Lesbian Authors Guild
Victoria Avilan
I studied art and nursing in my native Israel. I live in Redondo Beach California with my wife of 27 years. I work as an intensive care nurse in a pediatric facility and write fiction on my days off.
The Art of Peeling An Orange
What do you do when the man you love 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, risque take on the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice. The story is a powerful structure, colorful characters, and magical themes echo the ancient Greek myth of the lovers in the Underworld.
Only, with a double lesbian twist.
An Alternative Ending
The Art of Peeling an Orange
Ever wished you could write an alternative ending for a novel you've read? In response to readers' uproar, the author agreed to release this alternative ending. Read only if you've read Victoria Avilan's "The Art of Peeling an Orange."
A Small Country About To Vanish
2015 Rainbow Awards Honorable Mention; Also nominated for Lambda and Golden Crown Awards 2015. Can one memory haunt and influence your entire life? Excerpt from chapter 28: "Shelli had been shy at first, then demanding, directing. Rona had become freshly fascinated with her own hands, at how well they played that newness, that softness, that warmth. Her hands knew the correct fingering and positioning without instructions. That act of love came naturally. She was playing the violin, the cello, the entire orchestra, in legato, legatissimo and molto vibrato. At last, down on her knees, she'd put her mouth on that versatile new instrument. Until the gasp came. The gasp hadn't been hers, hadn't been Shelli's. Suddenly her boy-lover towered over them." This book almost reads itself, so sure-footed is the pacing, the ease of being drawn in despite some unease about what is written; I admire the way the author does not intrude on her characters (and thus her readers) with the pointed finger of too much message forcibly delivered. A reader's ease and ability to identify with each main character is to have witnessed Avilan's magic literary show. As a reader, one leans into this character or that one, or all of them, as readily as one turns the pages. One of the hallmarks of a well-designed and well-written story, for me, is whether the characters stay with me long after the book is done. Do they ever! Read this book at your own peril and your own pleasure because it will make you feel. And you will remember the people from A Small Country About to Vanish." By Historical Romance author T. T. Thomas.