Michelle Arnold
Lesfic Author
About Me
I am the author of six lesbian romance novels, a four-book mystery/romance series, and a collection of short stories with a friends-to-lovers theme. All of my books feature lesbians and bisexual women in leading roles, often facing and overcoming challenging situations.
When I'm not writing, I work as a special ed paraprofessional. I'm also a big nerd and a cat person!
My new Sapphic urban fantasy novel One Light: Beyond the Portal is out now! Buy in paperback or ebook format here. It is also available through Kindle Unlimited!
Ari is eleven when she first hears voices seemingly coming from inside the wall of her house. Scared but inquisitive, she pulls back the baseboard and discovers a portal. Curiosity getting the better of her, she peeks through it to see her own family in a terrifying scene she knows can’t be real. She quickly convinces herself she must have imagined it.
Thirty years later, Ari is a middle-aged woman struggling with chronic illness, but married to the love of her life, her vibrant wife Mandira.
One night she decides to share the secret she’s kept all these years, telling Mandira about the other world she once imagined seeing in the wall and the different life she witnessed.
Mandira’s simple response changes everything: “What if it was real?”
With her mind open to the possibility, Ari starts to hear the voices in the wall again, and this time when she investigates, she opens multiple portals showing alternate universes in which she and Mandira are living slightly – or completely – different lives.
Mandira believes Ari has this gift for a reason and that they have a duty to bring their other selves together. Ari isn’t so sure. Is it safe to interfere in other worlds? And if they physically venture through a portal, could they be cut off from their own world?
As Ari grapples with her worsening disability, she works on honing her gift for accessing other worlds, with Mandira serving as her moral compass.
But can a power like this ever truly be harnessed?
Romance Novels
Lesbian romance in which couples overcome adversity to forge lives together
After years of struggling with her sexuality, Chris finally comes out as gay when she starts college and meets the beautiful and mysterious Anaïs. Anaïs is just what the socially awkward Chris needs in her life: confident, adventurous, open, and loving. The only problem is that she already has a serious girlfriend.
Chris resigns herself to life in the friend zone, but a whirlwind trip with Anaïs proves there is a lot going on beneath Anaïs's calm surface. An impulsive act leaves Chris bewildered as to what Anaïs's true intentions are and feeling more alone than ever as she tries to understand why she loves Anaïs and what to do about it.
Laramie is forced to start her life over when her best friend and sometimes lover, Raya, cuts her off without warning. As she rebuilds, Laramie slowly begins to understand that Raya has been abusing her for years. Now that she is free of the abuse, she is able to build a better life with new friends and even finds a new love with the vibrant and beautiful dancer Zoe, who is everything Raya was not.
But then Raya decides she wants her back. Can Laramie truly break free to have the life she and Zoe deserve, or will Raya keep her claws in her forever?
Grace Walker doesn't do relationships. She spent her childhood in and out of foster homes, she and her siblings looking after each other when their drug-addicted mother couldn't. With such a dysfunctional family, Grace just doesn't think she's relationship material. She'd rather play the field and otherwise keep to herself. But then she runs into someone from her childhood: Eva Carrington, an orphaned heiress who did a brief stint in a children's home alongside Grace. The two felt a strong connection as children, and now that they're adults, it's even stronger. But Grace sticks to her guns: she doesn't do relationships, and she's certain kind, intelligent Eva deserves better than her anyway. But then someone else from the past hurts Eva badly to get revenge on Grace for some perceived slight, and Eva ends up pregnant. When she makes the difficult decision to have the baby, Grace promises to be there for mother and child no matter what. But with this makeshift family on her hands, can Grace keep pretending she doesn't love Eva?
When Abi Okafor moves to New York to start a job as a makeup artist on a TV series, she is assigned to a highly introverted and quirky actress, Greta Lang. Abi and Greta quickly form an unshakable bond, but Abi, though usually bold, is afraid to act on her romantic feelings for Greta. Makeup artists don't get involved with actresses, do they?Just when they are prepared to admit their feelings for each other, however, tragedy strikes: Greta's plane crashes, leaving her life in the balance. Now Abi must be there for her in more ways than she ever imagined. She is determined that her love for Greta will pull them both through.But Abi is keeping a horrible secret: Greta is the only survivor of the plane crash. Will Greta be able to handle it when she finally finds out?
Abandoned by her mother as a small child, Allie has spent her life trying not to disappoint anyone. She expects little out of relationships, and even in her thirties remains deep in the closet for fear coming out would drive her loved ones away. She spends her time surrounded by books, the only kind of solace that has never let her down.
Her friend Josie, a spontaneous, fun-loving college professor, seems determined to defy Allie's low expectations in life. She persists in finding new ways to brighten Allie's life and reassure her she will always be there, no matter what. Allie can't help falling for her, but she's certain Josie would never feel the same way.
When Allie's mother suddenly turns back up, Allie wants to believe it's an attempt to rekindle their relationship and finally heal her childhood trauma, but Josie suspects there is more to the unexpected contact. Nevertheless, when Allie agrees to make an enormous sacrifice for her mother, Josie promises to see her through it.
Allie finds old wounds reopened as she faces the draining ordeal, but with Josie steadfastly by her side, she begins to wonder if perhaps it is time to come out and try to mend her broken heart.
Five years after the events of Stay, Eva and Grace are happily married and raising their two small daughters, Tori and Nora. Tori, a lively, precocious four-year-old, has no idea she was fathered by a rapist, and her parents plan to keep it that way as long as practical. But when the parents of the deceased offender find out they have a biological grandchild, they sue for custody, sending Eva and Grace into a nightmarish legal battle that brings up terrible memories for Eva. As the two women fight to keep this potentially dangerous couple away from their child, a new threat emerges: Eva is being harassed online by an obsessive stranger.
In the midst of the chaos, Eva and Grace work hard to keep their little family functioning and happy, but they are left wondering: is it possible to live out your dreams without the past haunting you?
Detective Amy Sadler Mysteries
A blend of mystery and romance starring homicide detective Amy Sadler and forensic pathologist Lira Ward
A woman who has been missing for three months is found dead with over 200 tally marks carved into her skin. For Detective Amy Sadler, who is still recovering mentally from a past undercover operation gone wrong, the case is as unsettling as it is frustrating. As more bodies appear with the same tally marks, Amy's only solace from the seemingly unsolvable case is the romance blooming between herself and forensic pathologist Dr. Lira Ward, a beautiful soul with a past even she doesn't understand.
But that solace is shattered when the case collides with their personal lives in a way no one sees coming, and Amy is left wondering if she can salvage what they once had.
Homicide detective Amy Sadler and her new wife, forensic pathologist Lira Ward, are enjoying marital bliss when they are hit with a gruesome new case: someone is killing couples and families, with most of their rage directed at the wives. While trying to solve the case, Amy begins receiving threats from someone within the police department who doesn't seem happy about her marriage to Lira. Amy finds herself desperately trying to uncover who is out to destroy her marriage - because she doesn't want to find out how far they're willing to go.
Homicide Detective Amy Sadler is overjoyed: her wife, forensic pathologist Lira Ward, is pregnant with their first child. Life couldn't be better, although Amy soon finds that impending motherhood has made her a little more sensitive to cases involving children, such as the small girl found at the bottom of a pool.
An investigation into the child's family and possibly not-so-accidental death leads Amy into the twisted world of an isolated country church with extreme ideas, a world of child abuse and subjugated women. Amy's gut tells her there are sinister things happening beneath the church's picture-perfect public image, but proving it is another matter.
Then a man shows up claiming to be Lira's father, and everything Lira thought she knew about herself is turned on its head. Now as Amy struggles to prove her suspicions about the cult-like church before more children are hurt, she must also find a way to protect Lira from her own past.
A body is discovered in the woods, tally marks carved into her skin...
Detective Amy Sadler has seen this before. Amy and her wife, forensic pathologist Lira Sadler, find themselves reliving their worst nightmares are more bodies turn up in imitation of cases they have already solved, cases that are particularly personal for them. At the same time, defaming articles appear about them online, and Lira begins finding strange notes.
All Amy and Lira want is to care for their small daughter, Ruby, and to bring a second child into the world, but all of that seems threatened by someone with a mysterious grudge.
It must be someone they know, but who could hate them this much?
