N. Kathryn Howard's The Stripper Diaries




*The Stripper Diaries* is a comedic, satirical look at the stripper business with underlying messages of living your dreams and finding your passion in life. Four wonderfully flawed females plot to take control over their men and their futures within the comedic confines of the fantasy world they call work. Alex Parker, the wise-cracking protagonist of N. Kathryn Howard's sparkling novel debut, *The Stripper Diaries*, is your ticket into the mysterious but surprisingly entertaining and complex lives of exotic dancers. Alex is a woman who's easy to relate to. She's pushing thirty, dissatisfied with her career and love life, yet unmotivated to do anything about it. One eye-opening day at the prestigious Los Angeles law firm where she works as a paralegal, she takes a long, hard look at the dispassionate existence she has created and finally decides to do something about it. As an entertainer at heart, she elects to tread the glittering road to Hollywood and become an actress. She needs money. She needs time. She needs freedom. Enter a job as a bartender at a strip club, which leads to a six-month stint as an L.A. stripper, with a quick pit stop in Vegas. Dancing is nothing like what Alex expected. Sure, the usual suspects are present: serial perverts, womanizers, drunken gropers. But others are men looking for love in all the wrong places. They're lonely, confused and in desperate need of tell-it-like-it-is conversation with a scantily clad woman looking to fulfill her own destiny. The other dancers? A cast of colorful characters with dreams, drama, dilemmas, and abilities far more complex than their chosen occupation would suggest. As Alex indulges her love of entertaining and develops her own inner passion, a quest to get inside the minds of the aroused male is born. Her habitual analysis of life's lessons and experiences gained throughout these unconventional therapy sessions lead to beliefs that all things are possible and all dreams are reachable, even for those whose workday...begins at the bar.