Winston Salem, NC (PRWEB) March 23, 2006
Winston-Salem, NC (PRWEB) March 23, 2006 — It was a strange contraption that reminded her of the type of thing that acrobats use, yet more luxurious by far than a vaulting horse, with its thick padding of red velvet.
Thus begins The Red Velvet Horse, a novel that focuses on the modern heroine April Ingram, who discovers an ancient erotic manuscript while working through inventory in her antique shop in Vancouver. The manuscript, a diary of Hannah Wilkes, tells the bawdy tale of a seamstress-turned-harlot who lived in the city near the end of the last century.
Wilkes diary is intriguing in its honesty, as she first describes the chain of events that led her become a prostitute, then the candor of a woman who finds herself a dichotomy, both desiring to leave the profession while simultaneously deriving pleasure from it.
When Wilkes sees an opportunity to marry for wealth, she spurns the sensuous heat and passion of a relationship with a lower class tramcar operator, only to find herself in near imprisonment by a brutal husband. Her eventual escape from Vancouver to Toronto begins a series of similar ill-fated decisions and consequences, where she frequently resorts to her sexual craft for survival while always looking over her shoulder, fearing for her safety.
Modern day April becomes enthralled by the tale of Wilkes, retracing the flight across Canada, and as Aprils own life begins to take difficult turns, she finds some solace in the ancient diarys prose. At times, she even finds events in her own life that she can relate to Hannahs story.
Iona Blair has created characters in The Red Velvet Horse which are fallible and real; their decisions are often based in greed or emotion, and the story takes several twists and turns before learning of their fate. It is the weight and honesty of those characters that brings the societal pressures – and the streets of old Vancouver – to life.
The Red Velvet Horse is erotic fiction and a preview of the first chapter is available from Sensorotika Press (http://www.sensorotika.com). The book can be found or ordered from most bookstores in the U.S., Canada and the UK, including online retailers Barnes & Noble, Amazon, Books-A-Million, Powells and Ebook-Eros.