John LaChance

KRZM Radio Interview
w/John LaChance
Author of “PrimoDeus”

1. Welcome to the BookRead Interview portion of our program. I want to introduce you to John LaChance, author of “PrimoDeus,” a fascinating foray into the unexplainable, the unimaginable. Shall we get right to it? Could you summarize “PrimoDeus” as if you were speaking to someone unfamiliar with your book and its topic.

That may be difficult, but let’s try. Despite what the synopsis on the back of this book might lead you to believe, PrimoDeus is not a horror novel. And the Anti-Christ, if that is what he is, is more to be pitied than to be feared.

The subject matter (an instance of child abuse) and manner of transmission (a point by point psychological analysis of each of these character's faults and past transgressions) will not be to everyone's taste...especially since everything in this 532-page book, comprising 170,000 words, occurs within a half hour around a kitchen table.

As such, this book is not directed at a mass audience, such as a horror novel might reach, because it is intended only to fill a literary niche, mostly populated by unemployed literature majors who love the influence of words more than the reach of money. And, of course, it is the New Covenant of Spiritual Satanists.

2. What is the overall theme (central topic, subject or concept) of “PrimoDeus”?

Look at the title: PrimoDeus, meaning ‘the first god.’ It’s a play on words with Prometheus, the god who brought fire to mankind, which is analogous to Lucifer, the bearer of light, who might not be a bad god but a beneficent god.

Additionally, this is a Faustian tale, as it would be told today, hence the protagonist’s name deFaux. What if the “Beast of Revelation” were already born and living the transmutational horrors of his life within the exact moment you are reading this novel. What if, in understanding what makes him be who he is, you turned sympathetic to his destiny?

3. Where does this book take place?

Roughly half of the story takes place in the 1980's, when Beaulyn was three years old, and the rest is a time-distended reflection of that event, occurring 30 years later on the night of his death in 2017. The locale is a former French colony in Africa, originally settled under the feudal system of the 1700's while still retaining elements of the Realm.

“While some attribute the name Denga to dengue fever, of which the early colony had its share, the popular belief is that, when the first missionary arrived (not having weathered the voyage particularly well), the good priest insisted on a hot bath before searching out his flock. It was while he was bathing in the ship’s cooking pot amidships that female natives, dripping wet from their swim and hanging onto the gunwales in hopes of invitation, greeted the crew with happy smiles of filed teeth, or dents-gâchés, hence Denga.”

4. Who are the main characters and why are they important to the story?

There are five major characters:

The primary character is Beaulyn deFaux who appears both as a child of three (Beauby) at a kitchen table in a colonial bungalow on the beach and as a defrocked priest on the last night of his long death, thirty years in coming. Like Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane, the Anti-Christ is essentially alone in a desert locale, tortured by his personal demon, which appears to him as a vulture, and vague memories of that one pivotal moment in his childhood, which has made it impossible for him to be anything but what he is to be, the Beast of Revelation.

The spark that kindles the hell he lives for 30-odd years is his foster mother, Claire duQuesne, who sexually abused him, while drunk, in frustration of her husband’s impotence. On the morning of the church ladies' visit, Claire fears he will inadvertently reveal the truth of what she did three months earlier. The abuse, meanwhile, is fully detailed in a flashback, broken into climactically charged segments and fitted like a jigsaw puzzle into the events that unfold in the kitchen. More curious still is the fact that Claire now finds herself miraculously pregnant, despite her husband's hunting accident under the stampeding hooves of wildebeest, which had "crushed" her hopes for family.

Of nearly equal importance to Beauby is Demoiselle Monique LaVertue, the youngest of the aristocratic church ladies and a world-class beauty. Desperately needing to be somewhere else on the anniversary of her rape as a girl of thirteen, she begins to suspect that Beauby's foster father, whom she's never met on their parish visits, is her rapist. Much later, it is revealed that Monique, for the last twenty years a street whore in Denga's capital, is one of the two women who has accompanied Beaulyn deFaux into the desert -- there to die herself after confronting her own demons of whether it was Marc duQuesne who raped her or, just as likely, her own father.

Short and stout (and quirky as well, for being a spinster), Dame Rosa-Reine Rossignol is the second member of the triumvirate, all of whom are charged with overseeing the welfare of orphans in their parish, with special emphasis on Beauby, who is a descendant of the colony's founder. Because she herself bears the same name as the founder's lovingly wicked wife, Rosa-Reine Rossignol, Dame Rossignol has read every historical document concerning the founding couple; in the process, she has deluded herself into falling in love with the historical figure of Colonel deFaux and indulging herself in such fantasies on rainy nights. For the great burden of her virginity, which she has borne into her advanced years, Rosa-Reine is also guilty of tippling too early; consequently, in looking into Beauby's eyes, she drowns in the muck of his DNA, finding her dream lover deep inside, though not cooing his love for her but chiding her for her presumption. Remotely a cousin of the boy, she has Beauby removed from the duQuesne household the following morning and formally adopts him as heir to the Rossignol estates, which he assumes nine years later on her death..under suspect circumstances.

Nearly equivalent in importance to Beauby and Monique is the bone-thin triumvir who dabbles in Utuu magic and indulges in the local drug called tatter, capable of "warping and woofing the innumerable strands of tattered thoughts and dreams into revelations outside the limitations of time." Dame Evangeline de Pauvrelieu, daughter of an impoverished seigneur in the hinterlands of Denga and now the chatelaine of an important house, has dire secrets of her own: one of which involves her unnatural relationship with her father on the death of her mother, and the other as regards her son's true father, whom she doesn't realize is the reason why the reprobate Marc duQuesne is never home during the triumvirate's parish visits.

5. Why do you think that this book will appeal to readers?

This in an in-depth character study of eccentrics, each of whom is stripped bare, lie by lie, from when the reader first meets them to the moment when each of them dies.

6. How is your book relevant in today’s society?

Morals are changing, and this book is in the forefront of this change, as reflected in the censored portions of the story. What was so immoral as to be the basis of God's destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah is now enshrined in the law of the land. Someday, it is hoped, the "X"-ed out portions of this story can be published as well...because America still censors so much of everything, even great works of art.

7. Is there any subject currently trending in the news that relates to your book?

Nearly every year, there’s a rabid story in the newspapers about another school teacher, frustrated by her loveless life at home, who takes a young lover from among her under-aged students. The public never seems to tire of these revelations, best expressed by Claire duQuesne in this passage:

Seeing her world then crumble to dust (the horrified look on her own face at the unexpected headline, lurking on the folded pages of her morning newspaper, and the damning look of the itchy, high-collared skirt-suit she’d have to wear at the televised hearings, not so much covering the proceedings of her guilt as laying bare her guilty pleasures), Claire gasped aloud, too loud, feeling herself stripped naked for the amusement and recreation of the gawking masses.

8. What makes your book different from other books like it?

It's raw. Other books have never dared come so close to unraveling the law. Most have tried and lost, and it hasn’t been pretty. But the few who succeeded brought us forward in time. We no longer live under Victorian restrictions (thanks to them), but the noose is still around our necks.

9. What do you want readers to take away from your writing?

Movies are great for passive entertainment, but they're limited in scope, following a simple linear telling with only flashbacks as added dimension. Only a book, employing the inestimable power of imaginative language within new constructs, can reach down deep into a story requiring 532 pages to reveal what actually happened within a half hour around a kitchen table.

10. How did you learn about the topic? For instance, was it a personal experience, something in your education, a news article you read somewhere?

A feeling. At first, I wanted the reader to remember the forgotten peoples that the media doesn’t want us to think about, particularly those in Africa. For example, how did life change for white colonials after the colony of Rhodesia became Zimbabwe? (And, as plausibly, how quickly our own circumstances could change with a change in the political order.)

From a privileged class living lives equivalent to most Americans, these dispossessed white farmers and their families in Zimbabwe fearfully work their former lands in veritable rags, now just day laborers for some black politico who was deeded their land. This was the political motivation why I began writing, and it remains the underlying reality and lowering mood of the book; but the story itself evolved into a new mode, as the characters themselves evolved.

11. Is there a particular passage that expresses the mood of your book?

This passage relates to Dame Rosa-Reine Rossignol, the lush-to-fat triumvir sitting with Beauby:

Now carried on the echo of her dream-lover’s name, Rosa-Reine carried the coffee cup to her lips and blew across the placid surface, doing so in seeming calm while, underneath the skin, knowing herself caught on dark and sinister currents roiling the bedrock of her psyche, stirring up strange dreams and forgotten desires at the bottom of her, down in the muck. Looking deep inside, she saw herself as the young woman she had been, crotch-deep in the quagmire of a secret resentment (even more of anger and rage) at being condemned to barren spinsterhood for her high ambitions in a man...which family and friends had called ‘unrealistic,’ ‘fairy-tale,’ and ‘beyond your looks.’ Then, inexplicably, still looking deep inside, she saw herself skirling the blue skies of wonder, ecstasy and ardor, having found her true love in Colonel deFaux, blending with his essence, knowing his deepest wishes and smallest desires, while safeguarding that knowledge against all others.


12. I have to tell you, I read “PrimoDeus” in the course of two evenings, well into the night, and found it absolutely fascinating and brilliantly written, a masterpiece that I will treasure for years to come. Thank you, Mister LaChance, for sitting down with me during this captivating half hour on KRZM’s BookRead.

It is I who thank for the opportunity to let readers know a little bit more about “PrimoDeus” before they venture into it. I thank you for having me. It’s been my pleasure.… (plus d'informations)