Greetings, readers, and happy Friday If that book trailer hasn’t convinced you to pick up a copy of The Hypnotist by M.J. Rose, then perhaps the guest post below will Every day this week I’ve been promoting M.J. Rose, author of The Hypnotist by including snippets of the first chapter that I hope you’ve enjoyed. If you’d like to check out Chapter 1 in its entirety, please go here.

M.J. was kind enough to take the time to write a guest post about how art has inspired her as a writer and how it led to the creation of her most recent novel, The Hypnotist. Without further ado, here’s M.J.

At the Heart of the Hypnotist by M.J. Rose

My latest novel The Hypnotist takes place as much in a museum as anywhere else. Not just any museum – the museum where I basically grew up.

When I was a kid, we lived a block away from Metropolitan Museum of Art It was my backyard. Other kids rode bikes… I took art classes there. By seven years old I was already at home there. As I grew older, my mom and I went there once a week for lunch and to walk through a new exhibition. For years we never missed a single show.

Spending so much time around the great art at that great museum – exploring every nook and cranny, it’s not surprising that I’d want to be an artist.

When I went to college – it was to go to art school. I have a BFA. I’ve always loved everything about art and still do. But despite all that I didn’t wind up being an artist because at school I discovered what a truly ordinary painter I was. For some, just doing it would be worth it, but for me what I see in my mind is so far from what I can create with my hands that it’s more of a frustration than a joy.

And so I started writing what I saw in my mind.

For me writing and painting are very different. Both in the creating and the absorbing. The intellectual versus physical. Philosophical versus cerebral. Paintings, like music, move you without logic. Books require thinking, logic. I love the movement of painting, the romance of the artist’s life. I like museums better than bookstores, art supply stores more than computer stores.

I can stare at colors for hours, mix blues and greens into each other for no other reason than seeing them bleed together like the ocean. I love the smell of paint, the sting of the turpentine in your nose, the overwhelming scent of the linseed oil, the feel of brushes, buying new brushes and running one down your cheek and feeling that smooth silky touch of the sable. I love touching thick rich watercolor paper with its tiny indentations where the color pools. And I lust after the idea that when you paint you can create something in an hour or an afternoon and look at all of it at once. See the whole. Take in all of it all at the same time.

The Hypnotist is a novel of suspense, history and redemption. It’s about people who must come to terms with their past in order to move forward and have a future. It’s about life and death and life after death. And a hundred other things. I loved writing it. But I think of everything especially loved being able to honor a place that has mattered to me so much.

And there you have it!

Once again, I would like to thank TLC Book Tours and M.J. for providing me with this guest post opportunity. Thanks to all who stopped by during the snippets this week and checked them out Be sure to check out M.J. on Facebook and Twitter, and if you’re so inclined, buy the book here. To find out where else M.J. is stopping, visit this page.

Let me know what you think, readers. Are you dying to find out what happens to Lucian? What about the artist, Solange? What do you think will happen — is this it, or do you think they’re going to reunite, or that he’s going to bump into her when he goes back in time? This one promises to be an intriguing adventure, and the hypnotism element is great for all you fans of psychological reads out there

Happy Reading!