“I lived in Egypt way before that,” she said and smiled.

“You know this tomb has been on display in this museum since 1916.” I said. Something about the way she said it made me curious. “Since the last time I was here,” she said. “It hasn’t changed much at all,” she said finally in a wistful voice. I watched her examine the space, giving every section careful attention. She had long blonde hair and was wearing a school uniform. A little girl about seven or eight had entered and came up beside me to look through the slot. In ancient times this passageway allowed for family and priests to offer up incense and chants to the deceased. I was lucky to be in the intimate ritual chamber alone and looking through the slot in the wall at a wooden statue of Perneb in the room beyond known as a serdab. The space is very small and only three or four people can fit at the same time. I took the other, which leads to a second ritual chamber. One doorway leads to the main offering chapel. You can enter the limestone tomb from the left or the right.

The Mastaba Tomb of Perneb is a tiny bit of Fifth Dynasty Egypt transplanted to Manhattan, a gift from Edward S. One day about three and a half years ago, on one of my regular pilgrimages to the Met, I headed straight for one of my favorite spots. So it’s not all that surprising that sooner or later I’d write a novel with a museum as one of my main characters and that I’d pick the museum that was in my backyard when I was a kid.īut how I got idea for The Hypnotist is surprising, at least to me. I don’t think I’ve ever gone longer than a month without visiting there. That’s where I go to be renewed, refreshed and inspired. I’ve often felt art is my religion and that museums in general, but the Met specifically, are my temples of choice.

We lived a block away from the Metropolitan Museum of Art and I started taking Saturday morning art classes there when I was just seven years old. Growing up, I didn’t want to be a writer I wanted to be an artist. Rose shares the story of how she came up with the idea for The Hypnotist. She also runs two blogs Buzz, Balls & Hype (offering marketing solutions to authors and publishers) and Backstory (stories of how novels came to be from authors) Rose is the bestselling author of 11 novels – Lip Service, In Fidelity, Flesh Tones, Sheet Music, Lying in Bed, The Halo Effect, The Delilah Complex, The Venus Fix, The Reincarnationist, The Memoristand The Hypnotist.

Today I welcome on the blog the author of this series, M.J. Yesterday, I posted my review of The Hypnotist, the third book in what has become one of my all-time favorite series.

The Delilah Complex by M.J. Rose