11/7/25
I got up way too early this morning, because something that needed changing in my new book came to mind, and I can never get back to sleep when that happens. Yesterday, I took yet another proofreading pass through "The Sacred Carol," and I'm glad I did. As soon as I get the physical proof back from Amazon, it will go live on that venue. Then I post the hardback version on IngramSpark.

Once I have a physical copy in-hand, the next step is to shoot my video blog introduction. I've been practicing it out loud, and it's tricky. I have to introduce several complicated, radical new ideas in a short period of time. Some of it is technical, and I have to make it interesting. Years ago, when I was into photography, I realized that an image had to be three times more engaging in real life than it would end up being in the photograph, because that much is lost in translation. The same may be true of verbal introductions. This is probably the origin of "hype," when people realized that what was intrinsically interesting was boring people to tears when they tried to explain it. Hype is the artificial solution to that dilemma. I'm going for the natural solution.

Another artificial solution is to make up the facts. Again, my solution is to have such inherently interesting, real facts, that they will hold the audience's interest without the need for embellishment.

It's always hard to compete with people who are hyping up fanciful nonsense, when you are presenting the truth. But in this case, I think my truth is competitive with their lies. I have uncovered Charles Dickens' hidden, erased words in "A Christmas Carol," and those words and phrases prove him a plagiarist. They reveal the original co-authors; and they reveal that there was a sacred, esoteric redemption novella underneath his cartoonish ghost story.

The significance of this discovery is hard to convey; nay, impossible to convey to people who aren't ready for it. I will talk about it, if asked, in podcast interviews, or in Q&A when I give talks, or in private discussions. I won't lead with it. It should be obvious from the title of my book, "The Sacred Carol." A secular society has embraced the secularized caricature of a spiritual novella. A spiritually enlightened society would never have been fooled in the first place. As for traditional Christians, they will face a hard decision. Do they throw it out altogether, or do they admit that the young couple they persecuted, in the early 1800's, wrote an esoteric story that moved the world, even when secularized and dumbed down by Dickens? Because Abby, the Catholic mystic who was the spiritual powerhouse behind the "A Christmas Carol," was persecuted by these people as a witch.

You might as well persecute Thomas Merton as a warlock.

I wonder, as I write this, will anyone step up to assist me? If not, I will do it myself. Let's see if one person can move the world, and set a horrible mistake—the hijacking of a sacred novella by a sociopathic literary imposter—to rights.

Sincerely,

Stephen Sakellarios, M.S.