Thanks for your interest in my book. Here I'd like to share some of my personal thoughts on it..

First of all, let me say that although the premise is the same, it is not a rip-off of Richard Matheson's novel What Dreams May Come. In fact, I was not even aware of What Dreams May Come until after I had written Almost Heaven and read about plans to produce the What Dreams May Come movie.

"Oh no!" I thought. "Somebody stole my incredibly original idea!" I frantically searched for a copy of What Dreams May Come only to discover that it was out of print and published in the late seventies, more than a decade prior to even any inspiration to write my story. "Oh no!" I thought. Everybody is going to think I'm a plagiarist!"

I finally found a copy of What Dreams May Come at the library and leafed through it. More incriminating material--a fatal accident; suicide; a trip to hell; even a character named Albert! How could Richard Matheson have predicted what I was to write? It turned out that my idea was not so original after all. But even so, stories about life after death are nothing new, considering Dante's Inferno and even the Bible.

I eventually read Dreams and enjoyed it very much, and would never think of comparing myself to the prolific Richard Matheson, a writer far more accomplished. I was relieved to discover that even though the two books are set in the afterlife, they are essentially about different things. Dreams, from my viewpoint, is basically a love story between a dead man and his wife. Almost Heaven, on the other hand, has elements of a love story but is primarily about a man's struggle with good and evil within himself, and an examination of the conflict of love and hate within each of us.

The marketing tag-line, "He lost his way in life...He found it in death," summarizes the theme of my book quite well. It's a story about finding yourself. Our hero, haunted by severe depression and suicidal intentions, accidentally dies before his time and journeys into the afterlife. It takes death to open his eyes to the value of living, and while caught in a mysterious netherworld he strives to defy fate and return to the family he abandoned, confronting along the way his own personal demons while falling in love with another lost soul.

This book was not originally intended to be a book. I had set out to write a screenplay about life after death. In the late 80s when the idea first came to me, it seemed that there hadn't been an intelligent supernatural thriller picture produced since The Exorcist, which in my opinion is a masterpiece of filmmaking by William Friedkin as well as screenwriting by William Peter Blatty. Blatty's novel is a modern classic that I admire very much. The reason for the success of both that film and novel is because it was absolutely believable despite how absurd or fantastic the premise.

During the 80s horror pictures had become mere slasher films, mistaking blood and gore for true suspense and terror. There hadn't been a serious, intelligent movie about heaven or hell or life after death for quite some time, if ever, and with new technological advances in special effects, I felt something good as well as commercial was a real possibility. I was also thinking about the lack of any great new fantasy films like the Wizard of Oz, another one of my favorites. (It's no accident that they refer to that movie in the course of the story--if you look closely, you'll see that the plot is the same: the hero gets lost and tries to return home. After all, there are only about 20 basic plots used over and over again in all fiction, you know.)

My first draft of Catharsis turned out to be about 150 pages, way too long to try to sell unless you're going to be the director and your last name is Spielberg or Lucas or you're sleeping with a studio head. Screenplays should ideally be between 90 and 120 pages, using the rule of thumb that one page translates to one minute of screen time. After several re-writes I finally got it down to 114 pages or so, but felt bad about discarding what I had to cut. Since I had become so involved with the story, I decided to adapt it into a novel, retaining all of my original material as well as adding several subplots and lots of background that was completely new. I felt that even if I was lucky enough to sell the screenplay and even luckier to have it produced, it might very well be re-written to the point that it would end up unrecognizable. A novel would at least preserve my original story and perhaps even serve as a marketing tool for a movie.

I got some good feedback from the screenplay, and even went as far as having it optioned by a couple of producers who were very excited about it. It was they who suggested I change the title from Catharsis to something more accessible. They felt that people wouldn't understand the word "Catharsis". It wasn't the first time that title was criticized, however--an acquaintance suggested it was "pretentious", and perhaps it was. So I changed it to Almost Heaven, and to be consistent I changed the title of the novel as well. Maybe I should have given more thought and research to a new title. I later discovered there were already several other romance novels of that name. It also might have been mistaken as a travelogue of West Virginia penned by the late John Denver after the lyrics in his hit song Country Road. For that reason, before the book went to print I added the subtitle "Lost in the Afterlife", which perhaps should have been the only title. Anyway, the old adage applies: Don't judge a book by its cover--or title for that matter.

The option on the screenplay expired and those two producers who were so excited about it did a disappearing act, which is not unusual in Hollywood. (In hindsight, perhaps they themselves didn't understand what "Catharsis" meant, either.) I went on to write other things, and more years slipped by. What Dreams May Come became a somewhat successful film but not the commercial blockbuster and critical success the filmmakers had probably had hoped for. I enjoyed the film, especially the special effects, but couldn't help but suspect that the production, regardless of its success, might have stymied interest in producing anything similar such as Almost Heaven. For a while Hollywood seemed to be making competing versions of the same movie, such as Deep Impact and Armageddon, but it didn't happen with the afterlife theme. Nevertheless, the screenplay is still being shopped around by me and my agents--hope springs eternal, and perhaps the book will eventually garner some interest.

It is also worth noting that even though the copyright date is 1994, only recently has the book become available in paperback as well as downloadable on the internet With our society changing so fast, some things may already be out-of-date, I'm afraid. For example, there is a reference to Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, popular the day I happened to write that passage. Today Pokemon would probably be more appropriate and tomorrow maybe something else. To cite another example, airport security is tighter today than it was a decade ago--it probably wouldn't be so easy no to sneak onto a plane in place of another passenger as it happens in the story.

But despite being written several years ago, Almost Heaven: Lost in the Afterlife is a new novel to most, and because it doesn't have a million dollar marketing campaign behind it, it is you the reader who must make or break it. So if you like fantasy, horror, romance, spirituality, What Dreams May Come, The Exorcist, or even The Wizard of Oz, you will probably like my book. And if you do, pass it on to your friends. If you don't, however, still pass it on but let me know what you didn't like about it and maybe I can do better next time.

Finally, I want to stress that this book is by no means a religious manifesto. There are characters who are religious, and those who are not. The book alludes to ancient traditional religious beliefs such as the existence of an afterlife and concepts of heaven and hell, but I deliberately made the actuality of these concepts vague. The last thing I wanted was to be preachy. My intention was to spark the imagination and entertain by dealing with a subject that everybody can relate to. As did Mr. Matheson for What Dreams May Come, I had also researched actual near death experiences, such as the accounts documented by Dr. Moody and others, to add a degree of realism. But ultimately it's all fabricated. I never had any personal near death experiences nor have I known anyone who has.

By the same token, I hope no one perceives the book as anti-religious or offensive. Yes, there is some anti-religious and offensive language, but only to be demonstrative of evil and should not be taken out of context. If anything, the book is spiritual--something religion occasionally loses sight of. I've often observed that religion is in many ways more about politics than spirituality. And by spirit I refer to that intangible but real phenomenon that makes people act in a good way or a bad way; makes one feel love or hatred. Call it emotion, conscience, angels, or demons. Whatever it is, whether or not such a force continues after the physical heart and brain cease to function, well, nobody really knows that for sure, do they?

It comes down to a question of faith. Faith exists to explain the unknown and inexplicable, and faith is something that must and should be intimately personal. So do I believe in life after death? All I will say is that we shall all one by one discover the answer to that sooner than we might like, because life is short. Until then, live life, see the world, have personal relationships, experience new things, collect knowledge, use your imagination, and read books.

Jim Polivka

April, 2000