Hearts and Flour by Tara Lain

A raw food fanatic and a cupcake baker—can two hearts rise above the flour?

Healthy, vegan food is Micah Truveen’s religion. So when his devoted customers start showing up with white flour cupcakes, Micah’s ready to scream. When he discovers who’s been spreading the cupcake poison to the community, there’s going to be trouble. And to make a bad day even worse, Micah comes home to find his boyfriend in bed with someone else—on the day before Valentine’s Day! In frustration, he throws the rat out and agrees to go to his friend’s orgiastic Anti-Valentines party. Not his style, but lately, his style seems to be crumbling around him like stale baked goods.

Southerner Quentin Darby wishes he could stop wearing women’s clothes. He desperately wants to live up to the glowing opinion his grandmother holds of him, so he’s never even told her he’s gay. And now there’s this guy from the party who makes him wish he could just be who he is—a man who likes women’s clothing, loves to bake, and thinks everything’s better with cupcakes. Until a man with an axe to grind decides the time to grind it is now…

From the Author This MM novella tells the unlikely story of a raw-food loving vegan who falls for a cross-dressing cupcake baker. Technically, cross-dressing simply refers to the act of wearing clothing or other accoutrements associated with the opposite gender from one's own. The term doesn't connote any specific gender identity or motives, and in the case of my hero, he's a gay man who started cross-dressing so as not to be recognized in his city and found he enjoyed dressing and acting as a woman from time to time.

Cross-dressing is time honored. Hercules is punished by Omphale by requiring him to wear women's clothes, while Achilles was dressed as a girl to hide him from Odysseus who wanted him to join the Trojan War. Athena often dresses as a man in mythology, while in the cult of Aphrodite, worshipers all cross dressed, women as men and vice versa. Interestingly in the Hindu Mahabharata, the hero Arjuna dresses as a female dance teacher to keep his identity secret.

Many historical figures were cross-dressers -- Joan of Arc; Catalina de Erauso, a Spanish woman who escaped from a convent dressed as a man and served in the Spanish Army; the Chevalier d'Eon who lived the first half of his life as a man and the second half as a woman; Shi Pri Pu (M. Butterfly) a spy for the Chinese government, cross dressed for 20 years.

Any reader of Shakespeare knows how the author loved cross-dressing his characters. And modern films are no exception. Some Like It Hot has two cross-dressing men, while Victor Victoria stars a cross-dressing woman.

Actually, cross-dressing is a cultural construct. Society decides what is masculine and what is feminine. Clothing is in no way innately gender specific. Think of our modern world in which a woman in pants or even a business suit and tie is considered fashionable, while a man in a dress is considered a cross-dresser. I hope you enjoy meeting Quentin, aka Queen, from Hearts and Flour .

About the Author Tara Lain's first erotic romance novel was published in January of 2011. She's now on book 17. Her best-selling novels have garnered awards for Best Series of 2011, Best Contemporary Romance, Best Ménage, Best LGBT Romance and Tara has been named Best Writer of the Year in the LRC Awards. In her other job, Tara owns an advertising and public relations firm, and she carries her promotional instincts into her writing career as well. She lives with her soul-mate husband in Laguna Beach, California, a pretty seaside town where she sets a lot of her books. Passionate about diversity, justice, and new experiences, Tara says on her tombstone it will say "Yes"!