The Art of Peeling an Orange

What do you do when the love of your life has eloped with another woman on the eve of your wedding? The other woman is a famous beauty and their love story is splashed all over the tabloids, making you die inside. To add insult to injury, the man who has abandoned you is suddenly bursting with unusual creativity and his nude paintings of his famous wife sell like crazy. And when he dies unexpectedly, having left you a cryptic text message suggesting that you were always his one and only, where do you go? If you are Carly Rosen, a portrait artist with huge imagination, you use your art to charm your way across the inky River Styx and down to the Land of the Dead. There, faced with your greatest fear, you beg the powerful Hades for the life of your beloved. The Art of Peeling an Orange, set in sizzling, contemporary West Hollywood, is an erotic, risqué take on the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice. The story’s powerful structure, colorful characters, and magical themes echo the ancient Greek myth of the lovers in the Underworld. Excerpt, chapter 46, The Art of Peeling an Orange: Anna straightened up, majestic in her clingy, blood-red dress. “You paint because an image burns a hole in your belly,” she said slowly. “I write because a story eats me alive from the inside and I’d go insane if I don’t. It isn’t my choice. I’d write if you, or the whole world, were illiterate.” Read more