Bloghopping on Good Friday about a Tantric Jungian Novel

I didn't choose Good Friday as the day for a novel about kundalini to come out.  But as a pagan Methodist and believer in the "perennial philosophy" that all religions have been built on the same universal truth, I think it's fitting.

The post is supposed to be about "My Next Big Thing." Since my novel Cobalt Blue is officially released today, my next big thing is going to festivals and stores  and book clubs talking about it…and chatting on about it online of course, as I do here in answering these questions, sent to me by novelist David Halperin, author of Journal of a UFO Investigator.  David has answered this same set of questions about his Next Big Thing, the sequel-in-progress, The Color of Electrum.

 

1. What is the working title of your book or project? introducing Cobalt Blue to the world

 

2. Where did the idea come from for the book or project?  It's an idea that has been with me for decades, and is also expressed (radically differently) in a Christian setting in my first novel Revelation.

 

3. What genre does it fall under, if any? mainstream fiction, with elements of what some might consider erotica, thriller, visionary, metaphysical mystery

 

4. If applicable, who would you choose to play your characters in a movie?  Gwyneth Paltrow, Tommy Lee Jones, Joaquin Phoenix, Jack Nicholson, Diane Keaton.

 

5. What is the one-sentence synopsis of your manuscript or project?  The story is about a woman overwhelmed by an uninvited religious experience. 

 

6. Will your book or story be self-published or represented by an agency?  The book had not one, but two, agents, and now has one publisher, Roundfire Books, an imprint of John Hunt Publishing in England.  It's coming out simultaneously in UK, US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and Asia– in paperback and e-book.

 

7. How long did it take you to write the first draft of your manuscript?  The first draft was so long ago that I don't even remember.

 

8. What other book or stories would you compare this story to within the genre?  It has the blend of exotic and erotic that is strong in Memoirs of a Geisha.  Fans of Robertson Davies would like it, I think. And in the combining of edgy sex and religion, it's a bit like the TV series Six Feet Under.

 

9. Who or what inspired you to write this book or story?  I think the idea of the overwhelming religious experience, and the blend of the spiritual and carnal, are in my DNA.

 

10. What else about the book or story might pique the reader’s interest?  The 2 pre-pub reviewers both said that Cobalt Blue is "sexier than 50 Shades…."  It's set in Pinehurst and pre-Katrina New Orleans.  It includes a serious handling of voodoo.  The central event — the kundalini rising — is an upward rush of life force from the base of the spine through the body toward God.

 

And why is this even remotely appropriate for Good Friday?  A woman undergoes a dark and chaotic ordeal followed by glorious religious transformation.

And now I leave the subject of books for a few sacred days and contemplate (off-line!) the forces that drive the work that so preoccupies me.

Next to blog on these questions:

Marjorie Hudson               Accidental Birds of the Carolinas

Eleni Papanou                    Unison (The Spheral)

Carolyn Mathews              Transforming Pandora

Dawn Deanna Wilson       The Shangri-La Chamber of Commerce Welcomes You

 

Categories: 2013

Tags: Accidental Birds of the Carolinas, Cobalt Blue, David Halperin, Eleni Papanou, Journal of a UFO Investigator, Marjorie Hudson, Memoirs of a Geisha, Peggy Payne, Robertson Davies, Six Feet Under, The Shangri-La Chamber of Commerce Welcomes You, Transforming Pandora, Unison (The Spheral)