Book Title: Seashell Virgin
Author: Steve Schatz
Publisher: Any Summer Sunday Books
Cover Artist: James – GoOnWrite.com
Release Date: October 31, 2021
Genre: Humorous Mystery, Gay Friends, Drag
Tropes: Friends overcoming haters,
Themes: Empowering, humor
Length: 85 000 words/ 288 pages
It is a standalone story and does not end on a cliffhanger.
It is part of a series with related characters and themes, but reading the other books in the series is not required.
Buy Links
Mystery, Wit & Drag Queens
Blurb
Fast-paced fun. Touching and tawdry. Churchies, crooks, and rapscallions scheme to close our only gay bar, rape a forest, and get rich with a gay-hating charter school. Break-ins, kidnapping, threats, blackmail, bondage, and the most spectacular drag show the world has ever seen, thrill and delight you as the anti-heroes from Nacho Mama’s Patio Cafe once more answer the call to set things straight, as it were.
Chapter 2 – Beau In Tears
I had not planned to spend the day packing a truck and then losing it. I had wonderful plans for a day filled with a whole lot of nothing. This was supposed to be a day off. I had planned to sleep well into the morning, perhaps even until noon, my own personal best. Despite my plan, many hours before I found myself pacing the street, missing a truck that didn’t belong to me, that was filled with splendid little geegaws that didn’t belong to me, I had been jolted awake by some beast leaning on my doorbell. I stumbled to the door, anger and alarm jostling for my attention while sleep tugged hopelessly back toward my waiting bed. Mornings do not find me at my sharpest. On my porch stood Beau, tears streaming down his face.
“Miss Opal Hungerford Milbank is dead,” he wailed before I was able to say anything. Now Beau is less of a morning person than I am. Seeing him awake and in such a state at this hour (before noon) usually meant he had spent the evening falling in love and had awakened to find he had been abandoned and his new amour de jour was gone. This was not an uncommon occurrence.
However, he did not seem to be excruciatingly hungover, which was nearly de rigor for falling in love and being dumped in the space of an evening. Every few months, Beau would forget what happened last time, would see a new pair of tight pants, and get drunk enough to swoop on the fella. Should said fella be similarly looped, a beautiful friendship often resulted which lasted until either all the liquor was consumed or a night of sleep led to a sober appraisal and the young hottie would depart, offering a sliding scale of promises to call or hurtful proclamations hurled at the still love-struck Beau.
I had put these ego-rending activities behind me a few years before, when one young hottie I had bagged, as it were, returned to make amends, having admitted his night with me was his own personal bottom which had driven him into the rooms of AA. That was not the bottom I had been hoping would be explored. Being the publicly acknowledged lowest point of a young man’s life had not been on my must-do list. That memory had, so far, been remarkably effective in stiffening my resolve and unstiffening my member, even when I had over indulged. Beau still allowed himself to occasionally wallow in such demoralizing dances. However, I had never heard of these tangos ending in death. In addition, Beau rarely indulged in femmes real, imagined, or becoming. And Opal was not a name I had ever heard applied to a male of any variety.
I stepped back, leaving the door open and set about making coffee. It was too early to be receiving visitors, but Beau was one of my best friends. Friends do not require the social niceties extended to a visitor nor can they be denied because of lack of poise or preparation. One simply is with a friend. They have seen you at your worst and often return the favor. This is a bedrock requirement of friendship.
He went straight to his favorite corner of my couch, sniffling all the way. I brought the coffee. He did not drink immediately, but held out his cup like a Victorian street urchin, eyes searching the room. I knew what he wanted. With a sigh I grabbed the coffee liquor and the brandy from the counter and put them on the table in front of him. As he busily applied both to his coffee, I focused my attention on sucking in as much of my own cup as possible without scalding my mouth. This morning, coffee was not a nicety, but a necessity. I knew when he was finished with the ministrations to his coffee, he would return to his wail.
Excerpt From: Steve Schatz. “Seashell Virgin”.
Steve Schatz writes with a crazy mashup of laughs and excitement and humor. Readers can’t stop reading, but don’t want the story to end. Each book is an adventure where endearing anti-heroes struggle against this crazy world and triumph using the twin forces of intentional, creative action and friends helping friends. Schatz draws on a lifetime of varied and fascinating experiences, from instructional designer and college prof to party clown and nightclub owner.
His series of adult fiction highlights a group of middle-aged gay friends who gather every week in a small, Indiana college town. Mixing drinks, snappy repartee, and the humor and joy of long-time friends, in one book they rescue the fair drag queen from an obvious miscreant. In another, they ride to the protection of a lesbian candidate for judge who is being targeted by mysterious evil-doers. The excitement reveals itself against a backdrop of drag performance and efforts by anti-heroes. You’ll laugh. You’ll cry. You’ll beg for more. Steve Schatz offers a new voice and a smile for the LGBT community and their friends.
Author Links
Blog/Website | Twitter: @AnySummerSunday
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an ebook of each of the 3 books in the series
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