Tag: lesfic

Sapphic Book Bingo 2022

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Join the Sapphic Book Bingo [Bingo card with boxes arranged in 5x5 grid, each with a heading summarising a particular trope or aspect often found in sapphic books]

I’m about six weeks late with this, but there’s plenty of 2022 still to come, which means that there’s plenty of time still to read books. Plenty of time to take a look at Jae’s Sapphic Book Bingo and mark out a line you might like to fill. There’s still time to fill the whole card, if you’re feeling ambitious.

As ever with Jae’s challenges, there’s a refreshingly wide choice of themes, and my stories fit into quite a few of them. Such as:

  • Speak Its Name is, above all, Lydia’s coming-out story. (It takes her a while to come out even to herself, which was a bit of a challenge when I realised that the whole thing needed to be rewritten and put into her point of view.)
  • It’s also an award-winning book. In fact, it was the first self-published book ever shortlisted for the Betty Trask Prize. Getting shortlisted for the Betty Trask Prize means you automatically win a Betty Trask Award. Will I be forever thrilled to have been shortlisted for the same award as Sarah Waters? Oh yes.
  • I have a few short stories available for free. Find The Mermaid at The Lesbian Historic Motif podcast or Prima Donna at A Story Most Queer (both historical fiction, both podcasts). Or sign up for my newsletter to download Yay or Nay (historical fiction again) or In Little Space (a Christmassy short set between Speak Its Name and The Real World).
  • And you can find Daisy’s Yarn in the new IReadIndies anthology Anything But Romance, free until the end of the month. As you might guess, it’s Not a romance as well as being a free book.
  • Are student politics (Speak Its Name) or the intersection between sexual identity and faith (both Speak Its Name and The Real World) out of your comfort zone? There’s another square for you.
  • As for different sexual orientation or gender identity, Lydia is a lesbian (Speak Its Name is her book) and Colette is bisexual (The Real World is hers, and it’s very, very bi). They’re both cis.
  • They’re an established couple by the time we get to The Real World.
  • I think The Real World is probably my author’s pick. I was flicking through it this morning and thinking that it was worth all the anguish after all.

And if you’re going for the trickier Book Unicorn card, either Speak Its Name or The Real World will of course count for Faith. (You might find some other possibilities on my LGBTQ Christian fiction recommendations post, too.)

There are some that I can’t help you with. I’m too young to have written a sapphic classic, though I’ve read plenty (most recently enjoyed Katherine V. Forrest’s Murder At The Nightwood Bar). I am not a POC author (try Sara Collins, The Confessions of Frannie Langton). Nor am I a newbie (going to have to do some research there). And so forth.

And there are some that are a bit borderline. I’m not sure that I’d count ‘both being rostered to cook baked potatoes’ as a meet-cute, but you might feel differently. (Sadly, my cutest sapphic meet-cute happens in A Spoke in the Wheel, which is not a sapphic book, what with it being narrated by a man and all. But I’ll always have a soft spot for Vicki and Gianna and their background cycling app rivalry meet-cute. Gianna, the silversmith, would be my best shot at an unusual job, too. Oh well.)

If you think one of my books might help you fill a square on your card, you’ll find them, among other places, on Smashwords, where I’m giving a 50% discount to readers playing Sapphic Bingo. Use voucher code TF79U to get the discount.

So that’s it. Have fun. Eyes down.

Weston-Super-Anthology

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Cityscape with several spires and pinnacles poking up into a grey sky

November’s become very busy for me, and I’m not quite sure how it happened. From ‘absolutely nothing’ I’ve suddenly got two or three things in my diary on some weekends. And I’m having to write KEEP FREE in large letters across the other weekends, because otherwise I’ll be an exhausted sobbing mess before we get to Stir-Up Sunday.

One of the events that I’d really have liked to attend had I not already got something in the diary is Weston-Super-Lesfic, which is coming up on 21 November. However, I’ll be there in spirit, in the form of my short story The Sisters’ House, which appears in the Weston-Super-Anthology.

There’s a broad range of forms and genres represented in the anthology. Mine is a fantasy story set in a landscape inspired by the flat ground and watery cities of Flanders. (That’s Ghent in the picture, standing in for my fictional Drakenrey.) There are warrior women, a commune, some ill-advised magic, and a dragon.

I know there are going to be hard copies on sale at the event, raising funds for North Somerset LGBT Forum. I’m not sure whether those will be available more widely. You can, however, get an ebook edition from Amazon.

Two promotional things

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Blue flower with feathery foliage

It is warm! It’s ten to ten at night and I’ve just been out in the garden, watering plants. This photo is from last year; the self-seeded offspring of this love-in-a-mist flower are merrily blooming away without my having done anything about them. That’s my kind of gardening.

In similar vein, I have a couple of book promotion things to mention that have happened without my having done much.

iReadIndies lesfic giveaway

Firstly, iReadIndies.com, a community of independent ff/wlw/lesfic/etc authors are running a giveaway over on Facebook, and The Real World is one of the titles on offer. To be in with a shout, you need to be a member of their Reader Central group; you’ll find the giveaway poll under Announcements.

(Or if you don’t like the odds you could just buy it on Smashwords.)

In all seriousness, iReadIndies is doing some excellent work pulling together a somewhat underrepresented group of writers, and I do recommend taking a look if you’re into books about women loving women.

A Spoke In The Wheel, on sale

Secondly, Amazon seems to be doing that thing it does from time to time and knocking an arbitrary chunk off the price of the paperback of A Spoke In The Wheel. At the time of posting it’s down to £7.12 (from a list price of £10.99). So if you’re after a paperback this is a decent chance to get it at a discount. (They don’t knock it off my cut!)

I should say that I’m rethinking my relationship with Amazon (longer post to come on that in the next few weeks) but it’s too hot for anything drastic. In the meantime, I hope you’re all staying cool and have some good books to read.

Award-winning crossword clue

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Framed certificate with text: 'The Betty Trask Award 2017/Winner/Kathleen Jowitt for Speak Its Name (self-published)/The Society of Authors Prizes/Judges/Simon Brett/Joanne Harris/Michele Roberts'

That cryptic (thank you, thank you, I’m here all week) title refers not an award-winning clue, nor even an award-winning crossword (though you never know), but to Jae‘s F/F Fiction Crossword featuring award-winning WLW & lesbian fiction, which features, among other award-winning books, my first novel, Speak Its Name.

What’s the name of the hall of residence at the University of Stancester where Lydia Hawkins is Christian Fellowship representative?

Well, you can find the answer in the extract on my site, but I thought I’d take this opportunity to talk a little bit about the book (and the award), because I know a lot of readers will very reasonably be reading that clue and thinking ‘what on earth???’ Because, let’s face it, that question (which I drafted) seems like a bit of an unlikely start for a WLW book. And yet there it is, in some excellent lesfic company.

Speak Its Name is (as you see) a university story and (as you can guess) a coming out story. It’s got a bit of romance and a bit of satire. It is, above all, a story about how it’s possible to be more than one thing at once, to claim an identity that might be more complicated than most people assume, about the joy and the tension and the grief of having both a religious faith and a queer identity.

Lydia Hawkins is the main character, and by now you’ve probably guessed that ‘the secrets she tried to keep even from herself’ include her identity as a lesbian. Which I suppose would be a bit of a spoiler, if you hadn’t come here from Jae’s crossword. Anyway, she manages to get her head and her heart around that, but that’s rather less than half the story…

In ‘very good timing’ news, I’ve just released the sequel. In ‘very bad timing’ news, I’ve been hit by a bug that’s kicked all my ebooks off the major retail platforms. I’m trying to get that fixed; in the meantime, you can still get everything in paperback, and the ebooks are available from Lulu.

The award that it won was the 2017 Betty Trask Award. The Betty Trask Prize is awarded every year by the Society of Authors to the best debut by an author under the age of 35. Submissions, it says, have to be in ‘a romantic or traditional style’. Speak Its Name is a bit of both.

I only entered because it was free to do so, and because they accepted self-published books (at least, they didn’t say they didn’t). Being shortlisted was a huge surprise. I was walking with my brother in northern Spain at the time, and had in fact forgotten that I’d even entered my book for the awards. Realising that I was the first self-published author ever to have been shortlisted blew me away completely. I’ve made a tiny piece of literary history, and I’m still immensely proud of that.

The delightful thing about it is that even being on the shortlist gives you a Betty Trask Award and a cheque for £3000 to be spent on foreign travel. (I went Interrailing and enjoyed myself hugely.) And again, I’m in good company. Previous winners include Sarah Waters – who I met at the awards ceremony, and who was absolutely lovely.

I have the certificate hanging on the wall to the right of my desk, and it makes me smile every time I see it. Writing a book is a slog. (So is self-publishing.) If my experience is anything to go by, all the authors on that list of clues will have put a huge amount of work into their books, and will have been delighted to have it recognised.

Good luck with the rest of the crossword clues – and I hope you find many more new authors to enjoy!

Banner showing a golden cup and text 'Award-winning WLW & Lesbian Fiction'

Two historical f/f fiction podcasts

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isle-of-wight-coastal-path-looking-west-from-blackgang_7863516926_o

If you like having other people read you historical f/f fiction written by me, November was the month to do it. I don’t think there was any particular reason why it was November; it just worked out that way. But, because the internet is, if not forever, at least reasonably long-lasting, you can still listen to two podcasts featuring stories that I wrote:

  • Prima Donna featured on A Story Most Queer a couple of weeks ago:

Everybody knows why the great Signora Valli left the Licorne opera company. Everybody, that is, except Monsieur Perret, who has taken the brave—some would say, foolish—decision to cast her opposite rising star Delphine Vincent-Leclerc in Rossini’s Tancredi. But what everybody knows is only half the story.

It’s narrated by Julia Rittenberg and you can listen to it here (34 minutes). The story also appears in the anthology Upstaged from Supposed Crimes.

  • The Mermaid was the last of this year’s Lesbian Historical Motif Podcast fiction series:

Salvaging shipwrecks on the coast of the Isle of Wight in the eighteenth century can lead to unexpected treasure.

It’s narrated by Heather Rose Jones and you can listen to it here (18 minutes). You can also read a transcript here.

I’ve always been a bit hesitant about attempting historical fiction: so much to get wrong! So much more research! I don’t know whether I’d ever have the guts to attempt a full-length novel. At any rate, in both of these stories I found a way in through that old chestnut write what you know.

With Prima Donna, what I know is what it’s like to be an alto, to come to terms with the fact that even if you get really good (I never got really good, and also I have the acting ability of the average house brick) you’ll never get the biggest bouquets. It’s also the reading I did about the time when that wasn’t the case: the first few decades of the nineteenth century, when the castrati were dying out and the heroic roles that they had previously sung were now going to female singers. (Actually, those weren’t necessarily altos, either.) Signora Valli is one of those versatile sopranos who could play either hero or heroine. Delphine represents the new order (soprano heroine, tenor hero, villainous bass, and any other women relegated to confidante or crone) – or does she?

(I recommend Voicing Gender by Naomi André, by the way, if you want to know more about this period of opera – and you feel up to some fairly impenetrable academicese.)

Prima Donna

As for The Mermaid, what I know is the south coast of the Isle of Wight, the way that you don’t really trust the sea even on a calm day, the stories of wrecks and wreckers. This is a coast I’ve walked – except it isn’t, because the cliffs that Alice knows in my story will have long since crumbled into the sea. This is the Island before the tourists, before Queen Victoria, before Keats. This is the south west coast before the Napoleonic Wars prompted the construction of the Military Road, when it was even more remote from the rest of the Island, and anything could happen…

The Mermaid

Fall In Love: autumn sale at I Heart Lesfic

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FallinLove_Sep10-14__Wordpress

A heads up for fans of f/f fiction: I Heart Lesfic is hosting a very large sale over the next few days. There are over one hundred books up there, by more than sixty authors. Enjoy!

The eagle-eyed will notice that none of those authors is me. This is because Amazon refuses to recognise that I set Speak Its Name to free (in ebook form, at least) several weeks ago. Lulu, Kobo, the iBookstore and Barnes & Noble have all caught on, though, so help yourself. (And if you’re dithering, here’s a recent review to help you make up your mind.)