The Soft Animal
LGBTQ+ Fiction, complete at 105,000 words.
It’s 1990, and at eighteen, Moses Howard flees home with only a memory: the agony of her broken ankle, the glass bottle she drove into her stepfather’s chest, and the fall from Stella Robinson’s window after a too-brief goodbye.
The seven years that follow are filled with fake names and countless reinventions. So many that Moses cannot recognize herself – not until her stepfather’s death paves the way back to rural South Carolina where Stella, her oldest and dearest friend, knows her instantly.
Stella and her young daughter welcome Moses into their home, allowing Moses the chance to begin again on her own terms. Easy as breathing, the three of them forge a routine around Moses’ new bar-tending gig, school drop-offs, and spinning David Bowie records. A simple life, sure, but one that Moses only ever dreamed of sharing with Stella. Though days of fragile peace stretch into weeks, Moses knows better than to let her guard down. After all, being home again means proximity to a toxic gossip mill and vicious ghosts from her old life who won’t rest until they’ve run Moses back out of town.
Most dangerous of all? Moses’ dormant love for Stella has woken up, and to voice it is to jeopardize their precious life together. With everything to lose, Moses must lay down the weight of her past if she wishes to seize a future with the love she’s always desired.
Author's Statement
I have always liked the idea that a story finds you when you need it most. It never occurred to me, however, that the same sentiment can be applied to an author. The Soft Animal began as a short-story in an Advanced Fiction Writing course at VCU, was shelved, and remained on the back-burner for the front half of 2020.
However, after a summer spent consuming no small amount of soul-crushing lesbian media, the straw that broke that little gay camel's back? Mike Flannigan's The Haunting of Bly Manor. I binged the series in one sitting, finishing it at 4AM in the trenches of the COVID-19 pandemic, in my childhood bedroom. That next morning? I woke with the drive to create a lesbian love story that - in spite of the tragedy and world coming down on our main couple- worked out in the end, in a way that not only felt earned but well-deserved. (I also believed, at the time, that I was 100% straight. You know, just #AllyThings.)
Writing this novel felt like talking to a version of myself that would not surface for several years, like I was reaching across my unconsciousness with the assurance that the unearthed gem that is lesbianism is a beautiful thing, a soft animal eager and waiting to be loved. I hope, when this novel makes it into the world at-large, folks will find comfort and understanding in Moses, Stella, Tina, and Charlie, as I have.
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Inspiration Behind the Title:
Chapter-by-Chapter playlist:
