Another Story Behind the Book with Carolyn Haley

 Carolyn Haley:http://carolynhaley.wordpress.com/
The Mobius Strip Tease Buy link:http://www.clublighthousepublishing.com/PARANORMAL_FICTION_PAGE2.htm#THE_M%D6BIUS_STRIPTEASE 

Carolyn Haley will be holding a contest for today only, ending at midnight tonight, October 7th. One lucky commenter will win an ecopy of her book.

 

Where did the idea for this story come from?

It spontaneously combusted at work thirty years ago.

I was employed as a word processor back when that was a very new, very specialized occupation, and the equipment was situated in closed environments. The company I worked for shut down for two weeks every summer, forcing most employees to take their vacations at that time -- except for a skeleton crew of engineers and me, the most junior employee, who had to be available for whatever documentation work was required.

It amounted to almost none. So there I sat with nothing to do for days, not allowed to read or talk on the phone, or in any other way occupy myself productively. I hadn't accrued vacation time to take off, and couldn't afford to do so without pay. What I did have was a sophisticated typing device at my fingertips and invisibility behind a solid door.

At that time I had a keen interest in the supernatural and associated mysticism; was embroiled in a complex mess of relationships never matched before or since; shared with my cousin a groupie's interest in a particular musician; and was slowly transforming from an artist into a writer. That two-week period completed my transformation.

I shook together the bits and pieces in my head and commenced typing. The challenge of linking everything together turned me on. Though I didn't finish the raw draft during my two-week bubble, I was hooked and kept on until "The Temple of Love" was completed. It stank, but I knew that within it lay a good idea, and I wanted to get it published.

It took three decades to reverse-engineer my fantasy-dump into a commercial-quality novel. I studed writing craft and underwent every form of rejection and criticism until the lessons came together and the book -- now "The Mobius Striptease" -- finally worked.


How did your characters come to life?

It happened for me as for so many other writers -- the characters one day took on a life of their own.

Originally they were caricatures of types I'd absorbed from reading romantic suspense, fantasy, and mysteries since childhood, colored by attributes borrowed from key people in my life. My alter-ego, of course, was the heroine. As I struggled with a two-pronged plot, various themes, and the logistics of making supernatural power appear credible in today's world, I had to shuffle people around to accommodate the changes, plus make characters unrecognizable to anyone who might read the manuscript.

Eventually they resisted my manipulation and started thinking and speaking for themselves. This messed me up for several versions, until I got all the elements aligned and the characters were able to be true to themselves inside the world I had created.


Blurb

Although estranged from her twin sister Blanche over belief in the supernatural, Madeline LaRue still runs to her side when Blanche calls for help. Strange phenomena are occurring at New Atlantis, the fortress home of Blanche’s lover, Dru Montclair -- a superstar celebrity whose mission is to inspire global peace through music and the model community he has created at New Atlantis.

Madeline is the only person who can help, because she is a powerful psychic. She sees this gift as a curse more than a boon and has fought to suppress it since childhood. Her faith lies in science, not in forces she can neither see nor understand.

But to help Blanche, she must willingly confront her power and learn its secrets: how it works; why no one can prove psychic power exists; and why, through history, the bearers of such powers have been ridiculed, persecuted, or destroyed.

More frightening for her, Madeline must learn to embrace and harness her own power in order to transform the negative energies massing around Blanche and Dru into positive energies, before the gathering evil ripples outward into the world. In the process, she must untangle star-crossed lovers and identify her soulmate among them, for those relationships seem to be generating all the energies involved.

Her faith in science finally leads Madeline to the Möbius strip, a mathematical symbol, which transports her beyond occultism to the transition point between physics and metaphysics. There the truth awaits, if she can survive long enough to find it.