Smut Street: Orange Cat Heroines & Annabeth Albert
Plus a cover reveal for my upcoming MM baseball romance...
It’s cover reveal day for my next baseball romance, All Bats are Off, and great news… I think I found the perfect Betsey Johnson purse(s) to commemorate the occasion. 🎉
*Note to self* plan a future post pairing books and bags.
I’m super excited for this bite-sized novella. There’s something extra satisfying about writing queer love and drag queens while the government tries to strip them of their rights. Maybe—if we’re lucky—the very thought of men falling in love and boning in a sunken motel bathtub will make Elon cry again on Fox News.
That’s what I really do it for.
If you’re a paid subscriber, you get to read All Bats are Off first, one chapter per week, starting next Monday, March 24th. Again, this is for paid subscribers only.
For the rest of you beautiful baddies, you can preorder the book on Amazon and add it to your Goodreads. 💋⚾ And be sure to read my recent post for tropes, character inspiration, and more.
But that’s enough of that. Let’s talk about this week’s word of the week, one that is relatively new to me but has since become a staple in my bookish lexicon.
Hopefully, it will for you, too…
Word of the Week
Here’s the thing, I’m pretty sure orange cat heroine, is one of those character archetypes that we’re already familiar with, but didn’t know we were familiar with until somebody put a name to it on Tiktok—and not even on the book side of Tiktok.
I came across the concept of the “orange cat girlfriend” on Tiktok a few months ago, and I haven’t been able to forget it since, and how it applies perfectly to romance novel characters. ❤️😍
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So, who is the orange cat heroine, you ask? Trust me, you know her. She’s the best friend who encourages the main character to go on a revenge spree. She’s the little sister—probably of six grumpy cowboy brothers—who left her small town for the big bad city.
She’s a chaos demon, in the cutest and most endearing kind of way, and similar to the way black cat heroines pair well with golden retriever heroes, she often matches up with German Shepherd or Doberman partners—loyal, scary-presenting cuddle bugs who will protect her at all costs.
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Like I said, now that we’re all aware of who the orange cat heroine is, chances are good you already have a few specific characters in mind—and please, let me know in the comments.
How about a few more to add to your TBR list?
Maybe one of these weeks, we’ll make it through a Smut Street without me recommending a Christmas romance, but that day is not today. 🤣 Then again, it should come as no surprise that an orange cat heroine would fit perfectly within a holiday setting, and Meka James’ Being Merry is a prime example of that. It’s a sapphic romance between an introverted gamer girl and a high-energy, Christmas obsessed pixie… who happens to be her temporary roommate.
Unlike Christmas books, I don’t often find myself recommending many motorcycle club romances these days, but the Regulators MC series by Chelsea Camaron & Jessie Lane is one of my favorites. The fact that the vegan yogi gets a big and burly biker like Coal to fall in love with salads, and basically anything else she makes him do, was absolutely adorable.
Pippa Grant’s The Roommate Mistake and Angela Casella’s The Love Bandits were easy picks for me, mostly because both authors tend to write orange cat heroines on default. Pippa’s female main characters are almost always high-energy balls of chaos, and Ziggy is no exception. Throw in her pregnancy hormones, and look out… the girl can do some damage.
Author of the Week
Just ask any romance author living in the Pacific Northwest—one of the best things about living here is being surrounded by other romance authors, many of whom write queer romance, just like me.
I’ve read Annabeth Albert’s books—both indie and traditionally published—for years, and thankfully, we’ve been able to connect in person several times since I moved to Portland, Oregon in 2021, first at Emerald City Romance and again, at a couple of signing events at our local romance bookstore, The Romance Era.
Simply said, Annabeth writes everything.
Military men, nerdy gamer boys, cater waiters, single dads, neurodivergent leads, disabled leads—like I said, everything. More importantly, they all have one thing in common: queerness. 🏳️🌈💖
And, as if her backlist wasn’t already long enough, Annabeth’s currently roping together—pun intended—her next series, and I’ve got two words for you…
Gay cowboys.
May couldn’t come fast enough.
Hot Take of the Week
I’ll keep this one short, and please know that this applies to my thoughts on romance novels, romcom movies, etc.
Grand gestures are overrated.
Consistent and thoughtful micro gestures are much more romantic, in my opinion. I’ll take an MMC who cooks her dinner, knits her a sweater, or braids her hair any day of the week. Keep your boombox to yourself, John Cusack.
Got any more orange cat heroine romance books to recommend? How about a word or author you’d love to see highlighted in a future issue of Smut Street? Please let me know in the comments! Until next week…
Be feral. Stay dangerous.
xo
There are about 127 things that I love about your posts, but #1 has to be about how you share and cheer for other authors!! 💗 Go you!!