Title:
Cosmic Heart
Author:
Carolyn Haley
Genre:
Metaphysical Romantic Mystery
Book Blurb:
How do you harness extrasensory powers you don’t believe in to fight an enemy you cannot see?
Madeline LaRue must answer this question—fast—because the fate of the world depends on her powers.
Until now, she’d thought her special vision was artistic talent enhanced by intuition between identical twins. And she’d thought her beauty, shared with twin sister Blanche, was luck of the genetic draw.
Instead they combine to make Madeline a lightning rod for the positive and negative forces battling for control of humanity as the millennium turns. Both forces need her as a conduit to Dru Montclair, a superstar musician and her sister’s soulmate. With his worldwide following, Dru can tip the balance toward good, but he needs Madeline as the catalyst to fully ignite his powers.
But Madeline can only help if she masters her own powers first. And that depends on whether she can identify her soulmate from the four men vying for her heart. If she chooses right, she will enable Dru to triumph. If she chooses wrong, she will drag the world down with her into a thousand years of darkness.
Excerpt:
The universe punished me for doubting its powers by arranging a special demonstration. It dropped me, blindfolded and hamstrung, into a room with locked doors, and gave me four weapons: my paints, my doubts, my figure, and a library.
Then it said: “If you can find the right door and open it with the right key, then you can have your heart’s desire. Oh, by the way—There’s a psychic lunatic running around out there. If you can free yourself before the sands in the hourglass run out, then you can prevent him from corrupting a critical mass of humanity and plunging the world into a new dark age. Have a nice day!”
Okay, the universe didn’t actually say this to me. If it had, I would have answered, “Forget it! I’ll live without my heart’s desire.” After all, I’d been doing so for twenty-seven years.
I expected more of same as I backed out my driveway one August evening, heading for New Atlantis. A cryptic call from my identical twin sister, Blanche, had changed my weekend plans. Unaware I was launching on a preordained journey to entrapment and a psychic battle, I zoomed northward in altruism. Two hours later found me steaming along a fire road through the Green Mountain National Forest. Literally steaming: me in a perspiration cloud from heat and humidity abnormal for the Vermont mountains; my convertible steaming from the hit it had taken a few miles back.
It had begun the drive as a pristine vintage roadster—a ’66 Sunbeam Tiger, my pride and joy and special toy that had taken me from novice driver to winner in autocross. Now it bled coolant and oil as it limped and thumped on a shredded tire, two bent rims, and damaged suspension. Its V8 motor shook the dense woods around us, as half my custom sport exhaust lay behind in the puckerbrush while the other half dragged beneath the car, carving a trail in the dirt.
Please, please! I chanted internally. Hang in there another mile!
No way would I walk alone through the wilderness in a sundress after dark. Even if the Tiger kept going, at ten miles an hour I’d still be out here when the looming thunderstorm broke and twilight fell. Already, beneath the foliage canopy, I needed headlights. But one was broken and the other gouged out. I could probably hold my flashlight in one hand and steer with the other. Then again, the increasing flares of lightning could guide my way.
Please, please—c’mon, baby, hold it together—
Aha!
The forest pulled back to reveal a stone wall blocking my travel. Front and center loomed an iron gate backed by chain link and bracketed by cameras, set into masonry taller than I could reach. Along the top, barbed wire coiled like a lethal hairdo. Inside the gate, a guard shack squatted in the murk.
“Trespassers Will Be Teleported to a Hostile Planet!” said signs in four languages. And welcome to New Atlantis to you, too! I thought back. I couldn’t blame the owner, Dru Montclair, for needing to live in a fortress. That happens when you’re a mega-superstar, as was Blanche now that she shared his stage and his bed.
Approaching the gate, I didn’t bother braking—the car wouldn’t have stopped, anyway—sure that the guard could hear me coming and would be ready on the release switch. Indeed, the gate scraped open when my passage tripped a motion sensor and switched on floodlights within and without.
Once safe inside, the Tiger ground to a halt and expired. I dropped my forehead against my knuckles atop the steering wheel as the gate scraped shut behind.
“Hell of an entrance, Miz LaRue!” came a voice from beside me. I jerked my head up and around to find a guy standing halfway between me and the guard shack, backlit by the floods. My brain, still sludgy from adrenaline overload and dehydration, couldn’t manage a snappy comeback. I must have taken too long to respond, for he strode forward and changed his tone to an authoritative calm.
“Ignition off?”
He stood at the driver’s door, hand on the latch, ready to pull if I didn’t answer.
“Um, no, it stalled.”
“Don’t try to restart it. Just click off and give me the key.”
I obeyed, at loss for words, at loss for thought. When he said, “How many fingers?” I counted three. That seemed to satisfy him. He pulled open the Tiger’s door and asked, “You ready?”
“Um, a little gummy in the knees, but I think I’m okay.”
I pivoted in the cockpit and stuck out the legs that had earned me a six-figure income. The rest of the package emerged disjointedly, making me glad that Blanche the Dancer wasn’t around for comparison. The gate guard noticed everything without reaction, just offered a hand to help me stand.
At that, my synapses resumed firing. Those hands! Oil-stained fingers with nicked knuckles, curved around palms callused and thickened from years of turning wrenches. A mechanic! At New Atlantis! Oh joy, the day’s bad luck had just reversed!
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It’s a supernatural version of paranormal/fantasy, involving psychic power and reincarnation, and how they relate to love and destiny in modern times.
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Author Biography:
Carolyn Haley is a prize-winning novelist, professional editor, and reviewer living in northern New England. Through her business, DocuMania, she writes a mix of creative content for magazines and corporations, in addition to her own books. She mainly helps other authors with diverse projects through editing, proofreading, production, and education.
When not working, Carolyn enjoys several pursuits—gardening, paddling, walking, riding, birdwatching—along with aviation and autosports, and spectating the arts. Her enduring passion, however, is novels.
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