Hello, and thank you so much for hosting me
and my new release, A Muse to Live For.
A Muse to Live For is the third instalment
in my loosely interconnected “transgender trilogy”, which includes also Woman
as a Foreign Language and Spice & Vanilla. While WaaFL and S&V are very
obviously connected (they have two characters in common), the threads
connection Spice to Muse are much subtler, so much so that I consider it almost
a game with my readers to find them.
Unlike the other two books, which are
Contemporary Romance, Muse takes a plunge back into the past and is set in the
1880s.
This is part of why it took me so long to
write it (almost a year, on and off). Much as I am familiar with Victorian
England from having read so much Dickens, and Conan Doyle, and the Brontë
sisters, and a number of other books written or set in that period, whenever
one begins to write, one discovers how many details they are still missing. How
much did a shave cost? How did you ride a cab? Where would a poor Irish
immigrant likely live? How do you wear a bustle dress? How do you fix one if
it’s worn?
It became so fascinating to research all
these things (and much more) that I spent more time in Victorian London than I
had ever intended, and once more, a short story became a novel (story of my
life).
The main reason for choosing a period
setting however was not the fancy costumes and moody atmosphere, but a desire
to write a story about an artist of that amazing period, when the Pre
Raphaelites, the Symbolists and the Impressionists were changing the face of
art, and to write a transgender character before transgender became a thing,
before there were any labels or any sense of belonging to a group.
It is the deepest trip I ever took into the
emotions of any two characters, through obsession, depression, love and
wonderful fulfilment, and both characters have some autobiographic relevance to
me. It’s my favorite story to date.
Blurb:
London, 1884
An artist lives to create. When Nathaniel’s
urge to paint died, so did his will to live.
Until the night he meets Gabrielle.
Gabrielle may be just a poor prostitute,
but she has the beauty of a Pre-Raphaelite stunner and the otherworldly aura of
a fallen angel. She also has a secret. Gabrielle is Gabriel, and when Gabriel’s
dark past comes knocking and Gabrielle must abandon her new career as an
artist’s model, Nathaniel’s whole world comes crashing down again.
Better to die than living without her love,
and the breathtaking creative drive she brought him. But it’s dead easy to die
for a woman. Any fool can die for love. To live for it, that takes altogether
more courage, doggedness, and imagination.
Be Warned: transgender romance, queer
romance, cross-dressing, m/m sex, anal sex, rape
Excerpt:
I am not sure how to touch Nathaniel. I
want him to kiss me again, I want him to hold me, I want him to look at me that
way he does in his studio, when he watches every line of my body and sees a
woman. And at the same time, I wish he would see me for what I am, all that I
am, once and for all, so I don’t have to hide anymore.
So I shed my jacket, and the blouse
underneath. I shiver a little in the cold when my arms are bared, and he runs
his warm palms on my goosebumps, soothing them.
Then I stand to unbutton my skirts and
petticoat, and untie my bustle, and I let it all swish down around my knees,
and I stand here naked, in my small chemise, and stockings and corset, and my
boots.
I am still silk-skinned and woman shaped.
Except for that one thing.
I steal a glance at his face—I can hardly
bear to look at his eyes, standing here so naked—thinking he will wince, or
frown. Or scream, what do you know. You can never tell, with a sensitive
artistic temperament.
But he does none of these things.
Instead he goes to his knees on the floor,
like a man about to propose in some play, and with a sort of mute reverence he
strokes my thighs and my buttocks, and the back of my knees, through the
stockings. When he lays a kiss and then his forehead on the hard of my hip,
where the bone pokes sharply under my skin, I put my hands on his crazy hair,
and hold him there, and with the barest, lightest touch of his fingertips he
caresses the front of my corset, on my belly, and then down, down.
And to my acute embarrassment, the damn
thing shivers to his touch, stiffening, rising.
Well. He has certainly seen me, now. He
really has.
He is not screaming.
I pull him to his feet and I step out of my
puddled skirts, and gently I undress him. Jacket and shirt and trousers and
drawers, socks, everything.
He is as tall as I am, which I had never
noticed, because he always stands with his head bent and his shoulders slumped.
He’s not muscular, but there is no fat on him either. He has well-built bones
under his lumpy clothes—he badly needs a good tailor—and he would be rather
handsome if he held himself straight, with his chin up, and didn’t look so much
at odds with himself. He’s pale, but not as pale as I am, and there is just the
merest spray of hair on his chest.
I caress his skin all over as I undress
him, and he looks transfixed, as if it had never occurred to him that it takes
two to dance this dance. Perhaps he thought I’d make him spend the night on his
knees adoring me.
The heat of his skin is like a deep
current, and it draws me to him.
We stand here mute, the only sounds the
drumming of the rain and the swish of falling clothes, and gently kissing lips.
When I push him to lie on the bed, I have a
moment of dread that he might want to do that to me. I cannot have it. I will
not be taken that way ever again.
I’ll make my living giving blowjobs for the
rest of my days, I guess.
But I am not afraid of him. I do not
believe he’d be capable of hurting a fly, let alone me.
“So, do you fancy that blowjob, finally?” I
whisper in his ear, smiling, but he holds me close, too close for me to slide
down along his body.
“I love you,” he whispers, his lips on my
ear, so that words are made into a caress, “I love you, I love you.”
“Hush,” I whisper back, bearing down on
him, grinding my cock on his. “Don’t say such things. It cannot be. It can’t.”
“This night, this once, please, let me say
it. I love you, I love you, I love you.” His body rises to meet mine, and I
feel those tears spilling now, with joy, and grief, and pity. Pity for him, for
me, for both of us, lost in this narrow garret under the drumming rain, orphans
in this storm, desperately naked in this terrible iron city.
“Only this once, then,” I whisper.
“Tomorrow, you must forget.”
And before he can answer or kiss me again,
I slip out of his arms, and down, along his chest and belly, so he cannot see
me cry.
I have pleasured so many men this way, but
never one I loved, and maybe it’s the same thing, and yet it’s something
altogether different. He’s all silk and warmth and heaving life and fire
pulsing, and his flesh matters to mine, so that my whole body loves his.
“You—don’t—have—to do this,” he whispers at
first, but then he surrenders finally, and lets the pleasure take him.
I told him, the first time we met, that I’d
do him for free. Who would have guessed, then, that I would end up doing him
for love?
And I don’t know if he’s a virgin—but he is
indeed quick. His cock grows even tauter on my tongue, and he breathes in
short, hard gasps a few times. When his body arches and heaves and his hand
fumbles at my cheek, I hold him, and hold him, and hold him… He comes with a
broken moan, hotly. I swallow it all.
On the street I never do. But here, now,
with him, I could not bring myself to spit.
Find
A Muse to Live For at Evernight:
BIO:
I have entered that age when looking at
beautiful male models in their prime makes me a cougar, ahem.
Almost all my heroines are short: that’s
because I look at the world from hobbit level. Being so small I am three times
more concentrated (read: obsessive) than anybody I know. I am exhaustingly
creative in writing, arts, crafts... Sometimes my brain gets friction burns
from hurtling at such speed from one universe to the next.
I love animals, plants, and occasionally
even people.
Like the Highlander I come from a lot of
different places. I was born in Italy but lived here and there and consider
myself simply and deeply European. I love Europe passionately, its antiquity,
its diversity, its quirkiness. All my books are set in Europe, or alternate versions
of it.
I have been writing since I can remember.
LINKS:
Katherine’s Blog:
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follow her on Instagram @katherinewyvern
Lea Bronsen likes her reads hot, fast, and edgy, and strives to give her own stories the same intensity. After a deep dive on the unforgiving world of gangsters with her debut novel Wild Hearted, she divides her writing time between romantic suspenses, dark erotic romances, and crime thrillers.
