(In this time of inauguration) THE WOW OF “VOW” to change the future - in real life and in fiction.

VOW ON A GOOD BOOK!

In this time of Inauguration oaths, it’s interesting to reflect on the power of the vow (but only, and always, if that vow is truly meant!) A vow each day will change your day. In real life, if you vow to make friends today - you will. You’ll reach out and do it. Vow to be happy and you will be. You’ll turn to what will make you happy. It’s like a self-fulfilling prophecy. A mainspring that drives action. We should stand up and make a vow on a 'good book'every day. It’s the same thing with fiction and, for me, I don’t believe my story starts until my character makes a vow, literally, or implicitly.

A young boy vows to hold back the sands of forgetfulness from his fading and beloved Grandpa who was once an Egyptologist – and to achieve that he takes his Grandpa to the museum after school each day. Alzheimer’s disease meant that his memory would worsen over time, although Grumpy could often remember things perfectly and in amazing detail. How could she say he used to love Egypt? Grumpy still loved Egypt. And nothing was going to take it away from him. Not if I had anything to do with it. This is what I will do with the rest of our time together. I will give him back Egypt, I vowed. Even if the hungry sands keep coming back to cover his memories the way the desert sand blankets the ruined temples and tombs of the pharaohs, I will dig them up again. I will hold back the whole desert to save the precious treasures of his mind. I would do it, not just for the love of Egypt we shared and for the interest he had always shown in everything I did, but because I loved him with the freely given love you could only know with a grandparent.

The Smiting Texts also begins when a renegade, alternative British Egyptologist Anson Hunter makes a vow to find out why his famous ‘mainstream’ Egyptologist father was murdered in Egypt…

And The Egyptian Mythology Murders begins when the returned goddess Isis, revivified when her mummy is blasted in a CT scans in a London hospital, vows: “Osiris. I will begin a new journey for you. I, Isis, Great of Magic, will rise and search for you – for your remains, your pieces, even the atoms of your dust - and through the power of my magic I will restore you.” Isis renewed the vow of a new cycle, a cycle that the Egyptians believed took place every 5,000 years and that had now been re-activated by a blast of twenty-first century radiation. And so it goes. Maybe, right now, stand up formally and make a vow today. Vow on a good book!