Blog Archives
Lover’s Lies & Family Secrets
Lips: Kiss the Lips that Lie follows an English au pair with hidden secrets who meets a reserved CPA, and they have an instant connection that quickly turns into a tangled web of deception. What was the inspiration for the setup of your story?
Lover’s lies and Family Secrets. I started to think about all the harmless (and not so harmless) lies lovers tell each other, and the private mythologies which armor families down through the decades. Also about the ways people know others in their lives. In real life most people don’t have plausible backstories.
Technically, LIPS grew out a desire to capture in prose style a feeling of hush or quietude. A breath caught and held. Waiting and anticipation. The Prologue introduces the nighttime silence of the big lake, then Selene’s first visit to the cottage and the exploration of various objects which reveal a kind of cloistered family history. At it heart of the novel is a love story of the resolution of opposites—Selene’s exhibitionism paired with DB’s voyeuristic tendencies.
What character did you enjoy writing for? Was there one that was more challenging to write for?
With LIPS, there was so much writing and rewriting, and adding and deleting of characters, that I became very attached to all of them. Glory and Gillian were great fun to write, and Miss Addy was a constant surprise. Of course, Selene is the key to the kingdom, and she was tricky.
Looking back, I think DB was the most difficult to write. I believe he is the most internalized and enigmatic. He is a man trapped by conditions most of which are not of his own making. He is privileged but bound hand and foot by the expectations of others. I think he deals with it by withdrawing. He feels Selene is the only one who truly sees him. It is hard to write someone who doesn’t say much.
I felt that there were a lot of great twists and turns throughout the novel. Did you plan this before writing the novel, or did the twists develop organically while writing?
Once a story gets rolling, it develops organically. All my planning occurs in my head. That approach requires a lot of backtracking and do-overs. Characters show up and then leave. Bits of backstory crop up in unexpected places. Many a day I ended up wishing I had patience for some serious planning.
What is the next book that you are working on, and when can your fans expect it to be out?
I’m currently working on a sequel to “SEREN” (working title AIX) which takes place in France, and also a fun project about 1970s Detroit called “The Vitruvian Murders” which has some witchery in it.
I hope AIX will be ready by next year. The Detroit book may or may not be ready by summer next.
Author Links: Goodreads | Instagram | Website
Selene Ormond, a striking English au pair, has finally met her match in Davis Beckwith—a reserved CPA and heir to his family’s prestigious firm. Their chemistry is irresistible, each sharing a taste for secrets. Yet, their romance is shadowed by Davis’s formidable mother, Miss Addy, and the messy past Selene thought she’d left behind in Britain.
As their lives intertwine, so does the web of deception holding them together. Against a backdrop of eccentric relatives, posh ex-pat friends, and vicarious liaisons, the pair must navigate betrayal, ambition, and their damaged pasts. LIPS unravels the tangled threads of family, desire, and deceit on a treacherous journey to keep love alive.
Lips: Kiss the Lips that Lie
The book begins with a haunting scene of a father walking into the cold vastness of Lake Michigan, and from there it stretches into a sweeping and layered narrative that mixes family history, secrets, art, desire, and the way the past claws its way into the present. At the center is Davis Beckwith, heir to a complicated family legacy, and Selene, a young Englishwoman whose charms and tangled impulses drive much of the story forward. Their relationship unfolds against a backdrop of wealth, decay, and long shadows of tragedy, with the author weaving together voices, memories, and settings in a way that blurs the line between truth and invention.
Reading it pulled me in slowly at first, like wading into deep water. The prose has a deliberate, almost meditative rhythm, and sometimes it lingers on detail long enough to feel claustrophobic. Yet I found that same attention to detail intoxicating. The rooms, the objects, the little observations of human behavior felt alive. I loved the way the author treats silence and absence with as much weight as spoken words. At times, I was frustrated with how opaque the characters could be, but that frustration worked in the book’s favor. It mirrored the way secrets seep into family life, how you can love someone without ever really knowing them.
Emotionally, the book left me uneasy and restless. I alternated between admiration for the writing and irritation at the characters, especially DB, who often seemed passive to the point of vanishing. Selene, on the other hand, is magnetic and maddening, brimming with contradictions. I didn’t always like her, but I couldn’t look away. The novel made me think about the lies we tell ourselves and others, and how much of love is invention. I felt caught between awe and discomfort, which is not a bad place for a novel to put me.
I’d recommend this book to readers who like fiction that doesn’t rush, who enjoy atmosphere and layered family drama, and who don’t mind a story that raises more questions than it answers. If you like being unsettled and pushed to look harder at the ties that bind people together, LIPS is well worth the read.
Pages: 339 | ASIN : B0F9FYY7ZD
The Nature of Artistic Inspiration
Seren follows an art dealer whose pursuit of a dead painter’s final work leads him into a surreal spiral of obsession, identity, and the dangerous power of the muse. What was the inspiration for the set-up of your story?
SEREN is a follow-on to the short story, “Deadfall”, which appeared in the New Guard anthology published a few years ago. Four of the major characters in “Deadfall”—Moss, Seren, Bainbridge, and Haller—are part of the main cast of SEREN. Moss only makes a cameo appearance in the short story but was thrust into a larger role in the novel.
How did your background as a visual artist shape the way you wrote the more surreal or atmospheric passages in the book?
As a painter and Art Professor, I’ve long been intrigued by the nature of artistic inspiration. To personify such a mysterious and elusive element requires the creation of a powerful, and equally mysterious and elusive creature—someone who, through various attributes, can assist artists in transcending themselves. With her, they are able to enter a state of intense limerence where no effort to please is too great.
The muse/artist relationship has generated much interest over the years, by both art critics and social critics. The idea of a deadly muse isn’t original on my part, but the concept of a personification of inspiration/genius always seemed a two-edged sword to me. The fact that history often chooses to diminish or ignore the role of the muse made the job all the more intriguing. The muse’s true story is only hinted at in the novel, but she inhabits the book as much as Moss—just in a different way. The relationship is very much that of lovers.
Margaret Atwood in her essay “MacEwen’s Muse” examines the nature of the muse (this time male) as experienced by Gwendolyn MacEwen the Canadian poet.
“I now know a language so beautiful and lethal
My mouth bleeds when I speak it.
Gwendolyn MacEwen
“You now comprehend your first and final lover
In the dark, receding planets of his eyes
And this is the hour when you know moreover
That the god you have loved always
Will descend and lie with you in paradise.
Gwendolyn MacEwen
I think the ecstasy of the muse could be described as a euphoria so intense it could easily be mistaken as agony.
Fairchild is such a vivid character. Did you always envision him as the protagonist, or did he evolve during the writing?
Moss is composite character loosely based on three individuals I’ve known for a long time. The art world is full of eccentrics, posers, and charlatans, as well as intelligent and talented individuals who are willing to sacrifice much of normal life for their calling. Moss is a flawed and failed human being who hopes to find meaning for his life. Selling the work of creators, but not able to create yourself is a heavy burden. Through Claudine he finds purpose, and connection. With Seren the last vestiges of his middleclass vanities are burned away.
What is the next book you’re working on, and when will it become available?
I’m currently in the middle of a follow-on novel to SEREN—working title AIX—which follows Moss and Claudine to Aix-en-Provence, France, where they pick up the trail of the muse. Given the verities of the publishing process, I’m guessing it will be released in 2026-27.
Author Links: GoodReads | Website | Instagram
SEREN
After reading Peter Gooch’s Seren, I find myself marveling at a novel that weaves a murder mystery into the messy fabric of artistic obsession, identity, and legacy. At its center is Fairchild Moss, a once-promising painter turned weary art dealer, who becomes captivated by the final painting of a deceased, reclusive genius, Norris Bainbridge. The titular Seren, model, muse, maybe something more, appears as both a literal woman and a haunting symbol, driving Moss to unravel the truth behind the painting’s strange power. The book shifts between boozy lunches, high-art pretensions, urban decay, and moments of surreal introspection, all with a painterly eye for mood and detail.
What stood out to me most was the writing. It’s deft, sardonic, and at times almost hallucinatory. Gooch has a knack for painting with words, which fits, given his background as a visual artist. The prose rolls like jazz, sometimes smooth and stylish, other times jarring. Characters pop with distinctive quirks, and the dialogue hits that tricky sweet spot of sounding real without being mundane. Moss’s ruminations and side quests, though full of voice, sometimes slow the story. Still, I couldn’t help but be drawn into Moss’s unraveling, both in his investigation and in his own midlife malaise.
The real kicker, though, is the way Seren plays with the idea of the muse, not as a passive, dreamy figure, but as a living force that might inspire or destroy. Seren’s presence is slippery, both ethereal and grounded in flesh and snow and paint. The book doesn’t spell her out, and that ambiguity works. It makes you lean forward, ask questions, and doubt your own reading. I loved how it blurred the line between inspiration and possession, between art and madness. It feels like a meditation on how far someone might go to touch something real in a world of reproductions and sales tags.
I’d recommend Seren to readers who like their mysteries with layers, who don’t mind a story that flirts with the surreal and doesn’t tie every thread into a tidy bow. Artists and art lovers will find plenty to chew on, but even if you’ve never set foot in a gallery, the book’s humanity and humor are what really shine.
Pages: 378 | ASIN: B0DZBLG3Q8
