By Lanette Kauten
Genre: Literary Women's Fiction
Evolved Publishing
Book Description
As a reporter living in Deep Ellum, all Tanya Falgoust wants is to be accepted as part of the underground arts district. But living among free thinkers and musicians doesn’t make her one of them. Then she meets the sensual, rebellious Cassia, a performance artist who struts onto the stage and into Tanya’s bed.
No one knows who Cassia is, but her beauty and talents as an actress and dancer captivate the local scene. Tanya is mesmerized, and they quickly form a relationship. A close friend warns Tanya about Cassia, but she brushes him off. But when Cassia refuses to divulge anything about herself, where she lives, or even her real name, Tanya starts to realize her friend was right. And the secrets her lover is hiding are deeper and more damaging than Tanya could imagine.
As the pull of their relationship deepens and becomes more volatile, Tanya must decide whether to break from her desire before she loses the one thing she wants most—connection to the musicians who have accepted her into their community.
Author Bio
I grew up in the suburbs of Dallas, TX, and moved all the way over to the next county… so, not very far. In high school, I was a serious and determined student with the goal of becoming a psychologist. However, an artistic desire awakened inside me during my late teens, and I became enamored with artists of all strains, and Deep Ellum became a home for my soul.
After a couple of years, I realized I would have to grow up eventually (actually, my mom realized that for me), so I went to nursing school and once again became a serious and determined student. While in school, I became fascinated with research, and after a few years of working as a floor nurse, I went into nephrology research and loved it!
Because just about everything interests me, I eventually picked up my long-dead hobby of writing, which I’m happy to say is now a budding career. My debut novel, HOUSE OF THISTLES, came out two years ago. I’m very proud of my latest, which takes place in an industrial arts neighborhood.
I’m married with two kids and a step-son, and I home school my youngest.
On Facebook: http://bit.ly/1PtmVJU
On Twitter: https://twitter.com/LanetteKauten
Website: http://lanettekauten.com/
On Amazon: http://amzn.to/25nB7zZ
Excerpt:
If I hadn’t been assigned to write an article about her performance, I wouldn’t have been sitting on a dirty seat in the third row of a darkened theater-in-the-round. At least I had Nick with me. He provided a perspective as one who would enjoy it.
A hard driving rhythm began—a thundering bass line overridden by a throbbing guitar note, bent, twisted, then released, followed by another. To the right of the stage, a screen dropped. Projected onto it, a stunning beauty wearing a blue lace bra and panty set spun around on a pole with enough speed to match the music. Her legs splayed out gracefully, with one foot landing on the stage and the other above her head. She let go of the pole and performed a perfect pirouette.
My breath caught. Her talent and beauty more than matched the rumors, and I finally understood how she captivated the local scene.
I broke away from the view of the screen for a brief second, and composed myself. All I could think was her parents wasted their money on ballet lessons for... this.
Then Cassia sashayed and reached behind her back to give the eager men in the recorded performance the gems they’d been waiting for. At that moment, the screen went black and the music stopped playing. Silence. Complete darkness. The only sounds were nervous shifting in the audience.
I waited, believing it to be for dramatic effect. After an undetermined amount of time had passed, the audience grew restless and spoke in low murmurs. Nick stood but sat back down when I grasped his arm. I scanned the front of the theater for a crack of light. Nothing.
A Middle Eastern song filled the room, and backlighting on the screen highlighted the movement of dancing curves behind it. Her hips swayed back and forth, as her body rolled with her chest rising and falling. Writhing and sensuous, her dancing was as hypnotic as a cobra’s, except she was both the charmer and snake.
When the screen came up, Cassia strutted up the steps in her glow-in-the-dark body suit. Had this been a concert, the crowd would have erupted into praise, but this was art of a different type. This was theater and more. Her adoring subjects expressed the awe that one might show in the presence of a god... or a goddess.
She circled the stage with slow, purposeful steps, and then stood right in front of me and yelled, “Stop!”
The music quit.
She lazily sat in a swivel chair in the center of the stage and placed her fingers to her mouth and her ear to mimic talking into a telephone. “Two last night and four last Friday.” She paused before saying, “Yes, at the same time. Oh, you know baby girl can take it.” She paused again before laughing. “My mother doesn’t have a clue. How awesome am I?” After another pause, she said, “Girl, you and I need to get together—just you, me, and five other guys.” Pause. “Six? It only seems fair, right? As long as we share.”
Such talk was far from sexy. As a regular part of the art scene, I understood that the reputation of promiscuity among performers was often deserved, and sometimes, just demeaning and gross.
Others in the audience leaned forward, soaking up every hint of titillation in her one-sided conversation.
“Okay, we’ll get together and share those biology notes with the study group soon. I have three more tests next week. Bye. Mucho kisses.”
Pockets of nervous laughter scattered through the audience as Cassia hung up her hand phone.
The joke was on all of us, and I smiled at her cleverness and jotted down a note. A hint of this was going into my article.
Throughout the evening, she performed several more dances and short skits, some with her acting like a sex-driven ditz, while others displayed understanding of the universe possessed by the brightest physicists. In the last act, she juggled balls of lights while performing acrobatic feats and discussing man’s relationship with light molecules. That last one was a favorite among the audience, as it combined the simple beauty of light with all the amazing ways the human body can move, and the acrobatics of thought and brain waves. She offered not the eye candy of a woman moving her sinuous curves, but a feast of sight and sound.
The author is hosting a book giveaway!
a Rafflecopter giveaway
Thank you!
ReplyDelete