Brooke thought she had read every book in Grandad's collection of fiction until she stumbled upon an unfamiliar title. Curious, she delves into the book, realizing her relationship with her boyfriend of four years parallels the story she is reading of Ezra and Christian. Can a Victorian tale of forbidden love between two men provide the answers to salvage her floundering relationship?
This unusual novella is a period tale wrapped in a contemporary storyline. The interior tale follows the relationship of two men in 1890 Victorian London, and the outer story follows Brooke and Chase in upstate New York in a present-day setting. The manuscript crosses genre-specific lines; gay/hetero and period/contemporary. Definitely not a traditional run-of-the-mill read, but a journey into alternative fiction.
Video book trailer for Masked Identities
Note: The book cover pictured in the video has been redesigned since this video was made.
The history behind Masked Identities
I originally published Masked Identities in 2009 (by a pen name I wrote under during that time). Readers balked at the choice of the two alternate endings, feeling slighted by my not providing a single ending. In 2019, I revised the manuscript; replacing the alternate endings by combining elements of both to make one ending. After publishing the novella in that same year, readers again made their voices heard by demanding a conclusion to the interior historical short story. The 2019 version left the Victorian men (Christian & Ezra from the interior story) hanging, as their story wasn’t central to the wrap-around main plot. To my surprise, readers connected with Christian & Ezra and wanted more. In 2020, I wrote and published the conclusion of Christian & Ezra’s story and published it as a short story (Masked Identities-The Reveal). In February of 2021, I combined both the novella and the completed short story into one book. On March 2, 2021, I quietly released the revised Masked Identities novella featuring the bonus short story: Masked Identities-The Reveal, so as not to compete with the upcoming launch of my mega-novel Clipped Wings on March 4, 2021.
Both the interior story within Masked Identities and Masked Identities-The Reveal (originals of each are no longer available to purchase separately) are two halves of the same fictional historical short story, both refer to actual places, businesses, verbiage, and events of the exact time frame of the two historical tales. More than eight months of online research went into creating historically authentic short stories. Christian, Ezra, and a few secondary characters are the only fictional additions to the interior story and the accompanying follow-up. Other than that, everything else in the historical manuscripts actually occurred as written and has been verified by the London Historical Society as historically accurate. Not a bad feat for a Yank from the States who has never set foot in the UK, let alone lived during the Victorian era.
Masked Identities is available in Kindle and paperback from Amazon. Also available in digital eBook formats to accommodate most eReaders from Smashwords.
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Bestselling Fiction Author
Stories with an LGBTQ+ Twist
corrupting readers since 2008
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