56 Nights in Clovelly
A novel
The Story
When Los Angeles writer Annabelle meets reclusive artist Hudson, their connection is instant, volatile, and electric. She’s spent years negotiating a truce with her body size and her worth; he’s convinced people only want him for what he can give—sex, talent, salvation. In a moment of reckless clarity, they make a pact: fifty-six nights together in a seaside house in Clovelly, cut off from everyone they know, focusing on just creation, desire, and truth.
What begins as an erotic experiment becomes a reckoning with everything they’ve hidden from each other and themselves. As the days fall away, art, intimacy, and identity blur. When betrayal cracks the spell, both must decide whether love can survive exposure or if freedom means finally standing alone.
The Myth
56 Nights in Clovelly moves with the tides of the old myths of creation, eros, and awakening. It is Eros and Psyche beneath modern skin, Orpheus and Eurydice rewritten through art and embodiment, Inanna’s descent through the body’s shame and return in her own power. The lovers’ seaside house becomes a crucible—an alchemical vessel where opposites meet: masculine and feminine, artist and muse, flesh and spirit. In this sacred isolation, desire becomes initiation; their bodies become instruments of truth. The sea outside mirrors the unconscious within, rising and receding as they strip away illusion. What burns away is not love, but what love reveals—how creation and surrender are one act, how the self must die to be reborn.
In the end, Clovelly is less a romance than a rite: an erotic mythology of integration, where the human learns again to be divine through touch, art, and honest seeing.
Excerpt
The two sat there, their glasses poised to clink, staring into each other's eyes, each too scared to speak. Scared to ruin whatever bliss they had both been experiencing, and equally scared that there was a possibility it could get better. For two people who have never believed they were worth what they wanted, this moment was pushing every damn boundary they had.
“Well,” Annabell said, breaking the silence carefully. “What am I saying yes to exactly?”
“Fifty-six nights in Clovelly,” Hudson said, immediately.
“Clo-whaty?” Her face scrunched that adorable scrunch.
“Clovelly,” Hudson repeated. “My uncle Travis has a house right on the water and needs me to go stay in it while he has a job in Bali. You can write, I can art, we can stop running and hiding.”
“Where is Clovelly, though? I’ve never heard of it.”
“Sydney.” He said, inching his glass towards her so slowly she didn’t notice. “Australia.”
“Yes, Hudson, thank you, I know where Sydney is, sheesh. I mean, what part of us going to the other side of the globe isn’t running and hiding, though? You leaving him? My leaving…all that?” She said, waving her hand towards the city of angels in front of them.
“Well, I’m thinking, maybe if we experiment with not running or hiding from each other in this incubator of a house… did I mention it’s right at the water? And all glass?”
“No,” she inhaled, dreaming of the possibilities. “You did not.”
“I’m thinking, if we can pull that off with each other, down there, maybe when we come back, we can pull it off everywhere, up here.” The minute he’d said down there, Annabelle felt her body give way in total surrender, and her breath caught in her throat just slow enough for Hudson to notice, and his body surrendered right back. They didn’t even need to speak their answers; they would, but they didn’t need to. They both knew this was already happening. They both knew that they couldn’t say no even if they tried.
“How the fuck am I going to get fifty-six nights off work, Hudson?” Now it was her turn to move her glass closer to his.
“It’s Australia, Annabelle, Australia. You do know what’s in Australia, don’t you?” He had a wicked grin.
“Tasmania?” The smile began to grow on her face, too.
“And you know what’s on Tasmania, right?”
“Through hell's gate?”
“The very one. Tell Maggie you have a connection to the island and you need to follow it to get this thing well and truly off the ground. She will leap at the opportunity to send you there.” He was giddy.
“First of all, do you really have a connect you can set me up with? And two, fifty-six nights away, like I do have to write articles and shit, you know, make money and whatever something you…don’t ever have to worry about?” she guessed.
“So A, did you not hear me when I told you about my many greats-grandmother? Sure, she’s way dead, but we’re like grandmothered in to any research or access you may need to anything that has anything to do with Sarah Island, so, yeah, you’re golden there.”
“Holy shit,” Annabelle said, eyes widening.
“And two, you don’t think there’s so much shit to write about down there as it pertains to women and prisons?” Annabelle made a skeptical face at him.
“What am I going to tell her I have enough to write a whole series on? Women’s incarceration history of Australia: the hidden truth?” She paused.
“Yeah,” Hudson answered.
“It does kind of just write itself, doesn’t it?” She looked like a kid who’d just gotten her first bike.
“I’ll call Maggie and she will say yes.”
“You’ll call her?” she asked as Hudson swiftly wrapped his arm around hers, leaving their arms interlaced.
“She may have given me her number.” He smiled.
“Of course she did.” She squirmed, trying to adjust her arm, trying to pull on her shirt, trying to avoid the realness that was being asked of them both. “Are we going to drink these or what?”
“Are you going to say yes?” Hudson inched his glass closer to his mouth, teasing her. She pursed her lips, turned to the city lights, took a deep breath in, and turned back to him on the exhale, her eyes narrowed.
“Fifty-six nights in Clovelly?” She said, as he slowly nodded. “No hiding or running, tell the truth even when it hurts.” He shook his head, slowly, and leaned towards her, arms still linked. And you think that’s going to work?” He made a sure-thing face and nodded vigorously. “Fifty-six nights in Clovelly…”