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VENUS
African American lesbian historical fiction/mystery/romance. Set in 1970.
Venus couldn't remember anything before the age of six and living with two white people, George and Beatrice Slocum. How did she, an African-American, come to be with them? After all there was no love for her in that house. As she matures, Venus seeks the answers to the mysteries of her past, and why she has the terrible nightmares she has. Along the way she meets and falls in love with another girl, as well as coming closer to the answers about herself.
Excerpt from the book
Venus had never told her dreams to anyone before, not even Careena, because she thought they had stopped, and she hadn't wanted to even bring up the memory of the dreams by talking about them. She had tried to tell Beatrice and George when she had been smaller, but neither of the Slocums had been interested. They rarely listened to her when she talked about anything.
Venus "I am in an apartment. I feel like the apartment in the dream is familiar but in real life I don't know it. I seem to be a little girl. I don't know just how old I am, maybe four or five. It is dark and not very well lighted in the apartment and I feel anxious and a little scared.
"The apartment is all dirty and messy. Trash is lying all over the place. There are dirty dishes and dirty clothes everywhere there is a bed in the room and it's all mussed up. The sheets are wrinkled and stained like they've never been washed.
"I go and look out a window. It looks out onto an empty lot. There is a For Sale sign on the lot, poking up through the dry grass and weeds. It reads – Har's Lot for sale by owner.
"There are other buildings I can see from the window but they are all dark and empty and the windows are all broken out of them. Just looking at them scares me.
"Even though I'm scared, I decide to go outside because I can see some snow in front. I go outside and look at the snow but I decide not to play in it because somehow I know there's danger there.
"It is dark and gloomy outside too, and I keep feeling more and more afraid. I don't know where to go or what to do. I'm all alone and it's just as bad inside the building.
"Then I see this rose lying in the snow and it's so beautiful. its petals all shiny and satiny. It's just lying there, all alone in the snow, and I want it badly. So even though I feel the danger I decide to go and pick it up.
I'm about to pick up the rose when the monster is there. I don't know where he came from. He's dressed all in black and his face looks like it's decaying. The eyes don't have any lids and they're all sunken back into his head. His teeth are all rotten and his skin is gray and scaly and it's flaking off. I'm terrified some of his scales are going to get on me.
He picks up my rose, and then he looks at me and I feel as if I can't move, as if I can't even breathe. He tears the petals off the rose one by one and every time he pulls off a petal it bleeds.
I want to stop him, but I can't.
The blood drips down between his fingers and gets on his hands and then I see that it's on his clothes and on his black shoes and when he starts towards me he leaves red, bloody footprints in the snow.
He still has the rose and he seems to keep finding petals to pull off of it and it keeps bleeding. The droplets are forming into pools and the pools are starting to join together.
He tells me the blood from the rose is evil and that I'm going to drown in it. The blood is all around me and he's reaching out for me. I try to scream. I keep trying to scream and then I wake up and I really am screaming.
Foul use of the F word/ explicit/erotic explicit
Venus couldn't remember anything before the age of six and living with two white people, George and Beatrice Slocum. How did she, an African-American, come to be with them? After all there was no love for her in that house. As she matures, Venus seeks the answers to the mysteries of her past, and why she has the terrible nightmares she has. Along the way she meets and falls in love with another girl, as well as coming closer to the answers about herself.
Excerpt from the book
Venus had never told her dreams to anyone before, not even Careena, because she thought they had stopped, and she hadn't wanted to even bring up the memory of the dreams by talking about them. She had tried to tell Beatrice and George when she had been smaller, but neither of the Slocums had been interested. They rarely listened to her when she talked about anything.
Venus "I am in an apartment. I feel like the apartment in the dream is familiar but in real life I don't know it. I seem to be a little girl. I don't know just how old I am, maybe four or five. It is dark and not very well lighted in the apartment and I feel anxious and a little scared.
"The apartment is all dirty and messy. Trash is lying all over the place. There are dirty dishes and dirty clothes everywhere there is a bed in the room and it's all mussed up. The sheets are wrinkled and stained like they've never been washed.
"I go and look out a window. It looks out onto an empty lot. There is a For Sale sign on the lot, poking up through the dry grass and weeds. It reads – Har's Lot for sale by owner.
"There are other buildings I can see from the window but they are all dark and empty and the windows are all broken out of them. Just looking at them scares me.
"Even though I'm scared, I decide to go outside because I can see some snow in front. I go outside and look at the snow but I decide not to play in it because somehow I know there's danger there.
"It is dark and gloomy outside too, and I keep feeling more and more afraid. I don't know where to go or what to do. I'm all alone and it's just as bad inside the building.
"Then I see this rose lying in the snow and it's so beautiful. its petals all shiny and satiny. It's just lying there, all alone in the snow, and I want it badly. So even though I feel the danger I decide to go and pick it up.
I'm about to pick up the rose when the monster is there. I don't know where he came from. He's dressed all in black and his face looks like it's decaying. The eyes don't have any lids and they're all sunken back into his head. His teeth are all rotten and his skin is gray and scaly and it's flaking off. I'm terrified some of his scales are going to get on me.
He picks up my rose, and then he looks at me and I feel as if I can't move, as if I can't even breathe. He tears the petals off the rose one by one and every time he pulls off a petal it bleeds.
I want to stop him, but I can't.
The blood drips down between his fingers and gets on his hands and then I see that it's on his clothes and on his black shoes and when he starts towards me he leaves red, bloody footprints in the snow.
He still has the rose and he seems to keep finding petals to pull off of it and it keeps bleeding. The droplets are forming into pools and the pools are starting to join together.
He tells me the blood from the rose is evil and that I'm going to drown in it. The blood is all around me and he's reaching out for me. I try to scream. I keep trying to scream and then I wake up and I really am screaming.
Foul use of the F word/ explicit/erotic explicit
141 pages, Kindle Edition
Published July 26, 2011
2 people are currently reading
1 person want to read
About the author
Helen Dunn
54 books5 followersLibrarian note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.
Helen Dunn is the author of “Untamed Women of Yesteryear” published by L-Books – which received honorable mention by the Golden Crown Literary Society. She has also been nominated for Favorite Lesbian Fiction Historical – by the Lesbian Fiction Readers Choice Awards group for 2011. She has written several anthologies and novels, as well as once writing a newspaper column. Helen Dunn grew up in an environment that was almost 19th century, living on dirt roads in houses that had no running water, and an ice box rather than a refrigerator with her mother cooking on a wood burning stove, while her father farmed with mules. Many of her writings have historical settings and paranormal elements in them.
Helen Dunn is the author of “Untamed Women of Yesteryear” published by L-Books – which received honorable mention by the Golden Crown Literary Society. She has also been nominated for Favorite Lesbian Fiction Historical – by the Lesbian Fiction Readers Choice Awards group for 2011. She has written several anthologies and novels, as well as once writing a newspaper column. Helen Dunn grew up in an environment that was almost 19th century, living on dirt roads in houses that had no running water, and an ice box rather than a refrigerator with her mother cooking on a wood burning stove, while her father farmed with mules. Many of her writings have historical settings and paranormal elements in them.
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