The Art of Peeling an Orange

The Art of Peeling an Orange, set in sizzling, contemporary West Hollywood, is the art of glorifying and eroticizing the dual pains of love and lust. It is a gender-bending, risque take on the Greek myth of Orpheus and Eurydice. The story's powerful structure, colorful characters, and magical themes echo the ancient story of the lovers in the Underworld. What do you do when your lover has eloped with another woman on the eve of your wedding? The other woman is a famous beauty named Anna Garibaldi, and you are heartbroken. To add insult to injury, the one who has abandoned you dies unexpectedly. Where do you go from there for solace, for justice? If you are Carly Rosen, a portrait artist with huge imagination, you use your art to charm your way into the life and inner circle of the alluring Anna Garibaldi, whose seductive and secretive underworld is nothing you could have expected! You are doomed and you are blessed, and you don't know which you prefer. Excerpt from Chapter 46: She stepped into that huge hollowness, imperial and fearless in her bare feet, a beautiful, wild creature in its natural habitat. This basement was as familiar to her as the insides of her mind. She reached out, aware of everything in its place, and pulled on the edge of one ghostly sheet. The sheet slid off, sending clouds of dust into the already dusty air. "Welcome to the Land of the Dead," she announced. Dead, dead, dead...answered the echo."