A Different Kind of Fire, my debut novel due out November 1, 2018, has a cover. Bright but dark but graphic, and says a lot about the creative flame that drives artists. It’s also heading to the printers, so Advance Readers Copies should be available soon.
Ruby Schmidt has the talent, the drive, even the guts to leave behind her childhood home and the beau she always expected to marry to go to art school. Rebelling against the insipid imagery woman are expected to produce, Ruby embraces bohemian life. Her burgeoning sexuality drives her into a life-long love affair with another woman and into the arms of an Italian baron. With the Panic of 1893, the nation spirals into a depression, and Ruby’s career takes a similar downward trajectory. After thinking she could have it all, Ruby wonders how she can salvage her life. Rather than join the queues at the neighborhood soup kitchen, pregnant and broke, she returns to Texas,—and finds greater challenges there.
Set against the Gilded Age of America, a time when suffragettes fight for reproductive rights and the right to vote, A Different Kind of Fire depicts one woman’s battle to balance husband, family, career, and ambition. Torn between her childhood sweetheart, her forbidden passion for another woman, the nobleman she had to marry, and becoming a renowned painter, Ruby’s choices mold her in ways she could never have foreseen.
