Author: deborahlagarde

Born on Long Island, NY, in 1952, now live in the mountains of far west Texas. Began writing fiction stories at about 8 years old with pen and loose leaf paper, and created the characters in my Prodigal Band Trilogy as a teenager. From the 70s to the 90s I created the scenario which I believe was inspired. While bringing up and home schooling my two children I continued to work on the novels and published "Battle of the Band" in 1996 and "The Prophesied Band" in 1998. Took off the next several years to complete home schooling and also working as an office manager for the local POA. In 2016, I retired, then resumed The Prodigal Band, a FREE PDF book that tells the whole story to its glorious end. Hint: I'm a true believer in Christ and I'm on a mission from God, writing to future believers, not preaching to the choir. God gave me a talent and, like the band in my books, I am using that talent for His glory, not mine (and, like me, the band is on its own journey, only fictional.) I also wrote for my college newspaper and headed up production, was a columnist in a local newspaper in the early 2000s, and wrote for and edited "Log of the Trail," the news letter for the Texas Mountain Trail Writers, and wrote for and edited it's yearly catalog of writings, "Chaos West of the Pecos." OmegaBooks is my self-publishing sole proprietorship company founded in 1995. Other jobs included teaching secondary math, health aide, office worker, assembly line work, and free-lance writing and bookkeeping,much of it while home schooling.

The Truth About the (Music) ‘Industry’ Expounded in The Prodigal Band Trilogy (Part Three)—Handlers and Agendas

It isn’t just a matter of “selling one’s soul” for fame and fortune that explains why so many entertainers appear to promote and practice debauched behavior on- and off-stage. Those guiding their careers and success surely have something to do with it, including managers, producers, backers, and such ‘influencers’ as pop culture sages and spirit-guides. Timothy Leary and new age leader Maharishi Mahesh Yogi are examples from the ‘hippie days’ of the sixties, and Aliester Crowley, a Satanist and leader of an occultist group Thelema who died in 1947 (and memorialized by the Beatles as ‘sergeant pepper’ of sorts…Crowley also appeared on that album’s cover) also was an influencer in the 60s, 70s, 80s and 90s; Jimmy Page of Led Zeppelin fame was an avowed follower of Crowley.

Thus it is not just ‘whistling Dixie’ that I included among the evil characters for The Prodigal Band Trilogy the occult ‘church’ leader Swami Negran, his successor, ‘healer’ Cole Blessing, and then the next successor Mark Besst, a tech oligarch in the age of the internet. Also included in the bad guy list are evil ‘Novordo Club’ and occult secret society the Hellyons members Baron Torquay-Lambourgeau, Duke Marty Effingchester, Mrs. X and Y and Rodney Davis, a mafioso-type, and others. All of these can be considered handlers, making sure the prodigal band Sound Unltd follows the nihilist agenda set forth by the evil, led by the Satan-character, Corion, who guides those handlers.

Continue reading “The Truth About the (Music) ‘Industry’ Expounded in The Prodigal Band Trilogy (Part Three)—Handlers and Agendas”

The Truth About the (Music) ‘Industry’ Expounded in The Prodigal Band Trilogy (Part Two)

Years ago I read several articles in various newspapers and pop culture magazines about Mafia or ‘Syndicate’ influence in the music industry (as with Hollywood and other entertainment platforms) into the 80s and 90s. I know for a fact that the Mafias (and I don’t just mean the Sicilian one) owned various night clubs and concert venues (and not just in the US).Though Mafia influence seems to have waned some I suspect they still have a say in the entertainment businesses, including record labels.

Note: the part about involvement with evil New Age guru Swami Negran, as stated in the previous post, will appear next week in Part Three.

The following snippet is from Chapter Two of the original version of The Prodigal Band, self-published by OmegaBooks in 2018, © Deborah Lagarde. The then-five band members (minus bassist Keith who would rejoin the band later) are sitting with then-manager Billy Prestin, Keith’s dad Sean Mullock and new road manager Billy Hallsip, eating spaghetti, the night before the band Sound Unltd would embark on their contest-winning national tour.

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The Truth About the (Music) ‘Industry’ Expounded in The Prodigal Band Trilogy (Part One)—And a Tribute to Rap Legend DMX…RIP, DMX!

I was going to post a new set of articles regarding either The Prodigal Band Trilogy or a message for Christian authors in their writings. But then I learned rapper DMX, an avowed believer on Christ, died supposedly of a heart attack on April 2, which so happened to be Good Friday, the day Jesus Christ was crucified on the cross in the year (according to most historians) 29 AD.

While I was never a fan of rap, gangsta or otherwise, I was a fan (sort of) of DMX as he was an avowed believer on Christ and is known to have spoken about Christ to fans and rap fans in general. While I was not a listener to his tracks, I did hear him in various videos talking about ‘the industry,’ such as one on YouTube that was later incorporated into a ‘truther’ video upon his passing, such as this one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W7c0Z6P82hI (copy and paste the link into the browser; due to the ridiculous CASE Act, I will not post the video which might be copyrighted.) He not only denounced the evil within ‘the industry’ but also ‘preached’ so to speak about accepting Christ as Savior to fans at concerts and other events. Further, DMX was an actual inspiration while completing the trilogy in 2018.

Continue reading “The Truth About the (Music) ‘Industry’ Expounded in The Prodigal Band Trilogy (Part One)—And a Tribute to Rap Legend DMX…RIP, DMX!”

The Foreword to The Prodigal Band, Self-Published by OmegaBooks in 2018, the Original Version of the Third Novel of The Prodigal Band Trilogy

Below is the original Foreword to the original, copyright 2018 by Deborah Lagarde, version of the third novel of The Prodigal Band Trilogy, The Prodigal Band, which is available as a FREE PDF download at the link in the menu above. It turns out, however, that calling this a ‘Foreword’ was a mistake since I wrote it; Forewords are usually written by another person; a Publisher, an Editor, or a Beta Reader. It should have been called an ‘Introduction.’

Further, Foreword or Introduction, the words below do state the ultimate purpose of the novel and the trilogy as a whole. Cheers!

A new post will arrive next week.

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Why Is The Prodigal Band Available As A FREE PDF Download?

Folks, the last time I counted the number of downloads of the FREE PDF The Prodigal Band, the third novel in The Prodigal Band Trilogy, that number exceeded 500! This is not counting the number of downloads prior to July, 2019, when the number of downloads of uploaded files was not recorded by WordPress but the number of visits to the download page was recorded, and there were lots of visits there.

Here is the link to the page that tells about the third novel The Prodigal Band, including the content of Chapter One, and here is the link to the download site at the top of this page.

But why is The Prodigal Band available as a FREE PDF download? Since the trilogy book published by Lulu is available to be purchased, why just give away the third novel in the trilogy?

The third novel The Prodigal Band is a FREE PDF download because this is the novel that completes the prodigal band’s journey to redemption, whereas the first novel, Battle of the Band, tells of the band’s fall into crises after crises after reaching the goal of fame and fortune and then the crash, while the second novel, The Prophesied Band, has the band recovering physically and psychologically on the road to recovering spiritually, which occurs in the second part of The Prodigal Band. In other words, as with the Gospel of Luke Chapter 15’s The Parable of the Prodigal Son about his fall, recovery, and then the journey home to his father, Battle of the Band is about the fall; The Prophesied Band is about the recovery; The Prodigal Band is about the journey home to redemption. And this journey to redemption was the point of it all, why I wrote this trilogy in the first place. But I also had to write the two previous novels to show and tell what the redemption meant and why the redemption was necessary. And the battles between Good vs. Evil as well.

It would certainly help if the reader read the first two novels to find out why redemption was necessary and the details about the battle between Good and Evil, to read about the crises and the beginnings of understanding what was necessary to see one’s was out of the morass the band members (and their women also) had put themselves into while reaching rock god status. But I will leave that up to the reader as to whether the reader wants to read the other two novels.

But The Prodigal Band has a redemption message, and it is in fact a FREE message that one can use FREE WILL to decide if one is to accept the message or not. I do not feel as if I need to ‘charge’ anyone a ‘fee’ so to speak to get this message, and I also think since it is a FREE WILL message it should be made available for FREE as a PDF download (since PDF files are easy to download and easy to add to one’s e-book device….just follow the instructions on the download page!). So while I won’t be earning money this way, that’s not what this ‘mission of God’ is all about, and besides, I’m doing fine financially, thanks to God’s blessings. Cheers!

And that is why The Prodigal Band is available as a FREE PDF download!

Symbolism Within The Prodigal Band Trilogy, Part Three

The most important symbols within The Prodigal Band Trilogy—star systems and constellations symbolizing the battle between good and evil, the Red Crystal of Corion and the Corion Cross—have already been discussed with appropriate trilogy snippets in the previous two posts. This post concerns symbols that the prodigal band uses on album covers and as stage props in concerts that are prevalent within the pop music industry now and for decades. Satanic symbols and patterns, checkered-mosaic-tiled-floors (a Freemasonic highlight, supposedly), drippings from chains suspended between legs (indicating drippings from orgasms), pentagrams and “oozing” vaginas are used on one particular album cover. For concerts, A-shaped or triangular ‘monoliths’ (indicating so-called ‘illuminati’ symbolism) topped with rotating circular shapes such as ‘planet Earth’ and eye-shaped symbols (‘the all-seeing-eye’-like symbols), and, of course, the Corion Cross of which the prodigal band’s logo is based upon.

Album covers for rock bands utilizing ‘satanic’ symbols have been around for years and most prominent rock bands from the 60s into today have used these symbols. One symbol I did not use that is extremely prominent then and now—the ‘one-eye sign’—was not used because I never saw that symbol as significant until the site Vigilant Citizen showed me just how this symbol is everywhere in pop culture. But this symbol was even used back in the days of the Beatles; more than one album cover has a variation of the one-eye sign, including one of their earliest albums. Commonly known ‘satanic’ symbols would include upside-down crosses, symbols of pagan gods such as the ‘eye of Horus’ or Baphomet horns (used, to my dismay, by a loved-one’s fave Japanese rock band, the GazettE, on a poster of theirs) or the ‘as above so below’ arms pointing upward and downward simultaneously used by many rockers in posters and such, ‘666’ and such pointed symbols or upside-down 5-pointed stars, and other pagan god symbols too numerous to mention.

So, I figured, if this prodigal band began its journey to redemption as a tool for the forces of evil, at least one album cover and at least one concert featuring these symbols had to be utilized within the trilogy. Since the first novel in the trilogy, Battle of the Band, is the only novel that mentions an album cover in detail or a concert in detail, all three snippets in this post come from this novel.

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Symbolism Within The Prodigal Band Trilogy, Part Two

This symbolism post will deal with the evil character Corion, the Corionic Cross and the Red Crystal of Corion. I used to name Corion because it sounds like the star system Orion and it just came into my head when I began writing the trilogy. Why Orion? Because when I was growing up on Long Island, what with all the street lights and pollution and the fact that I almost never saw any stars even on a clear night, the only star cluster that I could see clearly was Orion’s Belt. That is why I chose the Orion system to help name my character, that happens to be the evil satanic character in the trilogy.

As for the Corionic Cross… why a cross? Because crosses are huge in terms of symbology. Every Christian sect or society seems to use crosses thanks to the crucifixion cross of Christ at Calvary: Jesuits, Dominicans, Orthodox, various Protestants and Catholics, Rosicrucians (their cross looks like a rose), Knights Templar and others. And the satanic groups also use crosses, turning them upside down. And the Corion cultists did use a cross of sorts.

Since band guitarist-producer Mick was a follower of an ancient cult in Wales called the Crag-Dwellers and their god was Corion and Corion had a cross, he decided that the prodigal band Sound Unltd would use a similar cross to be their band logo. The cross and the logo used snakes. The cross and logo (pictured above) are featured on the original cover of the first novel in the trilogy, Battle of the Band.

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Symbolism Within The Prodigal Band Trilogy, Part One

There is much symbolism within The Prodigal Band Trilogy, which begins with the first novel in the trilogy, Battle of the Band. This is where the symbolism begins and covering the symbols in this first novel will need at least two posts, maybe more.

This post deals mostly with three star-systems and constellations mentioned in a song composed by the prodigal band members and is mentioned in Chapter Two of Battle of the Band. The constellations are Draco, also known as ‘the Dragon’ constellation; Pleiades, which is located within the Taurus constellation and looks like its own constellation; and Orion. In the third novel of the trilogy, The Prodigal Band, I mistakenly claimed Pleiades was within the Dragon constellation, but it only looks that way-it is not within this constellation, and may only look like it is because it could be further back in the sky but looks closer. It also looks on a wide-ranging star map as if Orion is close to the Dragon constellation.

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Snippets of The Prodigal Band Trilogy Controversial Topics Series: Episode Six-The Consequences of Poverty and Debt (Part Two)

In Part One, the previous post, I explained why I turned the prodigal band’s drummer, Tom, from being born into an impoverished family into being the son of an indentured servant and explained what an indenture is. Now I will post snippets beginning in Chapter One of Battle of the Band, the first novel in The Prodigal Band Trilogy, to set up the scenario of consequences of this indebtedness on not only the one whose father was indebted but also the owner of the debt, who would pay a huge price should the debt be paid off.

The first of several snippets begins with someone among a group of very powerful overlords within the secretive Novordo Club discussing using the prodigal band, Sound Unltd, for their nefarious purposes of debauching youth culture. After ‘Mr. Y’ states why singer Erik, guitarists Jack and Mick, and keyboard synthist Bry would do anything to achieve fame and fortune for their own purposes, drummer Tom is mentioned.

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Snippets of The Prodigal Band Trilogy Controversial Topics Series: Episode Six-The Consequences of Poverty and Debt (Part One)

As with Episode Five about the controversial topic of Evolution vs. Creation and Intelligent Design, this episode, Six, will be in two parts. This post will discuss how indentured servitude, stemming from poverty and debt, plays into the trilogy. Part Two will feature snippets about the consequences of indentured servitude from the trilogy.

Throughout history, neither poverty nor debt has been controversial, and poverty and debt can happen by being born into it with virtually no way out, or through bad fortune, or through theft. Billions of people on Earth are poor and even more are in debt of some kind.

What makes poverty and debt controversial within The Prodigal Band Trilogy, however, is the legally binding document called an indenture, which by definition binds one party into the service of another party for a stipulated period of time. The document is called an indenture based on a legal meaning of an ‘indent’ which is a legal contract drawn up in duplicate or triplicate. Thus, the notion of ‘indentured servitude’ means that person doing the service does so for a stipulated period of time; mostly in history it has been used to pay back a debt. Historically, that period of time tended to be seven years.

Along with slavery, indentured servitude was abolished in the US by the 13^th Amendment to the Constitution, which reads: “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.”

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