SILAS J. LEES — AUTHOR BIO SHORT BIO (75 words) --------------------- Silas J. Lees is the author of Love Is The New Religion, a special-forces thriller about a spiritual awakening. After three businesses closed in 2015, Silas spent three months unable to get out of bed. What followed was a slow recovery — including cognitive behavioural therapy and an Ayahuasca retreat — and, from August 2015, almost three years spent writing. Mildly dyslexic and no natural student, he published a 116,000-word novel in 2018. LONG BIO (250 words) --------------------- Silas J. Lees is the author of Love Is The New Religion, a novel that fuses a special-forces thriller with a spiritual awakening — the story of Commander James Wedmore and the Black Widows, an elite unit sent on a mission that becomes something far larger than a war. The book grew out of Silas's own turning point. In January 2015, after three businesses he had built closed, Silas stopped getting out of bed — three months he describes candidly as running on Guinness, Netflix, and Dominoes Pizza. The recovery that followed included cognitive behavioural therapy and, at one stage, an Ayahuasca retreat, which Silas is careful to describe as one part of his own path rather than a recommendation or a cure for anyone else's. Starting in August 2015, Silas spent almost three years channelling that experience into fiction. He is mildly dyslexic and says plainly that he didn't do particularly well at school — which makes the finished result, a 116,000-word novel published in 2018, a book he still finds vulnerable to put his name to. Love Is The New Religion has been described by reviewers as "a wonderful book" that "strikes a wonderful balance of fiction and wisdom," and doesn't flinch from asking hard questions about war, power, and belief. Silas continues to write from the same place the book came from, with one guiding line: if it inspires just one person, he will feel incredibly blessed. CONTACT --------------------- Media enquiries: love@loveisthenewreligion.com