What actually inspired KARI OKAY?

In my last post, I confessed that my new novel, coming out later this week, KARI OKAY, has a dramatic rape scene in it and therefore the book has no erotic content, since it's a different type of novel completely.

What I didn't share as much on in that post was about what actually inspired the novel to begin with, and why I'd want to write a novel about such a dark theme.

Some readers dismiss erotica writers as "serious artists," and sometimes that's okay, but it's a pigeonhole that simply doesn't fit me. While I enjoy writing sexy fun, I also enjoy writing other sorts of things, too. Sometimes because actual events in the world piss me off.

One such event happened several years ago, before I was an active writer. It involved an at-the-time young professional athlete and an accusation of sexual assault ... something not uncommon, unfortunately, in the world of professional athletics.

However, the way in which this particular story unfolded flummoxed me.

The media outed the victim's identity.

And once that happened in one place, pretty soon everyone was repeating her name. Imagine the horror! Bad enough that you have been raped. Worse that you were raped by a pro athlete. But then your name is tossed out to the public so that you'll never know any peace at all, but have media idiots portraying you as everything from a temptress to a whore?

Unthinkable.

I didn't like how that particular real-life episode played out. I wanted to tell a tale that explored what life would be like for a young woman in that sort of situation. And I wanted to furthermore portray the devastation that something like that ... the backstage reality of damaged and destroyed lives that you never really hear about once the famous athlete "settles the case and puts it all behind him."

My tale, Kari Okay, is fictionalized. I give my character some measure of justice, even though she suffers a lot at the hands of her assaulter. It's a story that's suspenseful, contains some social satire, and has some bite to it because there are, unfortunately, several real-life cases where things very much like this have happened.

So, yes, there's a potentially disturbing event in the novel, but it's about a lot more than that. I hope you will all enjoy the suspense, the humor, and the message of survival it offers.