was returning to its previous colors and state. A voice within told me, "It's all right--the next time such beauty comes you will be able to bear its beauty." That was all. The dream had occurred in my mid-twenties. I had no idea what it meant. All I knew was that it was some kind of a blessing. I felt as though something fundamental had shifted in my life because of it. THE CALL COMESFor many years I forgot about the dream and immersed myself in earning a living, writing books, making films for television and doing all the other things we all do every day, when the responsibilities of a householder sit heavily on our shoulders. Then, many years later, the dream came back to me, and with it a strange imperative from within: You MUST put everything aside to write a novel about Beethoven. I had never written fiction, not even dared to dream that I could. The thought terrified me. Having raised four children on my own, I had spent a lot of my time earning a living. I began to research the novel, but soon realized there was no way I could write it unless I gave up my work in the media and stopped earning a living during whatever time it would take to write it. Many of us stop ourselves from daring to do what we want to do most with the excuse that the only thing that is stopping us is lack of money. That was my excuse. It was only when I found myself in the position of having enough money to not have to work for four years, that I discovered that it's not a lack of money that stops us, but a deep unwillingness to embrace the absolute freedom of choice we all have.FEAR OF FREEDOMUntil this point, I had been able to see myself as a conscientious and caring mother willing to sacrifice her own desires to earn a living and care for her children. Suddenly I found this was no longer necessary. I had all the material resources I needed to do exactly what I wanted. Just as the beauty in the dream had seemed overwhelming to me, I found this newfound freedom terrifying.During the years that followed I learned a lot about patience and humility. I learned that I was nothing--I am nothing--can do nothing of myself. Yet out of that nothingness, I experienced new realities being born. During the next five years, so many internal events occurred that it would be impossible to speak of them all. Many of them went into creating the novel itself. I learned to accept that no matter how irrational all of this seemed to me, or how difficult and lacking in self-belief I felt, I was relentlessly driven by some wild inner passion to finish the book--never knowing from one day to the next if I was capable of doing so. ORDER OUT OF CHAOSThen one day the novel was finished. I felt like someone who had come back from the dead--a caterpillar who had wrapped itself within a cocoon and watched while its body was dissolved into a white gel, only to be reformed again into a butterfly. What did I find out from all this? I learned that there is the most incredible unseen order that regulates all our lives. Even when we perceive ourselves to be in total chaos, it is always present, always guiding us. Within such order lies a love and compassion that goes far beyond kindness. It can lead us into new worlds--realms of knowing what is right and necessary from one moment to the next. Ludwig is a gripping story of one man's dramatic struggle with the spirit of what I call the godpower--a struggle to become not just a hero in form but a hero in truth. This was also my own struggle. I believe it is the struggle each one of us faces in our own way. It may be that making a choice to embrace the struggle is what turns us from caterpillars into butterflies.Please pick up a copy of Ludwig--A Spiritual Thriller. It's available on Amazon in paperback and as an e-book. Do read it. I'd love to hear from you personally about your experience of the book. I'd also love for you to write a review of it on Amazon for me if you will.Here's some of what the media has said about the book: "Giddy stuff, well marshalled with a kind of ingenuous passion for ultimates and the welfare of the planet." OBSERVER Jennifer SelwayLudwig is a very clever thriller about unseen puppet masters and secret societies not unlike Umberto Eco's Foucault's Pendulum though without all the prosaic mumbo jumbo." YOU MAGAZINE James McHale"A spiritual thriller where the fiery creative spirit of Beethoven struggles with the forces of material powers. Stirring and compelling...Read relish and enjoy..." William Horwood"An intriguing tale of the occult; a modern day CIA agent turned journalist confronts the forces of evil unleashed by 18th century secret societies and embodied in the music of Beethoven. Ludwig is a musically well-informed psycho-spiritual odyssey which combines the world of science fiction with Iris Murdoch in one of her wilder modes. Happy reading!" CLASSICAL MUSIC"It is an eclectic read, with topics ranging from descriptions of Beethoven's haunting work to illuminati 'men in black' to intrigue and forbidden passion... and beyond! " GOOGLE BOOKSMEDIA QUOTES ABOUT LESLIE KENTON"Leslie Kenton is the Dalai Lama of the beauty business...her creed goes like this, 'If you're doing what's right for you, you'll continuously unfold and become more healthy and more beautiful. It's a process not a state."LOS ANGELES TIMES"A pioneering authority on alternative health and beauty, Leslie Kenton is one of life's natural leaders."YOU MAGAZINE LONDON"If there is one health expert who can genuinely be described as pioneering and visionary, it's Leslie Kenton."TIME OUT LONDON "Anything she promises, she fulfils. 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Not only is her writing packed with scientific andmedical references...she knows what she's talking about."INDEPENDENT ON SUNDAY LONDON"She's a genuine free spirit...Kenton's message is as non-confronting as her flowing blond hair and cornflower blue eyes."SYDNEY MORNING HERALD"Long before the rest of the world began to take an open-minded look at different cultures and alternative therapies, Leslie Kenton was exploring philosophies which would challenge and change the way we eat, think and behave."FINANCIAL TIMES LONDON"Britain's leading health and beauty expert...Leslie is an advertisement for her own fitness philosophy"THE MAIL ON SUNDAY LONDON"First she was a prophet crying in the wilderness about all things healthy and organic. Then she was acclaimed as a pioneer. Now she's a revolutionary urging women to build a bridge between bodies and souls. And aways she has star quality."SUNDAY INDEPENDENT DUBLIN"Leslie is the enduring high priestess of health and beauty."SYDNEY MORNING HERALD