Reader Appeal?

I tell stories in my head. Since I was old enough to talk. It's how I entertain myself on boring rides or trapped in isolated and confined environments (ICE)--which has come in handy for work many times over and so is justification enough for telling tall tales and strange stories, in my head.

But now as a published author, there are only so many of these stories that I have time to get on paper and that publishers have the time and money to take chances on (no matter how kind and helpful my publisher, Affinity Rainbow Publications). So the deciding factor is reader appeal. 

Will a story appeal enough to enough readers to justify it's opportunity cost?

I'm a reader too, so I do get double the votes...but it's still hard to make that call sometimes. Plus, I like to take chances sometimes and play with the laws of grammar, plot, and genre and this desire to innovate can bias my estimates of reader appeal.

Which brings me to today. I have four novels outlined and ready to start, and no clue which one to try first. All four are lesbian romances. The main differences between them are in tone, point-of-views, and sub-genres. I appeal to those of you who read. I provide snippets of all four novels below. 

Please send feedback regarding which one appeals more to you. You're vote counts--maybe more than my own (depending on how much bourbon I've imbibed) toward which novel gets written up first.

1. A Badge Washed Up - Janey, a middle-aged Black lesbian cook at a beach-side retirement resort finds the honorary police badge of a missing forensic scientist washed up on the shore, but no one will take her questions seriously, so she searches for the scientist on her own. She finds a lot more than she bargains for during the search.

My hands were shaking even though the August heat beating down on the sand was so hot that my eyes felt scorched.  I felt sorry for all the little elders of the Shore Acres Seaside Retirement Resort, with their fair skin, pale eyes, and soft smiles.  But most of all, I felt sorry for the whole world.  I felt sorry for my beautiful dead baby. The injustice of his promising life cut short in his prime burned so rough in my chest that my hands still shook, two years later, whenever I thought about it.

I was walking down the beach on my day off, letting the green Gulf of Mexico wash in and out over my toes.  I kept playing back the last time I saw my son, Saul, alive. 

 “Come on, Momma, I'm just walking one mile up the road.  Julie's house is right on the edge of Orange Grove.  The first house on the left as you turn into the neighborhood.”

“I know you can walk the mile, Saul.”

“Julie is a good kid.  We're really going to work on our project for the science fair.  I promise.” Saul spread his large hands open in front of his body and stuck out his lower lip.

“I know Julie is a good kid, and you know I trust you anyways.”

“So, what's the hold up?” Saul rubbed the palm of his hand over his tight brown curly hair and bugged his eyes out at me.

I watched him shift from foot to foot, one ratty Converse over the other, as he waited for me to answer him.  He was sixteen years of earnest adolescent energy.

I wasn't sure what the problem was, but for some reason, I didn't want him to go out that evening.  I should have listened to my mother's intuition that night, even though I didn't have any good logic to support it.

“It's winter, Saul.”

“It's Gainesville, Florida, Momma.  Low of sixty-two degrees.”

“Dark by six 'o-clock, Saul.”

“There is a sidewalk the whole way.  I have to cross one street and there is a stop light there.”  Saul gave me a smile and wrapped one arm around my shoulders.

I said nothing.

“I'll take my hoodie in case it gets cold, and I'll be home by seven for dinner.”

I shook my head and smiled back at him.

“I'll also leave Julie's phone number on fridge for you.”

He was a good kid, an honors student.  He never sassed me and he never complained that we couldn't buy him a car or a phone, or that all of his clothes came from second-hand shops.  He smiled every day and he did his best to make others smile with him.  He tried to take care of me.  He promised to be home by seven for dinner that night because we both knew his dad would probably wander in drunk and smelling like some other woman well after our bedtimes.  Only the good die young.

I don't know when I heard the first siren for sure, but it was fifteen minutes after seven when I sat at the kitchen table in front of our ready dinner plates and got really worried.  Saul was never more than a few minutes late to anything in his life.  He was two days early for his own birth.  He rolled out of bed every morning before his alarm clock went off.  I was staring at our plates of mashed potatoes, green beans, and thin fried pork cutlets as I listened to the sirens outside explode into a symphony.

I thought I would call Julie to see what time Saul left her house, but when I got up from the table my feet took me past the phone and through the front door. 

I found myself running in my socks across the black-top parking outside our apartment, toward the front gates and the sound of sirens. Outside the gate I remember seeing ambulances and squad cars.  I remember tasting my heart in my mouth as I called out for Saul. I remember seeing one of Saul's Converse on its side on the pavement, covered in so much blood that it looked red rather than its usual washed-out gray all over.  

2. Inherent Risks (co-written with Ali Spooner) - DEA Agents Victoria Alvarez and Justine Adrijan want to bust the biggest drug-fueled sex-trafficking ring in history. Will their newly discovered passion for one another help or hinder their quest for justice and revenge?

Justine clutched Tori’s battered Kevlar vest in her white-knuckled hands and inspected the blemish and nick just to the left of the 9mm slug embedded in it. Noises swam around her in the waiting room of Ben Taub Hospital’s ER. Sweat trickled down between her breasts and prickled cold on the back of her neck under her hair. For the thousandth time in the last five minutes, she wished that she was in jeans and a t-shirt with a badge slung around her neck instead of rattling her nerves in the skimpy dress and high-heels of her undercover alter-ego, Sofia Galina.

Dumb-founded she touched the 9mm slug with a fingertip. It shouldn’t have penetrated that well or stuck there that deep. What the hell was the blemish just to the left of it? Almost like a bullet had already nicked it, but she knew the DEA would never issue Tori a previously damaged vest. As realization dawned on her, she murmured a harsh invective. In the raid three weeks ago, she could have sworn Tori had taken a bullet, but Tori had promised them all the shot fired from the crackhead’s .357 had missed wide and gotten lost in the already riddled sheetrock above. “Damn it, Tori. You are a fucking, hot-headed, hero-complexed, asshole.” Justine sneered at the nick in the Kevlar, “You got shot, and rather than take the six weeks of desk duty like someone with any sanity, you hid it and kept this worthless Kevlar.” Justine bit her lip and her eyes watered as she thought about Tori still lying unconscious amidst a swarm of trauma doctors and nurses down the hall. Her caramel skin was so abnormally pale that her dark hair looked like liquid ink in comparison when they pulled off her tactical helmet. Tears pricked at Justine’s eyes.

“Agent Adrijan,” a no-nonsense voice calling her name jerked her back to the present. She looked up and straight into the eyes of Special Agent in Charge of the Houston Division, Vincent Curial. She tucked Tori’s tattered Kevlar under her right arm with the nick safely behind her back and greeted him simply, “Sir.”

“What do you know about Agent Alvarez's condition?” Despite the late hour and unforgiving humidity, Curial looked impeccably professional and comfortable in navy slacks and a pale blue oxford shirt. There was never a sag or wrinkle on him. Rumor had it that the boss had been an undercover bad-ass not too long ago, responsible for bringing down the biggest Venezuelan cocaine cartel in the nineteen-eighties.

3. Beyond Deep Waters - Leigh Rigby's Mama was diagnosed with Altzheimer's last year and the disease is starting to accelerate. Leigh wants to be in town to be with her mother, but she also loves the open ocean and her life as a merchant marine captain the last ten years. She decides to get certified as a Houston ship channel pilot so she can work on the water everyday, but still be home for dinner with her mother every night. The problem is getting certified is proving harder than she thought. There is a lot of difference between piloting in blue water versus brown. To pass the test and get the board's approval she'll need some mentoring; and the board has chosen her mentor.
Thanks to a maritime accident that cost her both of her legs below the knee, ex-pilot, Reyna Guitierrez is building herself a new life (that accommodates her disability) as a maritime instructor and pilot mentor. Leigh Rigby isn't ready for a mentor, she's embarrassed. Reyna isn't sure she is ready to mentor anyone-it just reminds her she has to teach because she can no longer do. Together they learn how to make the most out of the cards fate dealt them and in doing so discover that there is a lot to love about life and each other.

Leigh shook the saltwater out of her hair. Just beyond the last jetty, to her east, over twenty vessels waited to enter Galveston Bay and eventually the Houston Ship Channel. She squeezed the soft brown sand between her toes and sighed. Tomorrow would probably change everything about her life, but for one more Sunday, she was still just an off-duty merchant marine with the sun starting to set on her shoulders and a cold beer waiting in her Mother's refrigerator.

After a quick rinse in the outdoor shower, she slipped on a dry pair of board shorts and settled her long board into the back of her old GMC truck. The ride home to La Porte from Galveston could be any where from half an hour to two hours depending on summer tourist traffic, but she hoped to make good enough time to swing by Shawpee's for a pound of fresh shrimp. Her mother's memories might be fading fast, but she still knew she liked grilled shrimp slathered in TexJoy seasoning for her Sunday dinner.

4. Once Before Again - Miss Dura Waley Inez Craig is the belle of the post-war ball, the cat's meow, thanks to land she inherited from her father that just happened to have several million gallons of oil underneath. While Dura is used to wealth and social standing, she finds herself shocked by the magnitude of her influence now, but still oddly confined by a woman's rightful role in society, and determined to do something meaningful with her life. It's a lot of angst for a young woman, and so she finds no harm in consulting the mysterious new Swami in town touting wisdom--until she is seemingly thrown one hundred years into the future with no clothes and no way home.   Is this just a drug-induced vision that will give her the guidance she seeks or something altogether more? 

Kate Lane thought that April in Houston must have been the poster child for the rhyme, "April showers bring May flowers." She huddled farther under her umbrella, tilting it slightly sideways in hopes of fending off the hell-bent deluge as she trudged home to her apartment from the corner pharmacy. Rainwater sluiced down the deserted sidewalk, flooding her tennis shoes and she gave up the umbrella entirely before the wind could shred it from her grasp. Right about the time she thought at least there wasn't lightening to worry over, a thunderous crack and streak of light hit the street beside her with so much force that it knocked her to her butt.

She bounced. Her umbrella skittered beneath some bushes. Concrete scuffed the palms of her hands and left her right wrist tingling. At least her prescriptions were safe in her backpack she reasoned, as she took stock of herself.

"Hello," a woman's voice meekly queried her from behind.

Expecting to be offered assistance, Kate held up a hand. "I think I'm okay."

"Oh, uh." The woman replied.

Kate shook her head, but the rain still blurred her vision. She sighed, slowly stood up and turned towards the voice.

"I must be dead." Kate intoned as she came face to face with the palest and most thoroughly naked woman she had ever seen. Even in the dim evening rain her eyes were luminous blue and even wet, her long hair piled and braided into an old elaborate style was obviously a glorious shade of amber. "And you must be Aphrodite."

The woman blanched and puked at Kate's feet.

"Or maybe not." Kate whispered.

It is up to you, kind reader. What next?

Lesbian Fiction Books

A funny story in honor of my Bubbas on National Siblings Day.

Cracked: A Sibling Conspiracy

In the fall of every year, two things re-percolate to the surface of my stream of childhood memories.  I remember Smurfs and indoor baseball. What child wouldn’t grow up to remember Smurfs?  But indoor baseball is a different story. There were originally only two people on the planet who knew the rules, and even we disagreed on our rule interpretations.

For instance, the “instant homerun” rule stated that any ball hit against the back wall without bouncing first on the playing floor was an automatic homerun. My older brother demanded that only balls that struck above the sliding glass door on the back wall were homeruns, as the rest of was sliding glass door and therefore not technically a wall at all. I contended that a ball that struck any part of the back wall, glass or otherwise, was a homerun – mostly because I had a hard time even hitting the back wall, whereas Brian could smack the wall above the door every fourth at bat.

He was an awkward gangly teenager then, but he managed to mass enough coordinated power to win most Saturday morning games. Not that beating his seven-year-old sister was a big deal. Only losing to his little sister was a big deal, unless, of course, he planned the loss to make me feel better—so I would keep playing. He thought those losses were necessary anyway to keep me from ratting him out to Mom and Dad for inventing the game, but truthfully, I wouldn’t have finked on him. We couldn’t play outside until they got home, and after cartoons were over, it was the best thing we had going in the way of entertainment.

Late one morning in autumn, after our Fruity Pebbles gorge-fest and the Smurfs were over, we decided it was indoor baseball play-off season. As the all-powerful older brother Brian was responsible for moving the minor furniture out of the base paths.  I dug the red plastic bat and slightly oversized lime Nerf baseball from their sacred hiding place in the back corner of my closet.

After a short review of rules and boundaries, Brian flipped a quarter for sides. I was the ‘visitor’ and with a cheery tap of the bat, I bounced over to home plate. Being first to bat meant that I would have at least one at bat where I wasn’t trailing by three or more runs. I could set up some padding on the scoreboard.  

As Brian readied himself to pitch, I cocked my bat ready above my shoulder, tucked in my chin, and nailed my stare to the ball in his hand.  He wound up and delivered a weaving spongy sinker. I swung the bat in a curt slice and missed.

Strike one.

I squeezed the foam ball up from the carpet backstop and tossed it back left-handed, disillusioned.

Brian wound up again. 

I focused my magic mantra on the ball, “BASEHIT. BASEHIT. BASEHIT.”

The throw was fast and straight –only fast throws with a Nerf ball can ever be straight, as the slow ones wobble around like a turkey in hunting season.

My bat swept over the plate in a long calculated arc and I pulled my hips into the swing.  The hit was a head high drive toward the long right corner of the back wall.

I thought to run, but the enormity of the ball’s perfect trajectory towards “automatic homerun” territory kept me planted two steps toward first base (the corner of the TV unit).

As the ball crossed under the air vent just before the right edge of the back wall, it took an inexplicable hard turn for the fireplace mantle along the right field wall. The ball struck Mom’s fine china vase (replica Ming Dynasty) dead center.

The ball dropped like an ancient horse-fly on a hot day and bounced from the vase to the brick below. In the following spot of time and space, the vase tottered. 

The rasping sound of ceramic wobbling over brick caused us to hold our breath, and then there was a suspended second of silence before the vase hit the base of the fireplace with a pistol crack.

We stood looking at the cracked shards of ceramic speckling the parquet floor, mottled rug, and fireplace in an exploded star shape. 

Super nova achieved. 

The big bang, Mom exploding into a super-heated rant about how she couldn’t own anything decent that we didn’t deface, was inevitable.

Brian’s posture from the mound read “game over.”

Humpty Dumpty came to mind. My eyes watered. I tightened my lips, in case that bottom lip decided to start a mutinous tremble.

I went through all seven stages of grief and back again, settling on shock and denial. I didn’t hit a homerun? I broke Mom’s vase? 

Brian jogged toward the laundry room for a broom and dustpan. 

I drug my bat over to the carnage and stared at it thoughtfully, trying to will the pieces together like a parapsychology lab subject mind-bending spoons. 

No luck.

Brian broke the reverie by commanding some mindless action—the best balm we knew for scabs of disappointment. As he swept everything into the dustpan, I nit-picked slivers from the tile. 

 “We could say the cat did it,” he suggested.

I thought about the time Dad whipped Brian, like some mutinous first-mate, for lying about feeding the cat when he didn’t. “No.”

“Yeah. You’re not so good at lying anyway,” he conceded.

“What if we just put it in the neighbor’s trash and act like it never happened? Mom probably won’t notice it’s gone, and if she does, it’s not really much of a lie to act like we don’t know what she is asking about. And even if she suspected, she couldn’t punish us or stay mad without ‘the evidence’, right?”

Brian laughed and shook his head, bangs flying. “Sure, she can. Mom will notice it is missing, and she is smart enough to figure out we are to blame.” 

He said “we” but I knew, as he did, that even if Mom thought it was only my fault she would punish him because he was “responsible” for me on Saturdays. He walked toward the kitchen trash.

“Wait…” I called.

He looked at me wearing his big-brother half-grin of enforced patience, his shoulders still facing the trash.

“Uh. Don’t throw it away. What if we glued it back together as perfectly as possible and stuck it on the mantle again? We could tell Mom we broke it, but show her how hard we worked to get it back together for her and she won’t be so mad. Maybe she’ll forget to ask how we broke it. And . . . even if she asks, she still won’t be so mad.”

Brian raised an eyebrow and coddled the dustpan. He was thinking. We both looked at the clock. Worst-case scenario, we had an hour to work, best case, three hours if they worked overtime closing up. He dumped the dustpan carefully on the kitchen table and bolted up the stairs to hunt out his model glue.

I started stacking big pieces together.

We didn’t say a word after that really. We worked heads down, hands talking for a little over two hours. Big pieces glued together first, then little pieces glued on to fill in the chinks. Brian used a wet paper towel to wipe away the excess glue before it could become hardened. I used my two smallest sharpest fingernails to cut and pick away stray strings of glue. Brian laid a piece of cardboard down to protect the table while we worked. We used the cardboard to pick up the glued vase and transfer it back to the mantle as soon as we deemed it safe to transport the goods from steady tabletop across the uncertain abyss of hall and living room toward the towering mantle.

“Maybe we should rotate it so the biggest pieces face front? The sunlight from the sliding door shows those hairline cracks too well.” He put his hands on his hips and tilted his head to one side.

“Yeah.” I nodded.  

He gave the vase a quarter turn from the bottom rim with surgeon steady hands. “Not bad, huh?” I asked.

“We’ll find out,” he grinned.

We moved the furniture back into “living” positions and I went upstairs to color something.

Mom and Dad pulled into the driveway fifteen minutes later. I applied my innocent face and floated downstairs to stand near the kitchen table toying with a grocery store flyer Dad had just put down.

Mom asked Brian to gather the dirty clothes so she could do laundry.

Brian looked hesitant, and started to say something. 

Mom interrupted, “Now, please? So I can get it started while we take a quick nap.”

Brian nodded and bolted off on assignment.

“What did you two eat for lunch?” Mom demanded.

“Cereal, I think,” I fibbed.

Mom murmured disapproval, “Well, no more junk before dinner, but I’ll make you a sandwich if you want one.” 

Dad said something about taking us to see the latest Star Wars movie after his nap.  I tore out of the kitchen and up the stairs to find the Yoda t-shirt Brian had out-grown into my wardrobe.

͠

I came home from college for Thanksgiving my junior year to find Brian and Mom in the living room tidying things up before assorted relatives amassed at our house for turkey and dressing. Mom had made a new flower arrangement for the occassion, and during extended placement trials, she decided the flowers might look best on the mantle above the fireplace.

I noticed Mom hesitate as she lifted her Ming-imitation vase from its central post on the mantle. She tilted the vase back and forth in the dusty afternoon sunlight looking into its archeological origins.

            “It’s so strange, look at how it’s all cracked up. What caused all the cracks? Why hasn’t it broken?” Mom mused.

Caught completely unaware, Brian and I cracked up, boulder rolling on the floor, in gut-busting peals of laughter.

Mom looked on from all five feet of her height above us.  “What?”

Laughter kept us from responding, but the uncertainty was already starting to spread into recognition on Mom’s face.

“You two did this?” she smiled and raised two eyebrows with as much authority as Queen Victoria.

Brian nodded between laughing convulsions that were more fit for a five-year-old boy than a man with three kids of his own. 

I snorted, held myself still on the floor, and tried to explain, “Of course we did. We broke it about fifteen years ago playing indoor baseball while you and Dad were at work, but we glued it back together to keep from getting into trouble.”

 “You never noticed the cracks before?” Brain inquired.

“No.”  Mom laughed from her belly.

I met my siblings eyes and we smiled at each other with our whole beings.  I remembered that the winter after we cracked the vase, my younger brother was born and we shared our love of indoor baseball with him over the following years.  We never broke another vase, and no squabble ever broke us apart.  I realized that some cracks help keep a family whole.

Brian and I dance at my wedding reception

Kirby and I drink scotch

Why Write?

I've spent three-fourths of my life to date studying human behavior. Psychology is my first intellectual passion, so why do I write fiction? Most especially, why do I write lesbian romance?

Honestly, I've always written stories in my head, mostly to entertain myself on long road-trips, but occasionally to entertain friends and family. Eight years ago, on a long flight out west with some very bored colleagues, I told them a story that I made up on a road-trip through Grand Teton National Park. I thought the story was about what would happen if a National Park Service employee who loved her job and worked hard (for very little pay, for a long time) to get exactly that job in that place met the love of her life and discovered her soul-mate had to work in the city. What happiness would this heroine decide to keep pursuing? If she couldn't have both, what would she sacrifice? Her love of meaningful work and the life purpose she had already chosen, or her chance to grow true love and companionship? What would she do if the deck was further stacked--if a large chunk of society didn't condone the relationship? If her soul-mate turned out to be another woman?

Hooked by the emotional dilemmas (my colleagues were psychology nuts as well), they encouraged me to just write the story--to make it a novel. Thanks to some inspiration from National Write a Novel Month (NANWRIMO.org), I discovered I did want to and could write a novel. That story became the lesbian romance, A Walk Away published by Affinity. But I also discovered I wanted to write lots of novels. And as I scribbled out plot after plot from mystery thriller and absurd horror to traditional contemporary romance I made another discovery. I had an epiphany. All my stories, no matter the genre or setting, were all about love.

More specifically, everything I write is about how letting someone love you (being completely vulnerable) is the scariest, hardest, and most rewarding thing you can do with your life.

Elated and thinking myself rather clever and self-aware, I told my encouraging colleagues about my epiphany. They smiled benignly and said something along the lines of, "Of course. Why do you think we told you to write? It's something the world needs to be reminded of again and again."

So I write, because nothing else sticks in the mind and makes a philosophy tangible and true like a story. I write because reading is one of the first places so many people test and observe behaviors, and I want to inspire people to learn to behave more vulnerably. Behave vulnerably enough to let someone else love you. The greatest gift we can give, the best stories we will ever write, are the ones where we let ourselves be loved.

I think this is especially true when social norms, or our individual perceptions of social norms, tell us that being that vulnerable with someone else isn't appropriate (like when we fall in love with someone of the same gender, or a different race, or a different religion). Letting yourself be vulnerable enough to be loved by someone opens up unknown worlds, unexpected joys, and contributes your single drop of inner peace to the filling of the world peace bucket. At least that is what I believe, based on my study of human behavior, and so I write. Especially lesbian romance.

Like heart rocks, meaning is where you find it and writing helps us do that.

My novel, A Walk Away, goes on sale soon.

Give me some feedback?  Would you read the book if you saw this synopsis on the back of this cover?

A Walk Away

      Katrina Reese worked her way through a dozen crappy park service jobs to earn her dream spot as an ecologist at Acadia National Park. She contributes to the world every day in a way she considers meaningful and rewarding, but she’s not sure she’s capable of really loving anyone without losing her sense of self—without losing the courage that kept her together since she weathered the death of her mother as a small child and her father’s subsequent depression. In thirty-odd years, Kat has yet to find a man worth loving enough to give up her love of independence and wilderness. 

     Rand Marshall sold her soul to the devil to start up a consulting company in Houston’s oil sector, or at least that is what she supposes her family believes. But doing the things her parents feared she shouldn't has given her and many other families a good life—even if she’s never managed to find an equal partner to share it. Forced into taking a vacation after a decade of business building, Rand finally has enough time to think about what she values for herself, and how to be happy independent of other people’s, even family members’, judgments.

     Kat and Rand’s daily worlds are 2,100 miles apart, but something about their meeting on the magical shores of the nation’s oldest national park east of the Mississippi sparks questions that neither woman can just walk away without answering. Sometimes chance brings you to the right person to help you resolve some of your baggage, and you learn to like yourself a little more. Kat and Rand are smart enough to recognize this chance in each other, but they also find that there is a catch to every opportunity—walking toward something is always walking away from something else.