I am thrilled to be hosting a spot
on the THE INDIGO by Heather Siegel Blog Tour hosted by Rockstar Book Tours. Check out
my post and make sure to enter the giveaway!
About The Book:
Author: Heather Siegel
Pub. Date: June 1, 2022
Publisher: Stone Tiger Books
Formats: Paperback, eBook
Pages: 250
Find it: Goodreads, Amazon, Kindle
Read for FREE with a Kindle Unlimited membership!
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Jett Hart, a 16-year-old girl from New Jersey, refuses to accept the diagnosis that her mother is brain-dead. Yes, Mom's long-comatose body seems like an empty shell. But there was that split-second, weird time Jett swears she lifted out from her own body and travelled to an indigo-colored, starry space, where she felt Mom's presence.
Now, as Jett's caretaking Aunt threatens to pull Mom's life support, Jett must find this mysterious indigo place again and return her mother to her body before it’s too late. The bad news is that only her schoolmate Farold -- who may or may not give off a more-than-friends vibe -- believes she can do this. The good news is that he's an amateur quantum physicist in training and has some ideas about how to help Jett get back “up there.”
Even if Jett manages to find Mom in the "indigo," can she bring her back to her body? While also staying connected to her own “empty shell” below? And, what if . . . someone is trying to stop her?
A teen thriller offering astral projection cosmology, life cords, parallel
universes, and wormholes, THE INDIGO is a wild trip through one person's
consciousness "above," her interconnected reality "below,"
and the psychological and potentially fatal dangers of being disconnected from
both.
Reviews:
"Out of this world! A fast-paced magical trip across the stars, Jett and Farold will whisk you away to The Indigo in search of answers and leave you gasping for air time and time again. Siegel creates a world you both fear and long for. A must read for fans of Flatliners and Stranger Things. - Rajdeep Paulus, award-winning author of the SWIMMING THROUGH CLOUDS TRILOGY
"The thing with The Indigo is the writing. It's subtle, sweet and doesn't
skirt around the subjects of grief and loss. It's not afraid to talk about a
struggling family, emotionally, financially, and with each other's
relationships. What Siegel has created here is a beautiful book, filled with
believable and relatable characters who have real feelings.... Siegel has
written a triumph."- Sally Altass,REEDSY
"Wow! It has been a while since I have enjoyed a book as much as I
relished The Indigo. The concepts are wonderfully fresh and unique and Heather
Siegel is a remarkable writer. If you swap dreams for astral projection and
throw in a tad of fantasy and a bit more drama, then this book would be like
the movie Inception, but for young adults. It is an amazing book and well
written. I think it could be made into a phenomenal film or even a series of
films. I was blown away and reading it has converted me into a huge fan. There
are a lot more enthralling elements in the plot that I can't give away. This is
an author to look out for."- Michaela Gordoni, READERS' FAVORITE
"A fascinating story involving portals, quantum physics, multiverses, and
astral projection, The Indigo is bound to entice fans of the paranormal genre.
Author Heather Siegel tells a moving tale about a tenacious teenager who
refuses to let go of her mother and gives her all to bring her mother back to
life. The plot takes unexpected twists and turns that you never see coming.
Jett is a likable protagonist you find easy to root for. Her devotion to her
mother is not only admirable but also very relatable. I especially enjoyed her
burgeoning romance with Farold, and it was one of my favorite aspects of the
book. Recommended to young adult readers who love fantasy or paranormal
stories."- Pikasho Deka, READERS' FAVORITE
1. Quantum
Meeting
Day 787. I
sponge Mom’s stringy arms and pronate her elbows. Suction saliva from her white
gums, careful not to disturb the psst-psst of the breathing tube. I
attach cotton-ball-size muscle-stimulation pads, all forty of them, to her
biceps and triceps, her deltoids and extensors, her flexors and hamstrings. As
the pads pulse against muscle atrophy, I crayon Chapstick on her lips, rub cream
down her pointed nose and waxen cheek skin, brush her dark hair splayed over
the starched pillow. I leave the waste bags for the nurses but check the
connections out of habit — the tubes to the catheter and colostomy bag, the one
to her nutrients. Then I sit, holding her hand, pretending to talk to her for
the sake of passersby, even though I know she’s not listening. Not even in the
room.
Her body is
an empty vessel. A coat on a hanger waiting for her arms to slip in. A mollusk
on the beach, abandoned by its host. An empty carton of milk I’m here to make
sure they don’t throw out.
Because when
I find her — and bring her back — she will need her container.
They’ve told
me it’s dangerous to think this way. Psychologically damaging, Aunt Margaret
has claimed. A byproduct of grief, the therapists have said. Denial is a
natural defense mechanism, Dr. Horn has counseled. “But we can’t ignore the
reality of what the scans tell us.”
He means the
X-rays of Mom’s gray folded matter. The regions of her brain that still incite
spontaneous reflexes — causing her arm to jerk here, her leg to twitch there.
“All seemingly normal manifestations of brainstem function,” he’s told me
repeatedly. “But should not be confused with actual brainstem function. Without
which she has little chance of waking up.”
I can’t
fault him for thinking this way. The guy’s a neurologist — his business is
brains.
But I know
there has to be more to us than our bodies and brains.
Call it what
you want — a consciousness, a soul, a spirit, a light being. It’s the thing
countless comatose patients swear gave them the ability to live whole other
lives while on respirators. The thing that philosophers and spiritualists spent
their lives writing about. The thing that makes us who we are. And maybe even fuels
the brainstem.
And Mom’s
brainstem went missing two years ago the moment she crashed her car.
An
accident, Aunt
Margaret had said on the phone. Black ice. A telephone pole. Coming to pick
up you up in five. . . .
I flew down
the stairs of our apartment and rushed into intensive care, still in my red
plaid pajama bottoms, dried toothpaste stuck to my cheek. Mom lay behind a wall
of glass, and I heard fragments: Her chest had banged into the steering wheel.
Glass shards had lodged in her cheeks. She’s lucky to have made it out
alive.
But define
“alive.”
For a week,
I watched machines automate her breathing, feed her, monitor her. I felt
numbed, stunned, dazed. Most of all, empty. Like something in my chest cavity
had gone missing, its hollowness threatening to suck my heart and lungs deeper
inward.
I thought it
was coming from me.
Then one
night, following Dr. Horn’s delivery of yet another brain spiel — this one
replete with pictures of axon and dendrites that looked like tree branches —
they let us through the glass wall.
I plunked
into the pink pleather chair and held Mom’s limp hand in mine; ran my thumb
over her beige polish, chipped from washing beer glasses at Sharkie’s Bar and
Grill. The emptiness opened like a black hole, and I yearned for my best-friend
sister-like Mom, just 17 years older than me. The woman who wore my jeans and
tried on my life, from basketball tryouts to friendship blips. The woman who
let me inhabit her dreams of traveling the world.
“How much
tragedy can one family take?” Grandma Eloise was saying. “First, I lose one
daughter, and now another?”
“I know,
Mom, I know.” Aunt Margaret sniffled.
They were
speaking of Grandma Eloise’s oldest daughter, who had died as a teenager —
Mom’s oldest sister. And I had sat there, unsure of what to say. Not only
because there seemed to be some kind of dark cloud hanging over us, but because
they barely noticed I was in the room.
So, when
they decided to go to the cafeteria, I said, “I’ll stay here, then.”
Aunt
Margaret turned, her yellow, roller-set waves bouncing like in a retro TV
commercial. “Jett, I’m sorry. Did you want to come with us?”
“It’s OK.
I’m good,” I said, because I knew they were just trying to salve their own
pain, even though you couldn’t have paid me a million dollars to eat a bite of
food in that moment.
So off they
went, leaving me and Mom and my emptiness, and because everything felt so
empty, I climbed into bed with Mom, spooned to her side — admittedly feeling
sorry for myself in this new orphaned state — and blubbered away into her bony
shoulder.
Her
respirator lulled me into a sleepy state, and my mind drifted, thinking about
her running off as a teenager at 17 — just a year older than me now — to marry
a guy outside the enclave of this small town. Then that got me thinking
about my dad, the man I barely got to know, but whose hands for some reason I
could see peeking out from his electrician’s coveralls: coppery skin freckled
like mine with wispy red hair, as he meticulously spliced the wire of a lamp cord. Cut before the damage. Splice by twisting.
See his hand twisting a lightbulb in, electricity zipping through its filament.
We can travel as fast as this . . . in our sleep. . . . We can meet in
Hawaii, where the sand is black, and the rocks are as large as grapefruits.
I must have drifted off then, Mom’s empty
container against mine, the respirator wheezing rhythmically, everything hazy
and meshing and sucking me under.
Just
think of where you want to go, my dad said, still coming to me in snapshots. His freckled
hands on a tabletop. Suntanned face. Fiery hair. A woman beside him laid down
cards splattered with ink. Palm trees swayed outside, and contentment purred in
my chest like a vibration.
Deeper and
deeper I drifted under, as darkness surrounded my eyelids and tunneled around
me, churning into a black liquid — the way dreams work — until it ended in a
circle of purple-blue light large enough to fit through.
I poked my
head through and found the air was watery, indigo-colored, and pocked with
millions of crystalline white stars. I wanted to climb through the hole and
swim out into the starry space. But when I looked up, I saw rectangles hanging
in the sky.
They were
outlined in what looked like glitter — the kind I recognized from my childhood
drawings, when I’d outlined geometric shapes with glue and glitter and blown
the excess off. And inside were movielike images:
Palm trees
in one.
The
stairwell to Mom’s and my old apartment in the other.
Where do
you want to go? My
father’s voice sounded again, only this time my chest tightened and pulled, as
though there was a rope attached to the center, and I suddenly got scared
feeling . . . wondering . . . knowing. . . .
This wasn’t
a dream.
I was somewhere
outside of myself.
Definitely
not in my body.
And Mom . .
. she wasn’t in bed at the hospital. She was behind that rectangle . . . that door.
I could
sense her, alert and awake, black hair not splayed on a pillow, but tucked
behind her ears and parted down the middle, revealing a white line of scalp;
cheeks not waxen and pale, but flushed from moving around the kitchen . . .
pulling me to her.
But because
it all felt so real, and because I didn’t know what would happen if I did dive
through that hole, I jerked my head back. And the next thing I knew, I was
yanked backwards and my whole body stung as though I were a human rubber band
snapping back.
Just in time
to find Aunt Margaret back from the cafeteria, shaking my shoulders.
“Jett, Jett,
wake up,” she called.
“Should I
call someone?” Grandma Eloise asked.
My eyes
popped open, and they gasped.
“You scared
us, you were in such a deep sleep,” Aunt Margaret scolded. “You’re not supposed
to be in bed with her.”
“I went to
find her,” I tried to explain. “Mom isn’t here. . . .”
“What?
Nonsense.” Aunt Margaret said. “You were having a bad dream.”
“Honey, we
are all under tremendous stress,” Grandma Eloise said.
“But there
are doorways up there,” I insisted. “We have to find her and bring her back. .
. . Look, there’s no one inside.”
“Honey, we
don’t know what you are saying,” Grandma Eloise said.
“Jett, this
is hard enough on all of us.” Aunt Margaret’s tone steeled.
My mistake,
I’ve come to realize, was continuing to insist, back at Aunt Margaret’s, and
for months afterward, describing all I could remember, and lugging home
research and stories from the library about people leaving their bodies: about
the idea that a person could ostensibly be in two separate places at once.
“That is absolutely enough. I will
not have that kind of nonsense talk in my house,” Aunt Margaret snapped
finally, and the next thing I knew I was seeing Dr. Karr, a grief counselor,
and being asked to review more charts from Dr. Horn. And when a year later, I
still wouldn’t relent about the purple hole and the doorway to Mom, and the
fact that anyone can tell she is simply not in this room, the grief
counselor suggested medications, and eventually whispered to Aunt Margaret
terms like “grief delusions” and “detached from reality.” This led me to
understand two things:
Not only can
I not convince people to open their minds, as a minor in the State of New
Jersey, 10 minutes from the state’s largest psych ward, I need to watch it, or
I might never find Mom.
Excerpt
#2
Quantum
Club Meeting. 2:30. Cafeteria.
“I didn’t
know the school had a Quantum Club,” says a girl passing by. Popular. A junior,
in black Lululemon leggings.
“What the
hell’s ‘quantum’?” a familiar voice says. “Oh . . . that explains it.” I turn
to see my cousin Meghan looking in my direction. Hair highlighted blond. Glossy
pink lips. We are nearly the same age, and worlds apart.
“Don’t know
and don’t care,” a beefy senior guy says. “Let’s go eat.”
“Oh, Matty,
all you care about is food.” Meghan giggles as they continue walking.
Truthfully,
I don’t know what quantum is either, but a quick Google search gives me the
answer:
The study
of physics that allows for particles to be in two states at the same time.
“That’s
weird,” I say out loud to no one.
I head for
the cafeteria, intrigued…
There are
three people seated in the sea-foam-green cabbage-smelling room. No surprise
Mickey Mizner and Brian Leonard are two of them.
“My problem
is I’ve got everything prepped for ampage past 27MHz,” Mickey says, blowing
dark bangs off square-framed glasses. “I just need to hit ionosphere at the
right angle—” He taps a black box on the table, the size of a breadbox, with
knobs and buttons. From here, I make out the words Galaxy Torchlighter 825.
“—Sweet,
isn’t she?”
“Sweet and
illegal to jack up,” Brian replies.
The new guy
swigs from an Orangina and scribbles in his notebook, his white braided
bracelets scratching against the Formica tabletop. He’s wearing an MIT
sweatshirt, and peeking out from the neckline is a black rope necklace. At the
ends of his hair, gold beads catch the fluorescent light.
“It’s not a
bad start,” he says, looking up and taking a swig of orange soda. “But can you
get someone on the other end of the world to receive the signal? The antipode
must be, what, Australia?”
“That’s what
I told you,” Brian says. He’s wearing a uniform from the ice cream store
Sunset Scoops: a brown wavy smock made to resemble dripping hot fudge, and a
maraschino cherry hat.
“Wait, the what
is Australia?” Mickey asks.
“It means
‘opposite,’ ” I say, reaching the table. “Geographically, right?”
The new guy
grins at me, his eyes twinkling with approval. And I’m not going to lie: I
can’t help but grin back. I slide into the end seat.
“Farold,” he
says.
“Jett.”
“Well, now
that we got that out of the way,” Brian cuts in. “I’m thinking
Electromagnetic Induction. The hypothesis is that a current can create a
magnetic field.”
“Also not
bad.” Farold scribbles again and glances up. “But you’d have to check if it’s
already been done.” He has a singsong quality to his words. I like the way
“realize” is “real’izze.”
Mickey
shoulders Brian. “That’s what I told you.” He turns to Farold. “Anyway, if I
find someone across the world, in an antipode” — he glances to me —
“think it’s worth seeing if my radio’s skip is capable?”
Brian shoves
back. “Mine may be done, but there’s nothing yet on what can and cannot escape
the said magnetic field. . . .”
“They’re
both solid starts.” Farold draws his fist to rest beneath his sculpted jaw
line, looking suddenly like the art room’s knockoff sculpture of Michelangelo’s
“The Thinker.” “But since this is going to be a competition for MIT, the best
science institution in the country, we’ll have to shoot beyond the rudimentary.
. . . Any other ideas?”
Three faces
turn to me. One cute as hell. But I’m here to listen. Besides, I can’t take the
rejection again.
“Every idea
has merit,” Farold says.
“He’s dope,
Jett,” Mickey says, which coming from him sounds anything but dope.
“If she
doesn’t have any ideas . . . ” Brian says.
“I don’t . .
. I mean, I thought . . . I don’t know, maybe we were going to talk about
quantum physics or whatever, not enter a competition.”
“You study
quantum physics?” Farold asks.
“No . . .
but it sounds interesting.”
“Which
part?”
I could feel
defensive, but there’s something about the way he asks, earnestly, and the way
he looks at me, so open and curious. “I . . . guess . . . I liked what your
flier said. It made me think. Wonder, really. Something I’ve been thinking
about. The idea of things being in two separate places at the same time?”
He smiles
again, right through me, sending a tingle along my neck. “I’m actually working
on something that poses that exact question. But it’s hard to prove. I mean, so
far, no one has . . . supported it.”
“I hear
that.”
“I had a
feeling you might.”
“How would
you have a feeling about that?”
“Your
hesitation.” Our eyes affix. Is it my imagination or is there something
palpable between us?
“Tell me
your idea,” he says.
“Tell me
yours.”
“You guys
know we’re in the room, right?” Brian says.
Farold turns
to him. “Two particles in separate boxes.”
“Following,”
Mickey says.
He waves his hand, drawing us all in. “It’s
proven they can communicate with one another and influence each other’s
physical spin. Well, I propose they relate to one another in a nonscientific
way. In a way we can’t really yet name. That they can speak to one another . .
. by sensing one another.”
His eyes
meet mine, alight, full of possibility. “Your turn.”
And like
that, I find myself blurting the story I promised I’d stop telling people:
“There was
an accident. . . . I could tell my mother wasn’t there. . . . And then this
thing happened at the hospital. . . . But I’ve tried everything and can’t get
back. . . .”
“What have
you tried?” Farold asks.
“You name
it. Re-creating the events. Dreaming and setting an alarm. I’ve tried something
called the rope technique, and the ladder technique. Also, rolling out, driving
out, rotating, and yo-yo’ing, which is basically trying to climb, drive, or
shimmy out of my body. I’ve tried the point-shift method and the picture
technique, in which I’m supposed to envision myself hovering at the ceiling,
looking down at my bed. I’ve even sent away for this—”
I pluck the
envelope from my bag and tear it open.
That’s when
Mickey and Brian call it a day.
“Next
Thursday?” Mickey asks, gathering his CB radio.
“Yeah, I
gotta split too,” Brian adds. “You’re awesome, man. . . . Uh, good luck, Jett.”
Brian tips his ice cream cone hat and exits the cafeteria, leaving me alone
with Farold, my heart sinking at the sight of the DVD on the table between us.
It’s not the
cheesy clouds against sky on the circular sticker adhered to the DVD that
rushes blood to my cheeks, but the airbrushed, ethereal angel flying through
those clouds.
At $39.99,
this cost me more than four hours of librarian work. Why did I think this was a
good idea to share — or buy?
Farold
slides the disc into his laptop, turning the device for both of us to see. Even
the digital quality is pathetic. Two women wearing flowing garb and seeming to
float on a cloud discuss how they came to learn under the tutelage of the Dr.
Reflexology guy, the art of soul travel by aligning their chakras — what they
can help me do for the next hour. Though if I want to learn the nine secrets to
launching myself, I will need to send away for the DVD package. For a mere
$69.99 more.
I want to
crawl under the table.
“I didn’t
know it would be this—”
“—cheapjack.”
“What’s
that?”
“It’s what
we say in Trinidad. Or in English, ‘cringe-y.’ ”
And that’s
my cue.
I stand,
slinging my backpack on, and extend my palm for the DVD, even knowing as pathetic
as it is, I am going to watch it — a thought that makes my cheeks even hotter.
Because that’s how desperate I’ve become, and I hate myself for it. “Anyway . .
. if you can just keep everything I said earlier to yourself.”
He pops out
the DVD and walks around the table to stand before me, a foot taller. “What
happens in Quantum Club stays in Quantum Club.” He edges close enough for me to
smell a delicious vanilla scent wafting from his sweatshirt, to feel those
tingles again, and to see in his pupils gold flecks that look like stars.
“Could be a
multiverse, you know. That Indigo place?” His hand grazes my wrist as he places
the plastic disc back in my palm. “Alternate realities are always taking place.
The name for it in quantum mechanics is the Many Interacting Worlds.”
Prickles
down my neck. “Are you saying . . . you believe me?”
“There are
no absolute proofs in quantum theory. It’s about what we can measure, and to
what precision.” He seems to have an idea, darts back to his notebook, and
scribbles.
I place it on the table, suppressing tears, and take a seat.
About Heather Siegel:
Heather
Siegel is the author of THE KING & THE QUIRKY, and OUT FROM THE UNDERWORLD.
She teaches academic and creative writing, holds an MFA from The New School
University, and lives with her family in Southern Florida.
Sign
up for Heather’s newsletter!
Website | Twitter | Facebook | Instagram | TikTok | Goodreads | Amazon | BookBub
Giveaway Details:
1 winner will receive a finished copy of THE INDIGO, US Only.
a Rafflecopter giveawayTour Schedule:
Week One:
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6/20/2022 |
Excerpt/IG Post |
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6/20/2022 |
Excerpt |
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6/21/2022 |
Excerpt |
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6/21/2022 |
Excerpt/IG Post |
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6/22/2022 |
Excerpt/IG Post |
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6/22/2022 |
Excerpt |
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6/23/2022 |
IG Post |
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6/23/2022 |
Review |
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6/24/2022 |
Review |
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6/24/2022 |
IG Post |
Week Two:
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6/27/2022 |
IG Post |
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6/27/2022 |
Excerpt/IG Post |
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6/28/2022 |
IG Review |
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6/28/2022 |
Excerpt/IG Post |
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6/29/2022 |
IG Review |
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6/29/2022 |
Review/IG Post |
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6/30/2022 |
IG Review |
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6/30/2022 |
Review |
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7/1/2022 |
Review/IG Post |
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7/1/2022 |
Review/IG Post |
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