 Laurinda
Brown: Following Her Passion
"When you do what your passion is -- your passion
being what God gave you the zest and talent to do -- the rest
falls into place." -- Laurinda Brown
“Laurinda Brown’s poignant tales of everyday life in both
the heterosexual and homosexual communities are definitely
stories that we want to keep coming.” - Sable Magazine
A native of Memphis, TN, and a graduate of
Howard University’s English Department, Laurinda believes in
divine destiny. Saying, “It was time for me to do what God
put me here to do,” she turned her back on corporate America
in order to complete the book that she knew was inside her. That
book evolved into a four-year labor of love that she eventually
entitled UnderCover.
A full-time grant and policy writer who
currently resides with her two daughters in Hampton Roads,
Virginia, Laurinda D. Brown writes about life…not lifestyles.
UnderCover
 Her
new book, UnderCover, alternates between Memphis, TN and
Paris, France UnderCover is two stories told in one book
from the imagination of a writer who feels the reader should be
educated as well as entertained. The reader learns about AIDS,
its transmission, and how it affects children. Through this
story the reader also witnesses the consequences of keeping
secrets and living life on the DL (down low) while peering into
the lives of people they will come to view as real in spite of
the fact that they are merely characters in the novel.
Because one of the integral storylines in UnderCover
deals with such a serious subject matter, an informational page
from Washington, DC’s Whitman-Walker Clinic, Inc. has been
included at the end of the book. Whitman-Walker Clinic, Inc. is
one of the country’s foremost authorities on AIDS prevention and
provides healthcare and social support services for people
living with HIV/AIDS.
In this, her sophomore novel, one learns that living a lie can
result in devastating consequences. Discover what happens when
Nathaniel Alexander, a rehabilitated drag queen, is shunned by
his lover and decides to marry his best friend from high school.
Finances force him to take a second job that ultimately leads
him down a familiar path, one his wife chooses to ignore until
his indiscretions hit too close to home.
Read Excerpt from Chapter 9 of
UnderCover.
 Fire
& Brimstone
Laurinda's first novel, Fire & Brimstone, was originally
a self-published title later acquired by Strebor Books
International LLC and reprinted under that imprint.
Fire & Brimstone is a story of issues as it takes two
controversial subjects and wraps them into one debatable topic
by focusing the attention on two lesbians who possess
conflicting views on what it means to be spiritual and
religious.
In this modern urban drama, the reader goes on a realistic
journey into the lives of two characters, Chris Desmereaux and
Gayle Evans. A journey complete with lesbian parenting, physical
and mental abuse, same-sex domestic violence, joy, sadness,
pain, laughter, interracial dating, dating through the personal
ads, welfare, rape, infidelity, intra-racial caste systems, and
above all else, survival and real love.
Fire & Brimstone is broken down into two distinct parts.
The first, entitled “Religion is for Those Who Are Afraid to
Go to Hell,” delves deep into the circumstances that have
influenced the main characters but not without exposing the
hypocrisies often present in the African American church. Here
the reader meets Chris Desmereaux, an unemployed,
college-educated, single mother of two, who feels spirituality
is what one carries within, not what you do for show on Sunday.
On the other hand, Gayle Evans, Minister of Music in her church
and Chris’s secret lover, sees nothing wrong with raising hell
Monday through Saturday just as long as she repents for her sins
during service on the Lord’s Day. And that is where the conflict
begins.
In part two, “Spirituality is for Those Who Have Already Been
There,” Chris begins her tumultuous journey of
self-discovery, an account so dramatic that she comes close to
losing everything she holds dear before discovering that the
love she so desperately wanted was in the one place she never
expected to find it. Part two is an exploration of
self-destruction and what it takes to bounce back.
Written in a free-flowing, intelligible manner, readers of all
sexes, ages, and ethnicities will find themselves comparing the
novel’s characters to someone they know. Alternately set in
Washington, D.C. and Memphis, TN, Fire & Brimstone is
brazen, in-your-face fiction that “lays out the down-low of
being black, Christian, and in love with women.”
Read Excerpt from Chapter 1 of
Fire & Brimstone.
P.O. BOX 23669
Hampton, VA 23669
Phone:
(757)851-4553
Email:
Website:
http://www.ldbrownbooks.com/
   
|
