Michael B. Koep – författare

Michael B. Koep’s final installment in the Newirth Mythology trilogy brings a psychologist face to face with his greatest fear: madness. On the other side of the world, a professor of mythology struggles to interpret a sudden shift in the historical timeline, the mysterious discovery of the ruins of an ancient city and the anomalous nature of Loche’s writing.

Discredited mythology professor Astrid Finnley believes gods and immortals once battled for a place in Creation—for a place of their own on the earth. When she is summoned to a secret archeological dig site in Northern Idaho to translate an ancient script, she uncovers an unthinkable nightmare: a woman buried alive—for over a thousand years.

Psychologist Loche Newirth’s assassination is ordered to prevent him from rewriting history. But his former mentor, Dr. Marcus Rearden, wants him alive to torture, to command, to control. When Loche discovers his son is also a target, he flees, pursuing a lead that promises to end what his writing has started. Instead, the path vaults him back to the prehistory of his story—to a time when a venomous army of gods lay siege to the City of Immortals, and his little boy stands in the balance.

The Newirth Mythology trilogy is a wholly original, imaginative, and remarkably inventive approach to the thriller genre. Koep’s final installment, The Shape of Rain is a poetic, action-packed, and existential book that will leave you haunted and wowed.

Imagine paintings that hold the secrets to the meaning of life and death or scribbled words that can alter the past and reshape the present.

We know art imitates life, but in Michael B. Koep’s thriller fiction trilogy, the author brings the arts to life in an action-packed tale spanning seven centuries.

In the spring of 1338, young William of Leaves knows only of remedies, herbs, and his mother’s kindness. When he is forced to watch as she is dragged to a witch’s pyre by a mob led by the Bishop of London, the mysterious immortal apothecary, Albion Ravistelle, promises the boy a chance at vengeance.

In the summer of 1972, Helen Storm is a stoned groupie on the sunset strip with a very special condition: she is immortal. When her life intersects with a famous guitar player, she is introduced to her future as a deadly and remorseless assassin.

In present day, psychologist Loche Newirth and Julia Iris must come to terms with Loche’s prophetic writings that have changed the course of history and shaped the lives of William, Helen, and countless others. As a war breaks out between the immortals on earth and Albion Ravistelle, Loche must accept the realities he has authored and cross over into death—he must enter again into Basil Fenn’s paintings to find a way to end the conflict.

In part two of the Newirth Mythology, Leaves of Fire, Koep entwines these lives and lifetimes as he explores myth, memory, revenge, and the hope of forgiveness.

Psychologist Loche Newirth becomes hunted when he sees a painting that opens a window onto the afterlife. An ancient order of men seeking to control the art pursue him across the world, through centuries, into madness and beyond. The first part of Michael B. Koep’s the Newirth Mythology—The Invasion of Heaven is mystery, adventure, myth, betrayal, murder, and madness.

Loche Newirth wonders if it was his fall: the fifty foot drop from the rocky cliff to the icy water below. Is this why he has been hallucinating? Or is it because one of his clients is dead, or his mentor has gone mad, or that his wife is leaving him? He can’t bring himself to believe what he has been seeing. Insane things like a massive, searching eye. He sees it in the water below the cliff. He sees it in mirrors, on walls: a massive, crystal blue iris and fathomless pupil there in the center of his life, looking at him.

To find the answer, Loche pens the recent events of his life into a book and leaves the work behind for his mentor Doctor Marcus Rearden to interpret. As Rearden reads he plunges into the harrowing depths of Loche’s reality: his loss of a client, the discovery of an unknown past, an ancient conflict over possession of the human condition, the awesome reality of the gods walking among us, and the crimes of humanity invading the hope that lies beyond the grave.

And along the way, Loche tells of unforgettable characters: the torn and manic housewife that teeters on the edge of sanity, and a depressed, swashbuckling swordsman that believes he is over six hundred years old, the stoned and prolific painter and his perilous work he must keep secret, and the beautiful business woman that abandons her life’s work for a love she never expected.

Gig, a slang word coined in the 1920s by jazz musicians, short for engagement or live musical performance, combined with the latin based suffix -mentia, meaning, condition of the mind, the invented word gigmentia might be defined as engagement of the mind. Or, perhaps, that confusing state of too many shows, too many late nights, too many repetitions to remember accurately—the struggle to recount the long performance that is our life.

Gigmentia is a reflection on the raw, challenging, and gritty vocation of a blue-collar musician living in the Pacific Northwest, and the varied adventures of a hard working, day-in day-out rock band. Introspective, insightful, and eloquently observed, Koep chronicles a summer season of fifty rock shows performed in small clubs, huge bars, and on outdoor festival stages, in barns, backyards, and the middle of the woods. Between gigs, Koep writes of sword fights on the lawn with his young son, the challenges of building a household, of world travel, pop music, poetry, and of the fascinating pursuit of the writer’s craft as he works toward completing his third novel. As the summer wanes and he balances the rigors and joys of live performance, promoting his books, and being a father and partner, his mother descends into dementia and forgets the world around her, including her son.

Gigmentia is an intimate tableau of an artist’s life; a love song to drums, fatherhood, writing, and to the passing of a beloved mom.