Flat-Out Love

A tale about profound pain, naked vulnerability, and familial love and dysfunction, Flat-Out Love is warm and humorous with a dash of mystery and one amazing, knee-jerk romance.

What counts isn't what you know or when you see it. It centres on a voyage.

There's a major problem at the Watkins house. And Julie Seagle, the newest occupant of this Boston home, a college student from a little Ohio town, is committed to finding the truth. Julie receives an invitation to move in with Erin Watkins, her mother's former college flatmate, after her plans to live off campus fall through. Erin and Roger, the parents, are hospitable but emotionally aloof and excessively focused on their studies. Matt, the middle kid, is a computer genius from MIT with a sweet side and the social skills of a USB cable spool. Celeste, the youngest, is a 13-year-old who is very intelligent but also quite meticulous. She carries a life-sized cardboard replica of her older brother with her practically everywhere.

Finn, the eldest brother, is a charming, intelligent, handsome, sensitive, and almost emotionally open person. Regarding location? Undoubtedly not accessible. Finn is now on the road and only appears in emails, status updates, and sporadic Facebook conversations. He soon finds himself igniting something emotional, humorous, and maybe even a little bit erotic in Julie's newly lonely soul via late-night exchanges of disembodied text.

Julie believes that the emotionally unstable Watkins family members add up to something that, well, doesn't quite add up. She doesn't get her response until she pushes a long-kept secret to the surface, sparking a violent altercation that might split the already precarious Watkins family apart.

Flat-Out Love includes instant messaging, Facebook status updates, and emails.