A Conversation with Linda Stasi

with Linda Stasi

We are delighted to welcome journalist and debut novelist Linda Stasi to Omnimystery News today.

Linda is the author of several nonfiction books but her first novel is The Sixth Station (Forge Books, January 2013 hardcover and ebook formats).

We recently had a chance to talk to Linda about her new book.

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Omnimystery News: We understand the idea to write The Sixth Station came to you during a recent visit to Turkey.

Photo provided courtesy of
Linda Stasi

Linda Stasi: I was astounded to find out that the Virgin Mary most probably lived out her final days in Ephesus, Turkey, after being brought there by the Apostle John, the man whom Jesus charged with the care of His mother as he lay on the cross. John began an evangelical Christian community in Ephesus, the place where St. Paul later had his own conversion.

OMN: But why a novel? You are already an established author of nonfiction.

LS: It wasn't a choice! The book came to me in Turkey and began to haunt my every waking — and sleeping hour. As a writer, I was itching to tell the story. As a reporter, I knew I couldn't tell a story until I dug through every possible clue.

OMN: How much of the story is real?

LS: The background is real — the story is fiction. And yes, there is in fact a cloth that bears the image of Jesus in a monastery in Manopello, Italy, which most probably contains His DNA.

OMN: The heroine of the book, Alessandra Russo, is a reporter. Did you base her character on any of your journalism colleagues? Maybe even include a little of yourself?

LS: She is a combination of many of the people I am closest to in journalism, including yes, myself. Many of the characters in the book are also all based on people I've known and quirky, strange people I've met or interviewed and were taken with for their goodness and sometimes for their evil. Reporters meet all kinds of people and some stick to your bones like a bad meal.

OMN: You mentioned that you "dug through every possible clue" to tell this story. Tell us more about that.

LS: It began for me, as I said, at the House of the Virgin, in Turkey. But as I dug deeper into the story and attempted to trace the path that the Veil or more properly, il Volto Santo, took in its 2,012 years, I realized that I would have to travel and take the same hikes, treks and journeys as the people who'd had possession of this relic since the beginning.

That meant driving about 500 or 600 miles through Italy with an exorcist priest from the Vatican, staying with monks in Italy, learning at the knee of a hermetic nun up in the mountains of Manoppello where she lives alone in a two-room house, and doing things like climbing Montségur, the nearly 5,000 foot mountain where the Christian Cathars, who may have been in possession of the relic were slaughtered en masse by the Pope's crusaders in 1244. I drove 1,500 miles through Turkey visiting possible places where the early Christians lived and visited many Templar strongholds there.

Every place described in the book has been visited several times by me. There was no place too remote or too obscure for me to visit.

OMN: How did your own beliefs affect your writing a story based on faith and religion?

LS: I have always believed that all of the great prophets were evolved beings that wanted to give the world the truth and did so. It's when they died and their minions took over and fought over who would be the keeper of the truth is when it always got distorted. Often the very philosophies of these great beings — most especially Jesus — became the opposite of what they preached. Jesus preached poverty and turning the other cheek, and yet, look at the Catholic Church. It's one of the richest organizations on earth with a bloody, bloody history.

OMN: Did you face any challenges working with the Catholic Church?

LS: It helps to have a friend at the Vatican. And I did, Father Peter Jacobs, who was registered to do exorcisms. He was kind of like the CIA for the Vatican. No one would ever admit that he was an operative for them, but he took me inside the Vatican to the pope's private gardens and dug out for me things in the Vatican library you wouldn't believe.

In fact, when he died, I got a call in the middle of the night from a friend of his who told me to get myself to his Vatican area apartment and remove his laptop and boxes and boxes of his secret papers, which I did. Luckily I happened to be in Italy at the time. You think it's easy to gain entrance to a dead exorcist priest's apartment when the Vatican wants in first?

As a questioning although lapsed Catholic — and worse as a reporter! — I began to realize that one of the very pillars of the Vatican, the sixth station of the cross is a totally made up story. It's not easy after a lifetime of belief to unmask the fact that there never was a Saint Veronica, and that the Veil of Veronica legend celebrated in every Catholic Church in the world, is a fairy-tale. Veronica, literally translates to "vera" or true, and "icon" or image. In other words, the veil is in fact the "true image" of the face of Jesus. As one monk said to me, "Do you really think that a woman with a name like Veronica lived in Jerusalem 2,000 years ago?"

OMN: Was your intent to both entertain and educate readers?

LS: Yes. I hope they are entertained, but also that they come away with a knowledge of religious history that they most probably have never heard. I also would like people to ask themselves this question after reading the book: If Jesus were alive right now, would we as modern humans still be so threatened that we'd do the same thing again?

OMN: What authors have inspired you?

LS: Definitely Nelson DeMille, who is always wise-ass and always brilliant; Dan Brown, Steve Berry, and John Grisham for their fantastic story-telling abilities; JK Rowling, because well, the world she created is incomparable and her imagination unlimited. I am inspired by every great book and every great newspaper column and story I've ever read. Yet, sometimes, with books like The English Patient by Sri Lankan-Canadian novelist Michael Ondaatje, I am so overwhelmed that I'd like to live in some of those sentences, they are so beautifully constructed.

OMN: Do you see Alessandra Russo returning in a sequel?

LS: You'll have to contact a higher power for the answer. I just don't know. I hope so. People who've read the book keep urging me. They want to know what the heck happens to her.

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Linda Stasi is a celebrated media personality, columnist and critic for The New York Post. She is also an onscreen cohost of NY1, Time Warner's 24/7 news channel, and has appeared on such programs as The O'Reilly Factor, The Today Show, The View, Chris Matthews, CBS Morning Show, and Good Day New York. An award-winning columnist, she is also the author of five nonfiction books. The Sixth Station is her first novel.

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The Sixth Station
Linda Stasi

Some say Demiel ben Yusef is the world's most dangerous terrorist, personally responsible for bombings and riots that have claimed the lives of thousands. Others insist he is a man of peace, a miracle worker, and possibly even the Son of God. His trial in New York City for crimes against humanity attracts scores of protestors, as well as media and religious leaders from around the world.

Cynical reporter Alessandra Russo heads to the UN hoping for a piece of the action, but soon becomes entangled in controversy and suspicion when ben Yusef singles her out for attention among all other reporters. As Alessandra begins digging into ben Yusef's past, she is already in more danger than she knows — and when she is falsely accused of murder during her investigation, she is forced to flee New York.

On the run from unknown enemies, Alessandra finds herself on the trail of a global conspiracy and a story that could shake the world to its foundations. Is Demiel ben Yusef the Second Coming or the Antichrist? The truth may lie in the secret history of the Holy Family, a group of Templars who defied the church, and a mysterious relic stained with the sacred blood of Christ Himself.