Red Dress Ink Novels
3 total works
' Tart is my favourite word. I love what it stirs in the mind–the synesthesia of flavour mixing with colours: reds, oranges and apple greens, gleaming with cheap temptation. It's been a goal of my twenties to live a tart life; I want everything I do to have that sharpness, that edge of almost too–out–there to be tasty, but not quite.'
Meet Claudia Bloom. She's having one of those years. First she steals her ex's VW bus and drives it across country, where it promptly explodes. Next she lets herself be rescued by Clay, a cute DJ on a motorcycle; falls hard and meets his somehow–never–mentioned estranged wife while searching frantically for her panties. Then she tries to forget about Clay and focus on her tenuous new career teaching theatre–only to discover Clay's wife is her colleague, and his mother is her boss.
Could it get any worse? When her neo–deadhead cousin shows up with a horse–size mutt, and the two of them take up residence on her couch, Claudia's pretty sure things have hit rock bottom! Set in a uber–hip beach town, this novel explores the rocky terrain of family secrets, forbidden fruit and all things Tart.
I thought I knew everything about Gwen Matson. We've been best friends since sophomore year at Analy High. I know her to be smart and confident with a retro style that would give Jackie O a run for her money-albeit a graceful, sweat-free run in kitten heels.
Not once did she ever display a rabid need to record every detail of her existence. But never before had she gone on a weekend road trip with her amazing boyfriend, Coop...and his evil, yoga-toned best friend, Devil Blonde Dannika. Now she's writing to me like mad.
Not that I'm complaining. I'm in gay Paris (good), meeting my future in-laws (bad), so her tireless scribbling is keeping us both sane.
Usually, a well-thought-out What Would Jackie Do? helps Gwen pull it together. But this crisis is beyond help. I know Gwen and Coop are meant to be, but can their love withstand Gwen's psycho jealousy and Dannika's twisted sabotage?
Twenty-five-year-old Anna-restless, famished and emotionally numb-is following the long-cold trail of her father, a celebrated luthier, whose death has always haunted her.
She's tracked his former business partner to a sailboat on Bellingham Bay, determined to pry from the old man the secrets of their guitarmaking trade, and maybe a few answers about her father.
Anna catches an echo of her musical father in Arlan, guitar player for a local band. Soon she's living on his sofa, hanging out with his girlfriend-having friends for the first time, even. And if Anna's new friends do drugs, read her journal and leave open a few too many bedroom doors, who's to say they aren't real friends? And if Anna has feelings for Arlan, who's to say where her loyalty lies?
During a single summer's worth of days, gin-soaked and colored with longing, Anna rediscovers her senses, shut down since her father's death, and finds that the only way to get free of her past is to embrace it.