Opposites Attract Publisher’s Interest : Books: ‘Hank & Chloe’ is generating attention for Mapson, whose first novel is one of the sexiest set in Orange County.

The title characters in “Hank & Chloe,” Jo-Ann Mapson’s gritty and sexy Orange County-set first novel, are an unlikely twosome.

Hank is an untenured professor of folklore and mythology at an unnamed Orange County community college (read Orange Coast). He’s reserved, predictable and, at 42, beginning to feel the twinges of aging: He’s eating “fruit now instead of pastry on his coffee breaks,” tuning into the “quiet stations” on the radio and wondering “when this gradual shifting of gears had occurred.”

Then Hank, who believes “romance died a natural death along with the Industrial Revolution,” meets Chloe.

A part-time horse trainer who works as a waitress at a cafe on Newport Boulevard, Chloe is a tough and independent woman with a past. She’s an orphan who grew up in a succession of foster homes and now lives in a shack without electricity in one of the county’s rustic canyons. At 33, she has an unfailing love for animals--particularly her ailing horse and a German shepherd named Hannah--and a major distrust for men.

This opposites-attract chemistry generates the sparks in “Hank & Chloe” (HarperCollins; $20), which is billed as a contemporary Western romance and which--given what one reviewer calls the plentiful and “enthusiastic bedroom bareback riding”--ranks as the sexiest of the spate of novels set in Orange County.

Publishers Weekly calls “Hank & Chloe,” a Literary Guild alternate which has been condensed in the March issue of Cosmopolitan magazine, “an engrossing, resonant read.”

Library Journal says “this wonderful little book, reminiscent of ‘Murphy’s Romance,’ defies conventional descriptions. In fact, it is so chock full of wisdom, romance, scenery and marvelous animals that the publisher’s tag, contemporary Western romance, seems painfully inadequate.”

Mapson’s fictional love story, which should be available in bookstores by late next week, has an appropriate genesis.

Hank and Chloe first appeared as characters in a short story Mapson wrote as a Christmas present for her husband in 1987 when they were “low on funds and decided to make each other gifts instead of spending money.”

Mapson, 40, said she had long resisted writing about horses and tough women who are “hard to love” because she didn’t think she had enough distance from either subject to make the required leap into fiction: She has been riding horses since she was a kid and, she says, “I come from a family of generations of tough women.”

Before giving the short story to her husband, Mapson read it aloud to her writing critique group, the Fictionaires, and, she said, she could tell from members’ reactions that she was on to something special.

The story, “History of the Branded Heart,” later appeared in the anthology “Women of the West” published by Doubleday. And Hank and Chloe resurfaced in two more stories, which were included in Mapson’s 1989 short-story collection, “Fault Line.”

Intrigued by the prospect of writing about how these two unlikely lovers first came together, Mapson began writing “Hank & Chloe” in 1991 as part of her thesis for her master’s degree in creative writing at Vermont College.

By then she had already written one other unpublished novel, which “almost sold a couple of times.”

In fact, she said, “I guess I was so frustrated about my lack of success with the other novel, I just said I’ll go for broke with this book. I decided I’ll go all-out and write as close to the bone as I can.”

Which is why, she said, “there is so much sex in the book.

“I wanted to do everything that you’re not supposed to do: You’re not supposed to write graphically about sex in a literary mainstream novel. I wanted to write about love in a real comprehensive way. Love is like it’s wonderful and perfume and chocolates and valentines, but it’s also dark and scary and I wanted to write about that too.

“I think when you’re writing any kind of story, there are emotional road blocks within yourself: ‘Oh, my gosh, I can’t say that, someone might be offended by it.’ Or, ‘If I wrote about sex that way I might upset my mother.’ I decided that I wouldn’t have any internal censors in writing this book.”

Mapson said that while working on the novel for her master’s, “I studied with this one man (Francois Camoin); he’s a Frenchman who wrote short fiction. He was great. He said, ‘You have my permission to write about sex anyway you want--just don’t write like an American.’ ”

Meaning, she said, don’t cut the sex scenes at the moment something happens. Don’t write sex scenes that are so disgusting or technical that nobody will be aroused by it. And don’t make the sex gratuitous where the reader thinks, “Oh, come on, let’s get back to the story.”

Mapson, who said she wrote about the characters’ sexual relationship as honestly as she could, acknowledged that “it’s very scary to write about (sex), but it’s also really rewarding when it works.”

Any concerns she had about what her publisher would think of the sex scenes were quickly dispelled.

“They loved it. They told me that right away: ‘We love the sex in this book; don’t take any of it out,’ ” she said, adding that “they were worried that the book I’m writing now wouldn’t have enough sex it it. I assured them it’d have plenty.”

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The novel she’s currently writing is titled “Blue Rodeo,” which is the title of a song written by local rock and roll singer Cat Parker, the late wife of Orange County author T. Jefferson Parker, a fellow member of Mapson’s writing group.

“He told me I could use it,” she said. “It’s a wonderful song, just heartbreakingly wonderful.” Mapson said the new novel, which is set in Orange County and New Mexico, is “another love story,” this time between a woman in her 40s and a man in his 50s.

Mapson, however, will set that aside the first week in April to begin a 12-city tour to promote “Hank & Chloe”

“I can’t believe they’re spending all this money on me,” said the author, who remains a bit awed by the success of her first novel. She already has sold the trade paperback and audio rights, as well as the hardback rights in the United Kingdom.

And, she said with a chuckle, “I have a Hollywood agent now.”

Warren Beatty and Annette Bening are reportedly among the Hollywood “names” who are reading “Hank & Chloe” for possible film translation. Mapson finds “that all very amusing. I don’t take any of that seriously.”

Mapson, who teaches writing at Orange Coast College, prefers not to say how much she’s made off her novel.

“Let me put it this way: The advance is more than I’ve ever made in about 10 years of working part-time jobs. But, conversely, I get to pay more taxes than I’ve ever paid in one year. It’s not enough for me to retire. I’m still a hard-working woman teaching (at the college), and I suspect I’ll always have a part-time job.”

Which makes the debut of her first novel all the more exciting.

“I feel like it’s such a miracle,” she said. “I hope I never get over it feeling like it’s a miracle.”