About Painting the Desert
by Sean Michael
121 pages / 36000 words
ISBN: 978-1-934166-29-1, 1-934166-29-4
Available file types - html, lit, pdf, prc
In a return from the popular novel The Center of Earth and Sky, Painting the Desert continues the story of Whit, who lives with his beloved twins, Grey and Raine. They've been living a charmed life, but their whole world is threatened when Grey is diagnosed with cancer, and everything starts to fall apart.
Grey is their rock, and as he's ravaged by the cancer treatment, Whit and Raine struggle to hold it together. Will Whit find the strength to be what his lovers need him to be? Can he remain in the center of such a storm and survive it intact?
Review
Kara Larson, author of the Ever After Taste Test, writes:
If there are three, how can two exist without the one? That's a question that Whit and his lovers, twins Grey and Raine, must face in Sean Michael's Painting the Desert. The connection between this threesome is a tangible thing, and their life together is happy, full of light and love and art. But when they receive news about Grey's health, that all changes…
There is an elegant and poignant beauty to this story, as the lovers make choices between death and life, family and home, medicine modern and old. The details are rich and fascinating, the characters easy to fall in love with. Painting the Desert is more than just the sex and the play that comes with loving, but the strength that you gather from the love itself.
Sample
Mr. Bartholomew Whittaker watched the kids go screaming out and shook his head. It was the same every spring; they all went just a little crazy. Spring fever might have been a cliché, but like with most clichés, it had something at its roots.
Of course he was experiencing a little spring fever himself.
He drove his little Toyota to the park near home, almost skipping as he walked toward the center of the green space. Raine had called and asked him to meet his lovers by the fountain.
The sun was warm and the earth fragrant with budding life.
Love was definitely in the air.
Grey was lying on the edge of the fountain, sunning, barefoot. Raine sat close by, reading aloud, eating grapes, feet in the water. Whit’s dark haired lovers looked beautiful, so exotic, so fine. That hair was still all black, the mahogany faces smooth and sharp.
Impulsively, he snuck up on them and swept a hand through the water, splashing them.
Raine cried out; Grey just laughed, hand splashing him back without even opening those beautiful dark eyes. He laughed too, bending to kiss Grey's smiling mouth and then Raine's.
‘Mmm...’ Raine's eyes were shining, warm. ‘Happy Friday, our Whit. How was your day?’