Printer-friendly version
Local author has series of events coming up.
Reviewed by Pennell Paugh
March 17, 2024 (San Diego) -- Ocean Beach resident Cornelia Feye writes a post-apocalyptic story.
After a massive solar storm causes a catastrophic global blackout, Greg and Vega escape with their extended family to their solar powered, self-sufficient mountain cabin. Their survival is threatened when a dead body is found on the path behind their home, and a gang of lawless neo-Nazis threaten to take over their property.
Here is an excerpt:
“In ten hours, the world as we know it, is going to end,” says an urgent voice in Greg’s cell phone. He moves out of the sun’s glare streaming into his office to see the caller ID. Rakesh Patel, Greg’s Silicon Valley computer-nerd friend, who now works in cyber security at the National Security Agency. He met Rakesh at a Zen retreat and remembers his odd kind of humor, but this is not funny.
. . . “Rakesh, what are you talking about? Is this some kind of joke?”
“I shouldn’t even be telling you this, and I don’t have time to explain, but you better get your family out of town and bring as much food and gas as you can. Turn off all your electric systems, and hopefully I’ll see you on the other side.”
“Wait, what’s going on?”
“A G5 level CME, the biggest since the Carrington Event. Look, I gotta go.”
“How do you know about this?”
“NOAA warning satellites. It’s confidential. Trust me and leave.” He hangs up.
“Greg stands dumbfounded looking at his black cell phone screen. What’s a CME? A Google search informs him that a ‘CME is a coronal mass ejection, or a significant release of plasma and accompanying magnetic field from the sun’s corona into the heliosphere, it can cause geomagnetic storms and damage to the power grid.’ If it if is large enough, it can fry the entire electric grid. For a very long time . . .
Greg sits down at his large wooden desk. It’s cluttered with piles of papers and requests he should be dealing with to run his private security company. An image of a giant flare licking through space flashes through his mind. The flare reaches earth and burns the continent of Australia. Greg shakes himself out of this nightmare vision. It is time to act.
“Vega,” he calls his wife as he prepares to storm out of the office. “Pack up all the food we have and all the clothes you need for the next few months. We have to go up to the cabin immediately.”
Feye envisions a world in disarray because most vehicles will be dead and the electric grid will not exist. People will band together to find food and shelter. Quickly, the scarcity of resources will lead to desperate acts by normal people.
Feye is an author, an art historian, and a publisher of the indie press www.konstellationpress.com. She graduated from the University of Tübingen, Germany, before traveling around the world for seven years. Adventures she had on the road have found their way into her writing.
Her trilogy of art mysteries began with Spring of Tears, which won the San Diego Book Awards. House of the Fox, set in Anza Borrego Desert, and Private Universe followed. Her latest mystery, Death of a Zen Master, is set in a remote Zen monastery. She co-edited the anthology Magic, Mystery & Murder with Tamara Merrill which won the San Diego Book Award in 2019. A second anthology entitled Modern Metamorphoses - Stories of Transformation was published in 2020.
Purchase book or learn more: http://konstellationpress.com/
Upcoming author events
March 21
Book Launch, Mysterious Galaxy Bookstore, Point Loma,
3555 Rosecrans Street, # 107; 7 PM
April 6
San Diego Writers Festival
Coronado Public Library, 9-5 pm
The SDWF 2024 program is live. Check it out:
April 30th. Julian Public Library, Book Presentation and signing, 5 pm
August 11
Warwick’s Books, booksigning
7812 Girard Ave., 1-3 pm
Comments
solar powered
Hopefully her system is EMP shielded? A standard solar system electronics will be fried by an EMP pulse.