Listen to Robert discuss his interest in writing about cults in latest novel, The Running Grave.
Transcript
I’ve always been very, very interested in mind control. I’ve always been very interested in groupthink and therefore in cults. So it’s something I always wanted to explore somehow in a book. So as I say, in 2010, when I started really thinking about how the whole series would take shape, I did foreshadow this because I thought this is going to be the time when I get to explore those things that interest me so much. And I love world building and creating this cult. Really thinking about what kind of cult I believe would take fire now in, you know, as we’re a couple of decades into the 21st century. What would it take to hook people in?
Perhaps particularly young people but as we see in the book, it’s not only young people who are attracted to this cult. But successful cults really manage to hook onto something in the zeitgeist. They understand what people want to hear, what people are trying to escape. And I think that the Universal Humanitarian Church does that very effectively within the book. So my jumping off point for the cult were the words that the cult leader says the very first time that Robin enters one of their meetings in their temple. And the words are ‘I admit the possibility. The possibility that there is a deity, the possibility that there is life beyond the earthly plane.’
I think that’s a good way of hooking people who may consider themselves atheists or sceptics. None of us can say for sure there is nothing beyond, but by saying I admit the possibility, the cult leader cleverly opens that door one inch and people want to come back. So that, for me, was the sort of ground zero for this cult. Do you admit the possibility?
