Works in Progress

Right now I’m polishing Wild Iris. Let’s just say that the scene I’m working on involves ShaSha resurrecting her former burlesque career in order to show off for the very intrigued Malcolm Bancroft. Stay tuned for an excerpt, but in the meantime here’s the scoop:

WILD IRIS

Wild Iris is a story where opposites collide when a conservative real estate developer is saved from ordinariness by a turquoise-haired former burlesque dancer. Malcolm Bancroft is so caught up in trying to buy every parcel in the city that he’s not only lost track of owning a ruined gem like The Glenn, he’s also lost track of himself. When ShaSha Reynolds gets fed up with the decaying old theatre ruining the view from her successful lingerie shop, she uses her business acumen to doggedly pursue the building’s owner and stop the gentrification of the East Atlanta Village. She’s certain that a money-hungry developer like Mac isn’t the type for her. After catching a glimpse of her teaching a private dance class clad in towering stilettos, Mac’s convinced that ShaSha is just the girl for him.

As president of the business association, it’s ShaSha’s job to make sure Mac takes responsibility for the eyesore spoiling their budding business district. She’s not interested in romantic entanglements. Mac’s calculated real estate purchases have made him a wealthy man. But his real motivation isn’t money, it’s destroying his powerful grandfather. When the entire Village is threatened by Mac’s neglect of The Glenn, will ShaSha be able to see past his single-minded ambition to find a man who would do anything to have her?

SILVER LINING

Here’s a blurb:

Joanna Davidson’s been shopping. Again. And to pay off her credit card debt she has to spend her summer teaching high school students all about poetry at an exclusive program in the South Carolina Low Country. She hasn’t taught high school for years. Not since she’d been young, confused and wrapped up in a torrid affair with the art teacher. When he’d taken off to Mexico she’d retaliated by marrying the football coach. All stupid moves. She’d ended her silly starter marriage and her teaching career in one fell swoop. And found a measure of happiness. And a lingering fondness for shopping as a coping strategy.

Cliff Matney’s enjoyed teaching at the Mayridge Institute. It’s a nice counterbalance to his growing fame as a photographer. Nothing like teenagers to force you to stick to the basics and not get too full of yourself. He’s going to be the Director of the Institute this year, which he’s none too thrilled about. But he can’t say no to the Institute’s founder, Rita Dandridge. She’s been nagging him to review the list of staff for the summer, but he’s got better things to do. Administrative hoopla is what drove him out of teaching in the first place – that and his girlfriend marrying the football coach while he was finding himself in Mexico.

Cliff and Joanna collide – literally – after ten years apart, and once Cliff sees who he’s knocked into the gutter with his car he may want to back up and really hit her. Joanna’s face had haunted his work for years in the form of portraits of women’s hair he’s become famous for, but he’d assumed she was living somewhere in LA, probably with 2.5 kids and a boring marriage to the football coach. Finding out she‘s single again means he’ll have to make a decision. He lost her once, now that she’s landed in his lap can he bear to let her go again?

I can say with all measure of seriousness – condensing an 84,000 word ms into three paragraphs is nearly as challenging as writing a sestina. (An example of a sestina is Elizabeth Bishop’s “One Art.”)