Skinless

<p><strong><em>An eloquent crime novel-street poetry renders the city in lush sensual language and a heroine's raw will to live.</em> - Foreword Reviews (Benjamin Welton)</strong></p><p><strong>Street poetry. Beauty. Danger. Survival.</strong></p><p>Skinless takes place in New York City at the turn of the millennium against a backdrop of small‑time drug dealing and violence. The story follows Charmay a survivor of sex abuse and teenage homelessness caught in the grip of alcohol addiction as she struggles to find her identity while trying to make it in the entertainment industry. She drinks to numb and sings to soothe the raw vulnerability she calls skinless then slips into Cindy the smooth persona she's built to survive on wealth and manipulation.</p><p>In a world chasing quick fixes and the American Dream Charmay is entangled in a web of money ambition and hunger for intimacy. Her past blurs with her present as she longs for her estranged father and the girls she once was while clinging to a hustler‑lover she needs to trust a Wall Street financier obsessed with Cindy and a producer who cuts her open to get to her honest voice. Desire and danger spiral. Hustles collide. Charmay turns to Cindy. Beats. Bullets. Bedsheets.</p><p><em>Skinless </em>becomes a strange evocation of the turn of the 21st century in America-the times we live in and the forces we live by-a real‑life portrait of a world gone off its orbit.</p><p></p><p><em>Skinless</em> is Book 1 of the series <em>Charmay: New York Noir</em>.</p><p>Companion album: <em>Skinless: Songs from the Book</em></p><p></p><ul><li>Maggie Moor has a voice unlike any I've ever encountered-both hip and illuminating a voice that lifts the mind to a place it's never been.-Kate Lardner author of <em>Shut Up He Explained: The Memoir of a Blacklisted Kid</em></li><li>Most of the book's sentences vacillate between beauty and despair. Charmay expresses euphoria sadness anxiety and anger as she shows off her raw will to live... her street poetry in which the city's colors and sensations are highlighted in lush sensual language. A humane portrait of often inhuman actions Skinless is an eloquent crime novel about a woman's relentless desire to survive.-Benjamin Welton Foreword Reviews</li><li>Skinless is a revelation. Meet Charmay. Skinless is also a revolution-of survival... In a word Skinless is a stunner.-Stacey Donovan writer editor ghostwriter; author of <em>Dive</em> and <em>The Red Shoe Diaries </em>book series</li><li>Raw poetic and fearless. Voice cuts to the bone. An unflinching act of emotional courage; both visceral and lyrical. Will stay with me. -Goodreads 5★</li><li>Skinless immerses you in a voice. Duality between Charmay and Cindy...fighting for space inside one woman. Like living in a story than just reading one.-Goodreads 5★</li><li>Raw poetic and fearless. Voice cuts to the bone. An unflinching act of emotional courage; both visceral and lyrical. Will stay with me. -Goodreads 5★</li><li>This is different and that is good. It tells a story which is worth the hearing but it also offers some amazing characters and a writing style which is somehow modern and vintage at the same time. The style takes you into the mind of the protagonist in a way which conventional descriptive prose may not. I really liked it. -NetGalley reviewer 4 ★</li></ul>