Abstract
Faustian bargains is a historical fiction novel that is based on a true crime event that took place from 1998 through 2001. The story is of a serial bomber complete with allegations of sex, drugs, paranoid vengeance, astrology, and the occult. The Alameda District Attorney’s office successfully prosecuted the so-called Fremont Bombings. At the time, these bombings resulted in the most highly publicized trial that Alameda County had had in many years. The bombings, which occurred on March 29, 1998, involved six bombs at five different locations. The Fremont police chief and a Fremont city councilman were two of the targets, along with a wealthy Fremont family’s home. Even though the project does include many of the facts of the trial and my personal experience along with my astrological expertise and specialized knowledge that helped to convict one of the Bay Area’s most malicious and evil serial bombers, it is, in fact, merely a work of fiction. Methodology for Writing the Fictionalized Version of Faustian Bargains There were various methods used for writing Faustian Bargains. First of all, the piece has its own storyline. The first question that a person may ask is how to turn a true crime event into a work of fiction? Of course when one embarks on such an undertaking, there are certain elements one must consider such as how to go about developing the main idea, the plot, the characters, and the theme. The main idea, plot, and timeline of Faustian Bargains do resemble the true crime storyline, overall plot, and timeline. The characters in Faustian Bargains were based on the people involved in the crime. However, all of the characters in Faustian Bargains were completely and dramatically altered not only for literary and entertainment purposes, but also for the protection of those whose lives were the most effected by the crime and the real life event. Literary Influences on Faustian Bargains The major literary theme that influenced the project and the one that is featured throughout Faustian Bargains is the character Faust from both Christopher Marlowe’s Doctor Faust and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s Faust. Other pieces of literature also influenced the project. Some of the pieces that were referenced or used as minor themes in Faustian Bargains were Bram Stoker’s, Dracula, Shakespeare’s Hamlet, Troilus and Cressida, and The Tempest, Angus Fletcher’s Doctor Faustus and the Lutheran Aesthetic, Bernard McGinn’s Visions of the End: Apocalyptic Traditions in the Middle Ages, Otto Heller’s Faust and Faustus: A Study of Goethe's Relation to Marlowe, Bradley P. Nystrom and David P. Nystrom’s The History of Christianity, Jeffrey Burton Russell’s Witchcraft in the Middle Ages, Patrick Collinson’s The Reformation: A History, Manly P. Hall’s The Secret Teachings of All Ages, Robert Graves’s The Greek Myths and Hebrew Myths: The Book of Genesis, Robert Macoy’s A Dictionary of Freemasonry, James R. Lewis’s The Astrology Encyclopedia, Barbara H. Watters’s Horary Astrology and the Judgment of Events, William Page Andrews’s Goethe's Key to Faust: A Scientific Basis for Religion and Morality and for a Solution of the Enigma of Evil, William L. Reese’s Dictionary of Philosophy and Religion, Paul Foster Case’s The True and Invisible Rosicrucian Order, Heinrich Kramer and James Sprenger’s Malleus Maleficarum, Reinhold Elbertin and Georg Hoffman’s Fixed Stars and Their Interpretation, Vivian E. Robson’s The Fixed Stars and Constellations in Astrology, Bernadette Brady’s Brady's Book of Fixed Stars, June G. Bletzer’s The Encyclopedic Psychic Dictionary, Peter Berresford Ellis’s The Druids, Llewellyn George’s The New A to Z Horoscope Maker and Delineator, Doris Doane’s Modern Horary Astrology, E. J. Holmyard’s Alchemy, Thomas Norton’s Ordinal of Alchemy, Marie-Louise Von Franz’s Alchemy: An Introduction to the Symbolism and the Psychology, and The Cloud of Unknowing and Other Works.