CommitmentNow.com Speaks with Best-Selling Author, Taylor Stevens!

Vanessa Michael Munroe is back! The smart, tough, mult-lingual protagonist of Taylor Stevens' debut novel, The Informationist, is back in the second book in the series, The Innocent!

With The Innocent, Taylor Stevens, the bestselling author of The Informationist, returns with another blockbuster thriller featuring the fearless Vanessa Michael Munroe.

Eight years ago, a man walked five-year-old Hannah out the front doors of her school and spirited her over the Mexican border, taking her into the world of a cult known as The Chosen. For eight years, followers of The Prophet have hidden the child, moving her from country to country, shielding the man who stole her. Now, those who’ve searched the longest know where to find her. They are childhood survivors of The Chosen, thirty-somethings born and raised inside the cult who’ve managed to make lives for themselves on the outside. They understand the mindset, the culture within that world, and turn to Vanessa Michael Munroe for help, knowing that the only possibility of stealing Hannah back and getting her safely out of Argentina is to trust someone who doesn’t trust them, and get Munroe on the inside.
 

CommitmentNow.com:  The Innocent is your second book featuring the protagonist Vanessa Michael Munroe an independent, tough, yet loyal “informationist.”  What events or people influenced the creation of such an intriguing character?

Taylor Stevens:  I think all writers are subconsciously influenced by what their own personal experiences.  I was reading a lot of Jason Bourne while writing The Informationist, so both he and Lara Croft were definitely in my head when I was creating Munroe.

Yes, Munroe is tough, but when writing my books I never thought that she was “too tough” or over the top.  She is a strong resourceful woman – that seemed perfectly normal to me.

CommitmentNow.com:  The Innocent is centered around a girl kidnapped and hidden by a cult called The Chosen.  You, yourself, were born into a cult, The Children of God.  Is The Chosen based on The Children of God?

Taylor:  Very much so.  The Chosen is the closest I can come to writing the about The Children of God in this type of format.  Hannah’s experiences are not my own, but most everything that takes place within The Chosen happened to somebody – just not necessarily me.

The Innocent is a work of fiction, but it’s not from nothing.  I couldn’t use all that I had experienced or all the things that people I loved experienced, but I took the essence of truth and turned it into fiction.

CommitmentNow.com:  The details about this cult, from the way the members live, to the way they think and treat their children, were specific and at times, horrifying.  Was it difficult to write a book on such a painful topic? 

Taylor:  Yes and No.  It was easy writing about what I know. I’ve long since come to terms, and made my peace with, what happened growing up, but it’s still painful to relive some of the experiences.  It was also difficult because when writing truth in fiction, you’re often handcuffed in the sense that you can’t stray too far from facts.  And sometimes the truth is mundane, which makes it hard to be accurate while writing a fast-paced story.

CommitmentNow.com:  You were denied an education past the sixth grade, yet you have become a New York Times best-selling author!  Are you self-taught or did you receive a formal education later in life?

Taylor:  My formal education ended at age twelve, but I’ve always had a voracious appetite for knowledge.  After I left The Children of God and arrived in the States, I read as much as I could; I needed to understand how the world works.  I had two kids at home and my family was living on $13 per hour.  I went to garage sales to find books and I read voraciously – text books, books about business law and real estate and novels.  Fortunately, I absorb information the way Munroe absorbs languages!

CommitmentNow.com:  In The Innocent Munroe is asked by childhood survivors of The Chosen to help get a 13 year old away from the cult.  Did you have a Munroe – like figure to help you escape The Children of God?

Taylor:  I wished for one – I think many of us did – but no, I did not have a Munroe to save me.  Unfortunately, there are very few true life stories of kids being kidnapped back.  Of the second generation who left The Children of God, some literally ran away and escaped when they were young, others got kicked out and were more or less dumped on the steps of a friend or a grandparent or relative, with no money, no education and no idea of how to function in society, but most of us had to find our own way out. It got physically easier to leave as time went on, but people who left without a plan often had a harder time getting on their feet, so I planned for a year and a half before leaving. It was still difficult, but not as difficult as it could have been.

CommitmentNow.com:  In The Innocent, Gideon tells Munroe that the media and most people are not interested in the lives of cult survivors – just a few salacious details.  Do you agree with that point of view?

Taylor:  About the media, yes. A lot of readers see The Innocent as Hannah’s story, which it is.  But the other characters – Logan, Gideon and Heidi – are there to tell the stories of survivors and Gideon’s pain is very familiar to me.
There are many misperceptions about cults.  I would like people to understand that children born into cults like The Chosen do not choose to join; it is forced upon them.  Second generation “members” are bystanders, yet society doesn’t distinguish them from those who, themselves, made the decision to join.  And the media does not seem to be interested in making that distinction, either.

CommitmentNow.com:  Heidi, another character who is a childhood survivor of The Chosen, doesn’t believe in brainwashing – she says the adult cult members make the decision to stay, for a variety of reasons.  Is that your opinion?

Taylor:  I agree with the way Heidi expresses it, but different people define brainwashing in different ways.  I was trying to raise an alternative viewpoint so that readers could see another side of this issue.  People without direct experience with these types of organizations tend to think that people who join cults and don’t leave have all been brainwashed.  But the first generation members are there by choice.  They even had a saying within The Children of God that, “the doors all lock from the inside.” Meaning, they could leave if they wanted. That’s over simplified, of course. There are many reasons why people stay, sometimes they are afraid of losing their children. There may be indoctrination and members may be enveloped into a different way of thinking, but that doesn’t mean they are mindless or that someone else is making them do or think things against their will.  There can also be many reasons why a person would join a group like The Chosen.  We look for simple explanations for people’s actions but sometimes there are none.

CommtimentNow.com:  Munroe is tough, smart, resourceful – and damaged.  It is her love for her friend Logan – a childhood cult survivor, and her empathy for Hannah, the child who was returned to The Chosen eight years ago at age five that sends her to Buenos Aires to remove Hannah from the cult.  Do you think it’s the juxtaposition of rough and tender that makes Munroe such a compelling character?

Taylor:  I think every reader will have a different answer to this question; every reader brings him/herself to each book he or she reads.  Some readers don't “get” Munroe; they think she’s too tough.  Others admire her strength.  What I love most about Munroe is that she takes responsibility for everything she does.  She doesn’t bemoan her situation – she deals.

CommitmentNow.com:  Would you consider writing a memoir of your own life experiences?

Taylor:  I probably won’t, because I feel that to do so would be like trying to exemplify my experience, and compared to what some of my friends went through, my own story growing up—no matter how difficult it sounds to those who hear it—was mild in comparison. I wasn’t raped by my stepfather or beaten until I bled.  I was never put into a “victor camp” at age eight or nine to do heavy labor as were other children who were deemed to be trouble makers.  I wasn’t separated from my parents as a toddler; that didn’t happen until I was twelve.  So how could I could I highlight my experiences and pain in a story all about me when people I love suffered so much worse?

Taylor Stevens is the New York Times bestselling author of The Informationist. The first novel featuring Vanessa Michael Munroe, it received critical acclaim and has been published in seventeen languages. Raised in communes across the globe and denied an education beyond the sixth grade, Stevens broke free of the Children of God and now lives in Texas. She is at work on a third Munroe novel.  Visit Taylor at www.taylorstevensbooks.com.

To purchase The Innocent, click here.