When was your Beautiful Chill?

You know that Valentine thing coming up? Roses and chocolates, the usual? Red velvet cards and whispered sweet nothings.... Time to express your love to someone you hope will be happy to hear all about it.... 


This is probably the perfect time to introduce my newest novel, A BEAUTIFUL CHILL, available now in paperback and ebook editions...just in time for Valentine's Day!

It's a romance, after all. Well, sorta. People fall in love, don't they? Meh, maybe. They live happily ever after, right? Umm, kinda. So it's not really a "romance" - is it? More of an anti-romance, perhaps. Let's just say this is not your grandmother's campus romance.

Of course, the campus romance is certainly one of the most popular fiction subjects, more so if they involve the forbidden pairing of a professor and a student. Lots of room for sexy scenes and tempestuous trouble! Some have complained that the power is always with the man, or always with the professor. 

That may be true in many cases. But, forgetting for a moment which person may be older or in a position of authority, consider who really has the power in such a relationship, especially in this topsy-turvy world of gender politics and the casual mind games that can be cleverly hidden between sessions of Studio Art and Shakespeare classes!

So here is Íris, a refugee from an abusive youth in Iceland and further abused on the streets of Toronto - until she discovers Art and uses it as an escape. Now, with a scholarship in hand, she drifts from depression to nightmare to her Wiccan rituals to the next art exhibit. But there's still a lot she must forget in order to succeed in a life she refuses to take responsibility for. Time is running out as she nears graduation.

One night she crosses paths with Eric, the new professor, settling in at Fairmont College, starting a new life after previous betrayal and heartbreak. Divorced and hitting forty, he has a lot to prove - to his father, his colleagues, and mostly to himself. The last thing he needs is a distraction - and there's nothing more distracting than Iris. Besides, being the consummate Romantic by training and by temperament, he must always save the damsel - whether or not she wants to be saved.


A BEAUTIFUL CHILL - the moment when past and present dangerously collide - is a contemporary "romance" set in the duplicitous world of academic rules and artistic license - much in the same vein as Francine Prose's campus dalliance in Blue Angel and Elizabeth Rosner's artist/muse elegy Blue Nude. A BEAUTIFUL CHILL is a novel about choices, empowerment, and redemption. 

You can read more about this novel at Shelfari.com

No Kindle? Get FREE reading apps here! 

Need a last minute gift? 

Simply buy the ebook and on the same page click to send it to your giftee's email.

Check out other books from Stephen Swartz: 

both literary/romantic-adventure and science-fiction!

(Click on your favorite book's LINK in the upper right corner of this blog page.)

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(C) Copyright 2010-2014 by Stephen M. Swartz. All Rights Reserved. No part of this blog, whether text or image, may be used without me giving you written permission, except for brief excerpts that are accompanied by a link to this entire blog. Violators shall be written into novels as characters who are killed off. Serious violators shall be identified and dealt with according to the laws of the United States of America.