Explore the novels of Eliza Mimski.
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Discover the compelling narratives of my newly published novels, now available on KDP.
Race-Switch
The time is in the future when corporations like The Switch, Incorporated, Asian Reincarnation, and Black is Beautiful and You Can Be Too perform race switching by means of disk-implantation. After switching, a client wakes up as a racially-different person with a new identity, lacking memories of their bio-self. A Remember Journal with a few basic facts about their prior self is all they are given.
Valentina De Guzman, a two-time switchee, works as a tour guide and support group leader at San Francisco’s The Switch, Incorporated. Valentina is an attractive, smart, and professional switchee but she lacks a sense of cultural belonging, suffering from a condition she thinks of as racelessness. She sees herself as an imposter, something she, of course, cannot mention to the company’s prospective clients.
In a society where the white race is steadily diminishing and darker races are multiplying and taking more prominence in the world, a local white supremacist group is determined to take down The Switch by destroying its technology. This plus the discovery that the corporation Valentina works for might be involved in some underhanded business practices sends her and her work friends, plus an elderly woman known as Mama, on a dangerous journey.
Valentina’s personal quest involves finding a way to accept herself because once one switches, there is no going back.
The time is in the future when corporations like The Switch, Incorporated, Asian Reincarnation, and Black is Beautiful and You Can Be Too perform race switching by means of disk-implantation. After switching, a client wakes up as a racially-different person with a new identity, lacking memories of their bio-self. A Remember Journal with a few basic facts about their prior self is all they are given.
Valentina De Guzman, a two-time switchee, works as a tour guide and support group leader at San Francisco’s The Switch, Incorporated. Valentina is an attractive, smart, and professional switchee but she lacks a sense of cultural belonging, suffering from a condition she thinks of as racelessness. She sees herself as an imposter, something she, of course, cannot mention to the company’s prospective clients.
In a society where the white race is steadily diminishing and darker races are multiplying and taking more prominence in the world, a local white supremacist group is determined to take down The Switch by destroying its technology. This plus the discovery that the corporation Valentina works for might be involved in some underhanded business practices sends her and her work friends, plus an elderly woman known as Mama, on a dangerous journey.
Valentina’s personal quest involves finding a way to accept herself because once one switches, there is no going back.
Nobody-girl
It's 1968 and Emily Queen is freshly out of high school and freshly out of Texas, leaving her toxic mother behind without saying goodbye. She arrives in St. Louis in the hopes of finding her long-absent father and discovering more about her mother’s hidden history through a man she hasn’t seen or heard from since she was a child. Since her mother has raised her on a steady stream of lies, Emily is desperate to connect with her other parent, not knowing how he’ll react to learn she’s not only seeking him out but is in his town.
Emily is kind, vulnerable, but also tough and determined to find out more about who she is and learn why her mother has always kept her history hidden. More than that, being on her own as a very young woman, Emily must now come to terms with how and why she relies so heavily on God’s presence in her life while remembering painful moments from her childhood. Convinced God is always in her corner, she must also begin to wonder why he has given her the ability to be sexually interested in women—a part of her identity that comes into full, complicated bloom while on her journey.
This story delves into painful topics like sexual assault, child abuse and abandonment amidst the backdrop of the LGBTQ movement taking quiet shape in both St. Louis, but most especially California. Emily’s story is told with tenderness and respect, and we see firsthand how memory—both forgotten and resurfaced—play a critical role in how we see ourselves as adults.
It's 1968 and Emily Queen is freshly out of high school and freshly out of Texas, leaving her toxic mother behind without saying goodbye. She arrives in St. Louis in the hopes of finding her long-absent father and discovering more about her mother’s hidden history through a man she hasn’t seen or heard from since she was a child. Since her mother has raised her on a steady stream of lies, Emily is desperate to connect with her other parent, not knowing how he’ll react to learn she’s not only seeking him out but is in his town.
Emily is kind, vulnerable, but also tough and determined to find out more about who she is and learn why her mother has always kept her history hidden. More than that, being on her own as a very young woman, Emily must now come to terms with how and why she relies so heavily on God’s presence in her life while remembering painful moments from her childhood. Convinced God is always in her corner, she must also begin to wonder why he has given her the ability to be sexually interested in women—a part of her identity that comes into full, complicated bloom while on her journey.
This story delves into painful topics like sexual assault, child abuse and abandonment amidst the backdrop of the LGBTQ movement taking quiet shape in both St. Louis, but most especially California. Emily’s story is told with tenderness and respect, and we see firsthand how memory—both forgotten and resurfaced—play a critical role in how we see ourselves as adults.
Sex, Love and Makeovers in the City of the Ancient Cougars
It's the summer of the 4th Annual Fashion Beauty Pageant for Women of a Certain Age Plus More, contestants traveling from all over the world to Ciudad de las Pumas Antiguas, or City of the Ancient Cougars, a fictitious South American resort. Along with the women and their seamstresses, young men in their twenties and thirties converge on the town, some gigolos, some fetishists and some genuinely interested in elderly women.
Beneath the satirical nature of the resort, the pageant follows six different characters through their battles with their identity: Bedda Harris, a narcissist who uses young men to make her feel young, but who desperately finds her health ailing; Skeeter Jones, her seamstress granddaughter who Bedda mercilessly controls and who is mourning the death of her beloved father; Bobby Palomino, an impotent young man man unlucky in love who hopes that an elderly woman could love him; the voluptuous Luna Santiago who has moved here from New Mexico to avoid being harassed, thinking it emotionally safer being among men who prefer old women; Jamie Kincaid, who gives of himself to different young men but finds himself unloved; and Dixie Poinbottom, a widow in her eighties who hopes that the pageant may help her to deal with her seemingly unstoppable grief.
It is through their interactions with each other, plus others at the resort, that these characters struggle to come to terms with their core identity.
It's the summer of the 4th Annual Fashion Beauty Pageant for Women of a Certain Age Plus More, contestants traveling from all over the world to Ciudad de las Pumas Antiguas, or City of the Ancient Cougars, a fictitious South American resort. Along with the women and their seamstresses, young men in their twenties and thirties converge on the town, some gigolos, some fetishists and some genuinely interested in elderly women.
Beneath the satirical nature of the resort, the pageant follows six different characters through their battles with their identity: Bedda Harris, a narcissist who uses young men to make her feel young, but who desperately finds her health ailing; Skeeter Jones, her seamstress granddaughter who Bedda mercilessly controls and who is mourning the death of her beloved father; Bobby Palomino, an impotent young man man unlucky in love who hopes that an elderly woman could love him; the voluptuous Luna Santiago who has moved here from New Mexico to avoid being harassed, thinking it emotionally safer being among men who prefer old women; Jamie Kincaid, who gives of himself to different young men but finds himself unloved; and Dixie Poinbottom, a widow in her eighties who hopes that the pageant may help her to deal with her seemingly unstoppable grief.
It is through their interactions with each other, plus others at the resort, that these characters struggle to come to terms with their core identity.
Links to my novels...
About the Author
I'm a retired educator and live in San Francisco, California. Over fifty of my poems, personal essays and stories have been published on the web and in print. I've been a finalist in the San Francisco Writers Conference Contest on three separate occasions and was a finalist in UK’s Fortnight Poetry Contest. Being a finalist is great, and humbling at the same time.