At the Heart of It All

By Kari Kilgore

On Certain Days, the Hurt Feels Brand New

Most people love the music computer in Sara's brain.
Earworm lyrics. Trivia and connections. Obscure cover versions. She knows it all.
Only one person knows the obsession behind Sara's knowledge. And the heartache she hides.

Can a break with the past show Sarah a new future?

 

Originally appeared in Obsessions: An Anthology of Original Fiction, Stark Publishing, 2020

 

An excerpt from At the Heart of It All:

The Day All Her Best Defenses Fail

 

Sarah may have been born with the computer, but her father had at least installed the software and optimized it for music. The massive database she'd been filling as long as she could remember.
Anything that changed after that hadn't been his fault.

"Not now. Not while you're in this traffic."

She took advantage of a dead stop on the highway and called up Jimi Hendrix and Crosstown Traffic to distract herself.

Keeping the calendars out of her office helped some with this dreadful, painful month. Same with turning off the displays on her phone and her computers at work. Even if she'd followed her occasional impulse and spent all of October in some sort of technology and communication void, she'd know.

Some part of Sara knew exactly what day it was.
Every single year.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Spiral Publishing, Ltd
• Release date: Jun 30, 2021
• ISBN: 9798201271329

Kari Kilgore

Kari Kilgore started her first published novel Until Death in Transylvania, Romania, and finished it in Room 217 at the Stanley Hotel in Estes Park, Colorado, where Stephen King got the idea for The Shining. That’s just one example of how real world inspiration drives her fiction. Kari’s first published novel Until Death was included on the Preliminary Ballot for the Bram Stoker Award for Outstanding Achievement in a First Novel in 2016. It was also a finalist for the Golden Stake Award at the Vampire Arts Festival in 2018. Recent professional short story sales include three to Fiction River anthology magazine, with the first due out in the September issue. Kari also has two stories in a holiday-themed anthology project with Kristine Kathryn Rusch due out over the holidays in 2019. Kari writes fantasy, science fiction, horror, and contemporary fiction, and she’s happiest when she surprises herself. She lives at the end of a long dirt road in the middle of the woods with her husband Jason Adams, various house critters, and wildlife they’re better off not knowing more about. Kari’s novels, novellas, and short stories are available at www.spiralpublishing.net, which also publishes books by Frank Kilgore and Jason Adams. For more information about Kari, upcoming publications, her travels and adventures, and random cool things that catch her attention, visit www.karikilgore.com.

Book preview

At the Heart of It All

For those of us with Earworm Brains

---

who understand how music can save lives.

At the Heart of It All

Kari Kilgore

Spiral Publishing, Ltd.

At the Heart of It All

Early evening was Sara’s favorite time of day. Winter or summer. Home or work, or on vacation. No matter where she was or what she was doing, an elemental and vital part of her relaxed when the hour hand pointed straight down.

This six in the evening found Sara in her vast, nearly empty office building, almost at the end of her workday. The door to her small office open as usual, music playing through her computer’s speakers as always. She could walk across the whole tiny room in five quick steps, but the pale wooden desktop had no need to accommodate anyone’s coffee cups or elbows but her own.

Cream-colored walls held her own artwork, the shelves her own silly toys and mementos. No calendar, not this month, but one featuring classic electric and acoustic guitars would return in a few days.

The option to turn off the harsh overhead light in favor of a sweet lamp shaped