'Quirky, unnerving and brilliantly executed.’
                                                                                                           Little Bookness Lane.


 

‘In the hands of a master storyteller you are taken on a pulsating journey which informs as much as it thrills. The climax plays with your mind in the same way the manipulative Marcus Kline uses his clients thoughts and fears and hopes to help them grow...I found myself struggling to put it aside.                    

                                                                                                                                             Barrie Thomson, Bookends And Binends.


‘If you’re looking for a book that will twist your brains you will love this book. It’s a mind numbing book of mystery, a little of the unexplained, and subtle but incredibly fascinating skills...Roll on book two!’
                                                                                                                                                     Lizzy Baldwin, My Little Book Blog.

Influence excerpt

 It starts before it starts

Let me tell you the most important thing now, before everything else, before you start thinking too much.

The most important thing is this:

Influence is the ultimate resource. 

You were born with nothing. Knowing nothing. And from the moment you took your first breath the influence began.


We create our power through our ability to influence.

We create the power to understand, the power to change.

 We create our world and rule our planet not because we are the strongest animal, or the fastest or the most durable. No. We dominate because we are the most influential.

 And our influence is contagious.

 It is contagious because influence surrounds us whether we realise it or not. It enters through our eyes and ears, whether we mean it to or not. It seeps in through the very pores of our skin.

 It is contagious because our nature makes it so, because all human beings have an instinctive ability and desire to create associations and meanings.

 In simple terms we see a facial expression, we hear a tone of voice, we witness behaviours and we interpret them almost immediately – so fast that we don’t even recognise the process. We create the power we need to navigate life successfully through our ability and our need to create meaning.

 That means we are all open to influence.

 Which is why the most powerful people are those who have created meanings that most of us – meanings that you - buy into. Meanings about right or wrong. Meanings about how society is supposed to work. About how we are should relate to other humans. And how they should relate to us. Meanings about how we should look and what we should wear. Meanings about life and success and failure.

 You know these things. You have your own set of meanings. You believe you created them yourself.

 You are wrong. Pathetically, hopelessly wrong!

 You didn’t create the meanings that you spray out into the world in the same arrogant way that a cat pisses in every corner of its territory. You didn’t create them - they were installed in you by others.

 By the powerful people.

 People like me.

 They were planted in your subconscious.

 Left to grow.

 Think of the most powerful antenna in the world, one that never stops receiving signals. Now think –if you can - of something infinitely more receptive. Infinitely more switched on. 

 That is your subconscious mind!

 Always open to influence.

 The hidden star inside the human brain.  

 It runs the show – your show - without you even realising it. Forging your attitudes. Shaping your perceptions. Sparking your responses.

 Even when you fall in love, it is your brain – with the subconscious pulling strings from the shadows – that directs the process.

 You don’t fall in love with all of your heart.

 The human heart doesn’t have the capacity for such a complex creation as love. No, it is the brain, especially parts of the so-called reptilian brain, the primal part of your neural circuitry, which quite literally sprays out feelings of reward and need and desire when you tell yourself that you have found your perfect mate.

 Love is all in your head. Just like every other emotion.   

 If that hurts just think about this: your subconscious mind is at the very heart of your relationships with everyone and everything around you. It is even at the heart of your relationship with yourself.

 Only of course you can’t think about it. Not really. You believe you can. You might even feel that you are. Only that’s the left hemisphere of your brain talking. And that’s the side that does the obvious talking. It is responsible for words and logic, for naming things. It is the side that the neuroscientists call the Dominant Hemisphere.

 The arrogant bastard!

Asked to name itself, the left hemisphere comes up with something that a dictator would be proud of. What makes me laugh is that the scientists haven’t even realised that the left hemisphere asked the question in the first place. And then it provided an answer designed to show its control over everything. And the scientists bought into it. They didn’t even realise they were being played. They didn’t consider the possibility that the left hemisphere was wrong. Or that it was lying. But how could they? There is no way the left hemisphere is going to ask those sort of questions about itself.

 All I ask – for now – is that you use your puny, self-serving conscious mind to focus on this one vital truth: the subconscious is the supreme, silent power source.

 The subconscious stores every influence that has ever found its way inside you. And then it, in turn, influences you in more ways than you can ever imagine. It influences you twenty four hours a day, seven days a week. It influences every minute, every second, of your life.

 I have seen life begin and I have seen life end.

 I have ended lives.

 So many different lives. I have watched the black cloud release itself. I have quite literally seen death.

 Now I have to kill again. And differently. After all, what is a researcher supposed to do? How else can I further my knowledge? How else can I develop my expertise?

 So, people have to die. They have been well chosen, I promise you. And they will die painlessly. I promise you that, too. I will prove my superiority.  I will be neither stopped, nor caught. Instead I will fly. I will flow. I will find my way into your subconscious. I will live inside you. Influencing you. Whether you know it or not.

 You see, the subconscious connects us all.

 And it is my home.

 The subconscious is the deep current that runs through everything. It is the fathomless one. Happy to let the waves of consciousness crash above it. Deep in its own resolve and purpose.

 Running the show.

 At the very heart of us...

Influence
Published by Urbane Publications 2014.

 


A thought-provoking crime thriller that dares you to question just how much

you ever know about yourself and the people you share your life with.

 Marcus Kline is the world’s leading authority on communication and influence. A consultant who works for presidents and prime ministers, business leaders and A-list celebrities, Marcus is supremely confident in his personal power and his ability to influence others.

 Only when he finds himself at the centre of a series of gruesome and seemingly inexplicable murders, Marcus is forced to confront terrifying truths about just who he really is and about the life he has created.

 Can even the greatest communication expert be a mystery to himself? Can a man who appears to have everything also be a killer?

 Whatever the answers, no one, it seems, can escape the power of Influence.

 This is the first in the Marcus Kline trilogy. Belief, the second novel, is scheduled for publication in Spring 2017 by Urbane Publications.

 
Praise for Influence:

Author

Chris Parker

Author

Chris Parker