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Cobalt Blue Peggy Payne 9781780998084 Books

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Cobalt Blue Peggy Payne 9781780998084 Books

Cobalt Blue is a novel about sex, and then it’s not. If you’re looking for steamy sex scenes, you’ll find them here, but you’ll also find much more in the struggles of Andie Branson, a 38-year-old artist who is suddenly caught up in a puzzling chaos of inspiration and desire. Frustrated that her career is floundering (her most recent job includes the lowly work of napkin design), Andie’s interest in creating art is waning, so she’s surprised when an unexpected surge of pleasure grows into an urgent passion to paint. And so the journey begins.

At her studio in Pinehurst, North Carolina, Andie is driven to develop an old sketch into a taut yellow umbrella, which is a portion of what she visualized during the pleasure surge. As she paints, she’s gripped with an unfamiliar energy, a prickle rising in jerky motion “as if parts of her were coming loose inside.” Although she’s perplexed by this new arousal, wondering if it’s what people mean by “mystical,” Andie also marvels at the electricity of the painting. It’s the achievement she’s sought for years.

Andie’s convinced she’s starting a new level in her art, so what seems to be a random injury to her wrist later in the day is particularly disturbing. Or maybe it isn’t so random. While reaching inside a partially open car window to pet a dog, Andie twists her wrist and at the same time sees the reflection of her face on the dog’s head, “a wolf with the face of a woman,” the lips snarling.

From that point on, events in Andie’s life go terribly wrong. Against her better judgment, she agrees to paint a portrait of a racist senator whose policies she deplores. She allows herself to be enticed into a sex-filled boat trip with a stranger, and charges him one thousand dollars a day for her company. She seduces an old friend. What started as inspired painting is now driving her in directions she doesn’t want to go. And still she continues to improve the luminescent painting of the umbrella.

Frightened by her behavior, Andie seeks counsel from a therapist, who draws out of her the idea that the sex is leading to an expansion of her concept of self, but she has to control it, which she can’t. Her search for understanding and control takes her down memories of relationships past and present, including her strong attachment to her parents. And to centers of peace, such as the Episcopal church of her youth and a friend’s Quaker meeting. But not until she leafs through the senator’s book on meditation does she find a concept that resonates—the coiled energy called kundalini.

According to the meditation book, kundalini is “the energy of self-actualization” that “when awakened, is said to travel up through the chakras to the crown of the head.” Andie is familiar with different understandings of energy and spirituality from her mother, but she’s not familiar with kundalini. Where does it come from? What does it do? Can it be controlled? These questions send Andie on a deeper journey that winds through more research, her painting, and her commitment to make a portrait of the senator. Eventually, the journey leads her to New Orleans—the center of mystery and the occult—with the senator’s portrait as contraband.

Cobalt Blue provides a provocative look at an aspect of spirituality little known to most people and rarely explored in fiction. It opens avenues of thought about the struggle for true self that resonate with fears and desires in all of us. Is it possible to be the best of whoever you are and to control your destiny? If so, how? Going along with Andie in her search for answers to these questions is an enlightening and turbulent ride.


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Cobalt Blue Peggy Payne 9781780998084 Books Reviews

This book delves into the complicated subject of an unusual spiritual experience called kundalini. It is expremely well written and compelling and is worth reading just for the writing itself. The kundalini experience of the main character is sexual, but her disturbance from that disturbance is emotional. The main theme is how she grapples with the disturbing emotional experiences and gradually realizes that she is experiencing something which transcends these disturbances. I highly recommend this book!
A SEXY BOOK FOR THE POST MASTERS & JOHNSON SET
I love this book because it explores powerful sexual experiences, including taboos and obsession, without being the least bit icky or victim-ey. This is definitely a book for the post Masters & Johnson set. Andy, the main character, is an artist who's stuck in a rut painting milk-toast murals for local country clubs. She's depressed and sad and her ho hum boyfriend just left her making her feel ho hum about her entire life. Then, out of the blue, she starts to experience waves of sensual awareness, spiritual and intense, which give her the ability to paint like she always dreamed of. Only this sensual awareness doesn't stop with paint, it brings with it a kind of hyper-sexuality which takes Ms Andy down wild, kinky and dangerous roads. Cobalt Blue chronicles a woman's struggle to tame the immense and holy powers of sensual awareness to create art and love in her life.
Spiritual awakenings are not typically on our cluttered "must-do" lists as we pursue our frenetic daily chores, juggling time for family, boss, and needy Aunt Sally while trying to ignore the beeps and tweets from our smartphones. Some of us have carved out personal time in our week for stress relief workouts, hot baths, perhaps even some meditation. We might consider ourselves "enlightened," certainly fortunate, for having made some healthy choices about how we manage our time.
However, not many in this materialistic era give much thought or serious effort to pursuit of enlightenment or self-actualization or spiritual awareness. These are lofty, noble, but vaguely understood states of being, accessible only after suitably dramatic crises and trials in the life of the pretty heroine or hunky male lead in some dreamy fable or foreign movie set in an exotic, far-away land like Zanzibar or Seattle. The Hindu goddess Shakti ain't going to drop in on the rest of us out of the blue--no way! Besides, the Age of Aquarius is so, like, over.
Andie Branson, the approaching-middle-age and not-even-remotely satisfied artist who is the focus of Peggy Payne's new novel, Cobalt Blue, believes herself to be about as far from a spiritual opening or transformative experience as a gal can get when the story begins. Floundering creatively, unhappily stuck providing hackneyed commissions for wealthy clients and corporate image managers, Andie is also a mess emotionally, having recently ended a long relationship with her frustrating partner Charlie.
The once-vibrant artist lacks inspiration and feels as "empty as an old can of house paint," stuck living life vicariously through a group of friends, mostly fellow artists, who share studio space in the same building. The action begins with Andie at another client appointment trying to land a sports mural commission that she needs but esthetically deplores. Her serious painting has been as neglected as her emotional development for years. Andie gets no definite answer from the selection committee and returns home feeling depressed and convinced that her life lacks any meaningful direction or purpose. She falls asleep and awakens after only a few hours to find her bedroom awash in dazzling moonlight.
Andie is not merely enthralled by the beauty of the lambent light but infused with an unaccustomed sense of well-being, energy, and happiness. Suddenly, a coil of shimmering blue light spirals before her at the foot of her bed, then disappears. Her naked body tingles everywhere, and she is seized by erotic urges and prickling, powerful energy that thrums within, through, and around her. She finally dozes off again but awakens filled with long-dormant creative drive and zeal. She rushes to her studio to start work on a new, serious canvas for the first time in years. Thus begins Andie's first encounter with the spontaneous rising of what many religions call the sacred energy, what others term chi, others identify with the goddess Shakti or the serpent kundalini.
Spontaneous visitations from the spiritual realm should come as no surprise to readers familiar with the author's other novels. God speaks directly to and disrupts the smug, comfortable life of a small-town Presbyterian minister who is the focus of her earlier work, Revelation. In Cobalt Blue, the author explores decidedly bolder, racier facets of ecstatic visitation. This time the divine tongue of the spirit springs forth from a tantric serpent and licks, penetrates, and lusts after every orifice of Andie's overheated body, along with more than one of the male characters in the story. Memo to prissy readers sex sells, and Ms. Payne pulls no punches in laying it all out for you.
But, yes, there is more to Cobalt Blue than a "five stiffies/damp panties" raunchy fiction rating. The first flash of Andie's spiritual/sexual possession subsides for a scene or two. At the follow-up meeting where the artist hopes to nail down her next meal ticket, she is taken aside by an old acquaintance and offered another commission altogether, a huge sum for a portrait of a powerful U.S. senator whom she has always thought morally reprehensible a Faustian bargain with the devil incarnate.
The ethical/financial dilemma posed by this tempting yet offensive opportunity is another unwelcome shock. Andie heads to the Carolina shore to avoid making an immediate decision on the senator's portrait. There she is again seized with surging sexual urges and cravings and spends a delirious weekend as a $1,000 per night sex toy on a nearby luxury yacht. Subsequent lust-fests and several that she is barely able to avoid giving in to leave Andie miserable, at increasing risk for serious physical harm, and desperate for help and self-control. And she's not getting any artistic boost from the bangings; the jolt of creative energy that she'd experienced that first morning when she'd rushed to paint has not been sustained.
What starts as Andie's search for any means to free herself from her ecstatic bondage develops into a much more interesting search for self-awareness and an opening of channels between mind and body in order to direct spontaneously surging energies in transformative ways. The author skillfully engages readers in her progress along many levels of understanding and problem solving. Andie first seeks medical help to determine whether she is acutely psychotic or if there are other explanations for her seismic symptoms. She also does some digging on her own and learns some basic facts about good and evil effects others have experienced when dormant life forces coiled at the base of the spine become aroused during meditation or occult practices. But Andie isn't a seeker after Eastern enlightenment like her mother. Why is this happening to her?
Under the care of an older female analyst Andie insists on finding a quick fix for her disturbing perceptions and risky behavior and resists the doctor's attempts to help her confront her arrested psychosexual development--a problem of Elektra-ish dimensions--linked to a distorted relationship with her glamorous parents, Zack and Daphne, during childhood and adolescence.
In the midst of this internal storm and stress, she has foolishly taken on the rich and powerful senator. So she must also find a way to outwit the devil satisfy the bare minimum of a portrait commission, take his money, and not soil her scruples on the way out of town. And out of town she again goes, this time to New Orleans in search of exotic release and enlightenment. Leaving her comfy perch in one of the city's opulent hotels, Andie plunges into the steamy city for more steamy action with smarmy guys. In the heart of the romantic old quarter, she finally starts down a road to healing and discovery with help from some local spiritual adepts--New Orleans style!
The story is well paced throughout and benefits from the author's fine talents in setting all scenes with rich descriptive detail, narrative tension, and emotional flourishes in crisp dialogue. The Carolina locales and those in New Orleans are authentic and immediately appreciable. Because this is a psychological drama, the main-character focus is intense and fairly myopic--a purposeful close-up of the protagonist with fairly sketchy, two-dimensional supporting characters whose sole purpose is to move the action along. The evil senator is believable enough although this reader found his list of transgressions all too predictable, straight out of the liberal's handbook of mortal sins. I enjoyed reading about the artistic techniques Andie uses to capture his protean facial features and corrupt personality. Ms. Payne either has a background in graphic arts or some very good consultants on the subject.
Two friends who take charge of Andie when she is least in control of her faculties are the only other characters besides the senator to rise slightly above sketch-pad level. But nothing complex or special here either perfectly adequate as friends in need, friends indeed. I was disappointed, however, with the portrayal of Andie's parents, especially their lack of meaningful interaction with her as the story develops. Their role in her developmental pathology was presented early and alluded to several times thereafter but ultimately left hanging. The father, Zack, even spends a few days with Andie, but we learn little from their time together. Nothing is resolved; in fact, more tangential plot questions are raised during his visit and left unanswered. Ms. Payne is a skillful writer, and I am certain she intended them to be left unanswered. I puzzled over why she decided to introduce them at all. Perhaps she has a sequel in mind?
However, these last few issues are mere quibbles, small beer. Andie's adventure is big and wet and wild and entertaining on many levels. Those who are squeamish about torrid sexual fantasies and some graphic accounts of the real thing will be put off. Those expecting a Western treatise on tantric yoga or the One True Path to the Buddha Mind will be disappointed. Those who appreciate a masterly rendering of one woman's tale of self-discovery will enjoy riding with Andie while she outwits the devil and rattles the rails on a roller-coaster ride with her inner serpent, kundalini.
Enjoyed this story of a woman, an artist, finding herself. The journey at times erotic, full of imaginings and relationships that twist and turn from moment to moment. Is she crazy, she wonders as her personality is tested again and again. Read it and judge for yourself.
Cobalt Blue is a novel about sex, and then it’s not. If you’re looking for steamy sex scenes, you’ll find them here, but you’ll also find much more in the struggles of Andie Branson, a 38-year-old artist who is suddenly caught up in a puzzling chaos of inspiration and desire. Frustrated that her career is floundering (her most recent job includes the lowly work of napkin design), Andie’s interest in creating art is waning, so she’s surprised when an unexpected surge of pleasure grows into an urgent passion to paint. And so the journey begins.

At her studio in Pinehurst, North Carolina, Andie is driven to develop an old sketch into a taut yellow umbrella, which is a portion of what she visualized during the pleasure surge. As she paints, she’s gripped with an unfamiliar energy, a prickle rising in jerky motion “as if parts of her were coming loose inside.” Although she’s perplexed by this new arousal, wondering if it’s what people mean by “mystical,” Andie also marvels at the electricity of the painting. It’s the achievement she’s sought for years.

Andie’s convinced she’s starting a new level in her art, so what seems to be a random injury to her wrist later in the day is particularly disturbing. Or maybe it isn’t so random. While reaching inside a partially open car window to pet a dog, Andie twists her wrist and at the same time sees the reflection of her face on the dog’s head, “a wolf with the face of a woman,” the lips snarling.

From that point on, events in Andie’s life go terribly wrong. Against her better judgment, she agrees to paint a portrait of a racist senator whose policies she deplores. She allows herself to be enticed into a sex-filled boat trip with a stranger, and charges him one thousand dollars a day for her company. She seduces an old friend. What started as inspired painting is now driving her in directions she doesn’t want to go. And still she continues to improve the luminescent painting of the umbrella.

Frightened by her behavior, Andie seeks counsel from a therapist, who draws out of her the idea that the sex is leading to an expansion of her concept of self, but she has to control it, which she can’t. Her search for understanding and control takes her down memories of relationships past and present, including her strong attachment to her parents. And to centers of peace, such as the Episcopal church of her youth and a friend’s Quaker meeting. But not until she leafs through the senator’s book on meditation does she find a concept that resonates—the coiled energy called kundalini.

According to the meditation book, kundalini is “the energy of self-actualization” that “when awakened, is said to travel up through the chakras to the crown of the head.” Andie is familiar with different understandings of energy and spirituality from her mother, but she’s not familiar with kundalini. Where does it come from? What does it do? Can it be controlled? These questions send Andie on a deeper journey that winds through more research, her painting, and her commitment to make a portrait of the senator. Eventually, the journey leads her to New Orleans—the center of mystery and the occult—with the senator’s portrait as contraband.

Cobalt Blue provides a provocative look at an aspect of spirituality little known to most people and rarely explored in fiction. It opens avenues of thought about the struggle for true self that resonate with fears and desires in all of us. Is it possible to be the best of whoever you are and to control your destiny? If so, how? Going along with Andie in her search for answers to these questions is an enlightening and turbulent ride.