01907 Spring 2021

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18 | <strong>01907</strong> Well worth the wait BY DANIEL KANE For Swampscott native Douglas Volk, getting his novel, "The Morpheus Conspiracy," from his mind onto paper was a long process — 39 years long to be exact. Throughout those four decades, Volk wrote whenever he could, all while raising a family and becoming the chief executive officer of his Volk Packaging Corporation in Biddeford, Maine. "I would take whatever time I had, an hour here or an hour there, to write," Volk said. "Sometimes it was during lunchtime or when the kids were asleep, whenever I could find time. It just took over. "When the idea for the story first came to me, I didn’t know why," Volk added. "I had never done anything creative. But I was very focused. I tried to get the creative out and it was exciting. I had this story in my head for 10 years. It was all written in my head. It was something I had to do. If I didn’t, I felt like I’d be mad at myself." Flash forward to last year and Volk had not only completed "The Morpheus Conspiracy," but its two sequels, "The Surgeon’s Curse" and "Destiny Returns," all three a big hit with readers and critics. Together they tell the story of the Morpheus Curse, a paranormal curse that gives a Vietnam veteran the power to invade other people’s nightmares with deadly results. The idea for the horror/thriller trilogy itself had deep roots in Volk's own experiences that include growing up in Swampscott. Volk played on the Big Blue's golf team and still remembers attending football games in the freezing cold. Years later as a young adult he would serve in the Vietnam War himself. Volk remembers the time all too well. From watching Walter Cronkite report on the war to listening to President Richard Nixon's false promises of peace at his inauguration, which Volk himself attended, in 1969. "There were thousands of protesters and students," Volk said. "Nixon made a commitment to ending the war but he didn’t do that. That struck me and hit hard for me, I was very upset about the whole thing. I could’ve stayed home but joined a reserve unit. It was a growing experience for me. I wouldn’t want to do it again but it left a mark on me." The tragedies of the war kickstart the entire "Morpheus Trilogy." "The Morpheus Conspiracy" begins with a Vietnam veteran named David Collier returning home to Swampscott, mocked and ridiculed like many soldiers were at the time, but also carrying a curse that allows him to invade people's nightmares, often killing his victims. The curse itself is actually the curse of war, Volk says, and it has heavy inspiration from the post-traumatic stress disorder that has plagued many veterans. Volk also spent time in a sleep study lab at Duke University in order to make his nightmarefueled story as realistic as possible. "One of the symptoms of PTSD is recurring nightmares," Volk said. "They lose sleep because of it. That gave me the idea. It was very interesting to study sleep. This was before the internet. It was a real challenge. I spent time in the sleep laboratory and this was before HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability and Accounting Act) so I was able to watch the doctors monitoring their patients (and) saw that firsthand." All that work helped the trilogy — now available to read on Amazon and Kindle — become a great success since the first novel was published in 2018. The response has been better than Volk himself ever imagined during all those years of creation. "It's all really exciting," Volk said. "I never imagined it would be here from where it was. The whole process, I miss it in a way. Netflix is looking at the stories right now and a film producer from Scottsdale has talked about them, but I don't know what will happen with any of that. Fun things are going on right now wherever it goes." – Douglas Volk
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01907 Spring 2021

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