“This book is well rounded and packed with drama. I wasn’t sure i’d like it at first, as i was foolish enough to think the author was going to take the common route of having the suspicious blond turn out to be evil and wreak havoc on our protagonist. So, i spent the first part of the book on the edge of my seat waiting for the shoe to drop. But that made it all the more enjoyable when i went back and read it a second time, once i knew what was really going on.
It’s witty, hot, intelligent, and with characters that you like so much that you want to call them to hang out once the book is done. You’ll be laughing one minute, and contemplating the complexities of the human psyche the next. It hits the gates running and refuses to be predictable. I’ll be reading this one again and again.
Kelli Jae Baeli is now one of my favorite authors and i highly recommend anything that she writes. She has the ability to make telling a story seem as easy as breathing. Whether it’s fiction or just observations of herself and life in general. A rare talent among a genre full of formula driven lesfic authors.”
In this erotic novella, Rachel Leeds is a repressed literature professor who struggles with taboo fantasies that invade her sexual identity with razor-sharp intensity.
Just as Rachel’s answers begin to overpower her questions, she crosses paths with a clever young lesbian who isn’t who she appears to be, and manages to turn her staid academia into a firestorm of desire, pulling at the threads of Rachel’s carefully controlled existence.
Random Act of Blindness is a steamy lesbian tale that takes an often superficial genre, and imbues it with eloquence, and multi-dimensional facets; Baeli has created characters a reader can truly invest in and care about.
~KIWI Club Reviews
Great writing February 6, 2017I read a lot and came across this author from another book called running the risk, I liked that book so much I read it 2 times. I looked her up and I think I am addicted to her writing.
A must read author
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This one in particular is such an easy read and I really became attached to both protagonists November 30, 2016 2nd read of this book! Somehow never made a review the first time which was nearly a year ago! This book was one of my first forays into les-fic. Since then I have read (I think) all of Ms. Baeli’s books. This one in particular is such an easy read and I really became attached to both protagonists. The wording flows so smoothly and effortlessly. I felt all the angst that Patrice and Rachel felt. I was very proud that they both could overcome the obstacles in their lives so that the love could shine thru! Thank you, Ms. Baeli for your wonderful books—–all of them!!!!!
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EXCERPTS
1
Never, in all her days, had she imagined herself in a position like this. Vivid fantasies aside, Rachel had never considered acting on the impulses that invaded her thoughts throughout the day, until her session with Dr. Bass. They were private affairs stored only in some scurrilous alcove of her mind. Yet her mind interacted with other minds, and often, there were fragments of information to be had in decidedly ironic ways. Dr. Bass, for instance, listened to her confession of the scandalous gearshift penetration mirage, and fantasy bondage scenarios and produced a copy of the bondage magazine. While not something Professor Rachel Leeds believed would qualify as a “literary device,” it was nonetheless pivotal in the events in which she was now participating. Namely, being on her way to a hardware store to find something to use as a whip on the girl who was naked and bound in a hotel room number 66, the Mark-of-the-Almost-Beast.
When she turned around, Patrice was in her chair, casually wiping her face with the neck of her own T-shirt. Their eyes met. Rachel considered the woman. The luscious blond hair, the ever so slightly oversized lips—a fuckable mouth, she mused, then banished the thought, along with its destination. “Where is this going, Patrice?”
“Does it have to go anywhere?”
“I’m. . .this isn’t the lifestyle I’ve had. . .I don’t know how to process this situation in any way that makes sense.”
Patrice rose and went to the coffeemaker, pouring two cups. “Why do things always have to make sense to you?” She added cream to them and handed one to the Professor.
Rachel looked down at it. “How did you know how I like it?”
Patrice leered at the choice of words for only a moment, before responding, “Observation. The sugar is below on the cart, the creamer is above. Thus, you use only cream. The sugar is for visitors. You would always provide things for visitors, even if you didn’t use it yourself. You’re accommodating.”
The professor reclaimed her chair, and pulled herself up to the desk, both hands around the cup. “So you think you know me, now?”
Patrice sat in the chair opposite the desk. “I think I know enough for now.”
“For now?”
“For now.”
She recognized a distinct craving for a cigarette, a glass of wine, a moment to luxuriate. . . yet that would be not only impossible here, but unprofessional. “What is it you want from me, Patrice?”
“I want to make you crazy with desire.”
“You’ve. . .been doing that. Is that all you want?”
“Is there something else you’d like me to have?”
Chess. She’s playing chess again. Just a fresh game; perhaps after placing me in checkmate on the previous round. “I’m out of my element with this, Patrice. And there’s this large specter of impropriety that I can’t ignore. You are a student, even if you’re only auditing and not registered. This is wrong.”
Patrice couldn’t help but smile. The professor actually thought there were some damn sex police around every corner. “You think you’re taking advantage of me?”
Faith. To believe in things not yet seen, they say. Patrice was faithful a long time ago. Then she communed with the faithless, and their cloying demands. She needed evidence because it made her feel foolish. And faith was lost. But the bitterness left her cold, barefoot, detached from the warmth of love and connection. Then she discovered a different faith. One born of her own power, left untapped for eons, swirling, ebullient, joyful. And now, coming full circle, she found herself wholly unqualified, still, to manifest from faith alone. Yet, perfectly accustomed to crying alone, wishing alone. Hope did not float. It sat on the bottom of a vast sea of isolation, weighted by its own lie.
Random Acts of Blindness is unlike any of my other books…I say that with a generous leeway in definition, because none of my books is like any of my other books.
But I was trying to do something that was not only different for me, but different for authors in general. I wanted to take a genre that is relegated to the fringes, and elevate it into a mainstream sensibility. I wanted to write an erotic book with three- dimensional characters, a recognizable plot, and a handling of the material that made a reader care about what happened to the people in the story. I think I accomplished that, and so it is a book I am very proud of.
I think that authors often underestimate their readers–authors and perhaps publishers, agents, editors and marketeers. If a writer gains fame with a breakthrough novel, he then seizes on that formula and begins to write the same story over and over again; the same people, dressed up in different clothes. There are only a handful of authors I feel write with a certain formula, but still manage to write something new each time. Those are the authors I continue to read. And I will read everything they write, with little concern for what genre it falls into; in this way, I believe that many formula writers do their readers a disservice. I remain interested in that author because of his/her command of the language, the ability to create characters I care about; the cleverness to keep me guessing, and the presence of mind to tie up the loose ends and give me a satisfactory ending that will not leave me feeling as though I had wasted my precious time. I want to come away from a book feeling good about something. That doesn’t mean I need fairy tales, either (although, really, fairy tales are notoriously dramatic, gory and often filled with characters and deeds no child should be privy to–Hansel and Gretel anyone?)
I find it exciting to hear of a favorite author breaking out of one genre and leaping into another. I can’t wait to read that book. It’s like seeing your love in new clothes; like driving a new car; like a meal you only get to have once a year, but that you love above all other meals. Thus, I hope to see more authors expand their genre-horizons. There are enough clones out there–both stories and writers. Give me a new species and my interest will be as intense as it originally was with the one that preceded it.
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