#WritersLife – Page 2

#AMA: Genres and Rainbow Representation

This week’s Ask Me Anything…You write both M/M and F/F. How are these two genres or markets different? And what are your top 5 book recommendations in each?

I guess firstly I don’t think of myself writing M/M or F/F per se. I think about myself as writing ‘queer romance’. I know that’s a pretty technical difference; but it does affect how I market my books. Some authors I know have different pen-names for the different romantic pairings or genres they write in; but I made a conscious decision that a) it would be too complicated for my chaotic self to maintain and b) it would make it more difficult for me to actually write. The reasons for a) are self-evident; and b) is because of my particular process I think.

Certainly historically I haven’t been a plotter. I do plot more now…I often begin a story by writing a blurb. I then move on to character sketches and perhaps location sketches. It’s all a bit free-form though and I’m not very good at sticking within the lines I’ve drawn for myself. I like to have the freedom to shoot off in a different direction if a plot idea comes to me or a character seems to require that. I sometimes begin with the idea that someone is one gender/sexuality and as the story unfurls it becomes obvious to me that they are different from the way I initially imagined them. Walter from The Quid Pro Quo is a case in point. Initially he was trans; and then I hit a historical issue with him being in the army on the cusp of the 20^th century where he’d have found it hard to have remained undiscovered. So I tried very, very hard to make him cis. But he wouldn’t have it and I had to fudge the whole joining-the-army thing to accommodate him.

Author wisdom has it that M/M readers are voracious consumers who spend a lot of time in KU; and that F/F readers are hard to win over but loyal once you have. I honestly don’t think I have enough experience to be able to comment on either of those things; but I do know that I don’t feel I fit precisely in to either of those categories. I do use the letters as a shorthand for readers to know about my characters at first glance; but I prefer to call my books with M/M pairings ‘gay romance’ rather than M/M romance. I don’t feel they are high heat enough to be ‘proper’ M/M if that makes sense?

I try and pitch my books as being about LGBTQIA people rather than any particular stripe of the rainbow and I do think that affects the way readers perceive them, and probably me as a writer too. I have a free story for subscribers who join my newsletter and to begin with that was a M/M offering. Last year I changed that to be a poly story with sapphic/non-binary and M/M relationships as I felt that better reflected my catalogue. I think it gives people who don’t know me a better idea of what they are going to find in my books and that can only be good.

I know not everyone likes to read and write across gender and sexuality pairings but it’s what I’m happy writing and that’s really important to me. Being true to my own identity is something I came to quite late and I am very conscious of it, although I have no truck with the idea that one can only write characters and genders from personal experience. It’s perfectly possible to write any character you want to, the only responsibility you have is to do it well. I like the variety that brings to my work and I guess identifying as non-binary, pan and grey-ace, I sit firmly in the meh, whatevs part of the spectrum. It’s nice to be able to write from and about different perspectives.

So this is where I sit and why, I guess!

Instead of answering the second question about my favourite books in the M/M and F/F genres, here are fifteen books I rate with LGBTQIA main characters and they are all excellent. They are in alphabetical order by title and are mix of different identities. Some of them I’ve blogged about in my #AmReading posts over the last few months, but I do hope you find something new here!

If you have an #AskMeAnything question, do drop me an email or pop in to Lester Towers to ask.

#AMA: Dinner and a Show

Today’s #AMA question comes from Liz Welch: Which of your characters would you most like to have dinner with, and why? And what would they make for you to eat?

I thought this would be an easy one to write about and actually I’ve sat here for ages thinking about it. There are so many characters and so many different things we could talk about over a meal.

Finally though, I’ve come to a conclusion. I’m going for Rob and Matty from Inheritance of Shadows.

Character Sketch of Rob & Matty from Inheritance of Shadows

Webber’s Farm

Sitting with Rob and Matty at the scrubbed wooden table on the battered oak chairs in the kitchen at Webber’s Farm would definitely be my first choice. Rob would cook something like sausages and mash. Straightforward, plain food. The range would be fired up hot to cook on and the kitchen would be warm and cosy.

We’d eat with our elbows on the table and to follow, because it would be Saturday and no-one had to rush back out to work afterwards, we’d have big slabs of the fruitcake Anne Beelock had baked that morning along with slices of sharp cheddar from the larder, and drink cups of tea out of the cups and saucers with roses round the rim—Matty would have got out his mother’s china for my visit—and talk about how the cattle were doing and whether the harvest was going to be a good one this year.

The Webber’s of my mind is a dim, warm, welcoming place, with slightly fraying thatch and a muddy track with the pot-holes filled in as and when they’re needed. It has a yard surrounded by low, ancient barns filled with machinery dating back a couple of hundred years, dusted with the red soil of the hills. The back door is always ajar to let the dogs in and out and the kettle is always almost-boiling on the range.
As you knock on the door and go on in—the back door, no-one uses the front unless it’s a wedding or a funeral, or they’re a stranger—Rob looks up from the kitchen table where he’s standing next to a pile of potatoes, peering down at the newspaper he’s supposed to be using to peel them on, wire-framed glasses perched incongruously on the bridge of his nose.
“Ah,” he says. “It’s you. There’s tea in the pot.” And he looks down again to finish whatever he’s reading. Something about the football, probably.
“Where’s Matty?” you ask him, poking at the kettle.
“Gone to town,” he says, taking off his glasses and folding them carefully in to their case beside him on the table. “Picking up the seed potatoes.”
“Oh, yes, it’s Saturday,” you say.
“Nothing for the market today,” Rob tells you, to explain why he’s at home and Matty’s gone by himself. “And I needed to get on with one or two things here. He’ll be back shortly though. Are you staying for dinner? He was going to the butcher. Sausages.” He grins and raises his eyebrows. He’s a big fan of sausages.
“That would be lovely, if you have enough,” you say. “Shall I help you peel the potatoes?” You gesture to the pile.
“No, no,” he says. “You sit down and pour us some tea and I’ll get on with this. There’s no rush. I just thought I’d get it done. Annie’s gone off to see her sister.”
So you sit and make small-talk. Nothing big. Nothing of moment. Who’s working where. Who’s walking out with who. Whether Flo the big plough horse is in foal or not.
And when Matty comes home it’s more of the same, all through the meal and into the afternoon.

That’s what I like about Webber’s and the stories I’ve set there. Both Inheritance and Taking Stock are about people finding a home. Inheritance has a paranormal element. But it’s still mostly about both Matty and Rob finding a way to be happy with themselves and exploring how they might fit together. I guess in these troubled times I need that security and if I can only get it by going back fifty or a hundred years then so be it!

Rob is the most reassuring of my characters I think. He’s so steady. You’re not going to get cordon-bleu cuisine or conversation about philosophy with your meal. But you’ll get nourishing, comforting food, insightful local gossip and some national political discussion. And maybe a bit of chat about what he’s been reading. He likes to read, but not a lot of fiction—biographies, that sort of thing.

Callum has narrated Inheritance of Shadows for me. You can listen to the first (long) chapter for free at Bookfunnel and hear his interpretation of Rob and Matty. I love them both, he’s got them exactly as I pictured them—Rob’s depth and steadiness really come through.

I hope this answer’s Liz’s question! I’m really enjoying having these thrown at me and I hope you’re enjoying reading them. If you’d like the chance to ask me something yourself, please pop in to my Facebook Group or join my newsletter–I will be regularly asking for questions!

Thanks for reading!

Read around the Rainbow: What’s your ideal Writing Shack?

Welcome to the first Read Around The Rainbow! A few of us have got together to write about the same topic once a month on the same day and I hope you’ll visit some more of the people in the webring—I’m including links to everyone else’s posts at the bottom of this one; and just click on the image to see who we are and for the links to our websites.

This month we’re all writing about our ideal writing shack.

I should confess before I begin that I do, actually, have a writing shack at the bottom of my garden. Here’s a picture! It’s got electric and wifi and in theory it means I can retreat away to commune with my muse. However, it’s also a long way from the kettle and the last two summers the garden has got away from me and I’d have needed a machete to get to it. Also…when the kids are home I need to be in the house and when the kids aren’t at home, I don’t need a writing shack! Perhaps this year I’ll manage to use it a bit more frequently in the summer when the family are out in the garden.

I’m very much a proponent of not wishing for things you can’t have…so my ideal writing shack is a bit nebulous and there’s a lot of crossover with my ideal place to live.

view through door in wooden cottage — Photo by Marina Leonova on Pexels.com

Ideally then… I’d like a small strawbale-built cottage, please. There would be a south-facing veranda, glassed in for the winter and with doors and windows that open wide in warm weather. It would be located in low rolling hills in a forest or wood, with wildish garden with a pond that I could sit and gaze at when I was thinking what to write. In spring there would be a riot of wild flowers in the surrounding woodland and I’d be able to walk to clear my head.

I’ve done a lot of the off-grid thing and I’m too old to be chopping wood for heating and cooking these days; so I’m afraid I’d need to be connected to the grid, although I’d have a woodburning stove I could also cook on in the winter. It would, I’m afraid, have very high-speed internet. But it would only be connected to the physical world by a long bumpy track only navigable carefully by people who really wanted to visit. My groceries would be delivered to the end of the track weekly and I’d go and wait for the delivery person with my donkey-cart. Did I mention I’d have a couple of donkeys? Or maybe elderly ponies.

cozy fireplace in light minimalist living room — Photo by Rachel Claire on Pexels.com

And it would have a desk on the veranda where I’d work. And also one in the living room by the fire for writing in the early morning or evening. It would have comfortable couches and a wing chair with a footstool for when I wanted to sit in comfort with my legs up and the laptop on my knee. I would write a couple of thousand words every day and I’d have time to meditate and do a bit of walking in my wonderful woods and sleep in the extra-comfortable bed I forgot to mention earlier!

Also, there would be a biscuit jar with an infinite supply of biscuits and a very large tea-pot.

I think reading this back, actually, my ideal writing shack is very much like where I live now…it’s just time, life-stressors and the lack of a magic biscuit jar that are an issue!

#AMA: Resonating with your characters

This time’s topic is a question from Fee. Which of your characters, if any, do you resonate with most?

I suppose the easiest way to fudge this is to say well there’s something of myself in all my characters and be all highbrow about it. However, there are definitely characters I resonate with more than others. It tends to be the people who are lost that I find I chime with most, or the people who are unhappy with themselves. What does that say about me? I don’t know*. None of my characters are me, but a few of them have quite a few elements of me in them…so, I’m going to pick two. Laurie from Taking Stock and Walter from The Quid Pro Quo.

Laurie from Taking Stock

Laurie Henshaw, farmer. Recovering from a stroke. Age 33. Brown hair, brown eyes, sheepdogs Nell and Fly. Came to Webber's Farm in 1954. Taking Stock.

Laurie is in his mid-thirties and has had a stroke, which means he can’t work his own farm any more. Yeah, okay, I wrote this just after my Mama had her stroke, but actually Laurie’s emotions and feelings of powerlessness are right out of the Ally Lester Playbook. My own chronic disability is a seizure disorder paired with fibromyalgia and I loathe not being able to drive, or even go shopping alone in case I keel over. I hate not being able to have animals any more—I use to run the egg stall at the local farmers market and teach poultry-keeping courses and generally heave bags of animal feed and animals and animal housing around and I am now dependent on Mr AL and Talking Child to even take care of the handful of hens we keep ourselves. I put a lot of that frustration into Laurie—his feeling of losing his livelihood and his anger at the universe and I think it comes through. Bits of him were very therapeutic to write and bits of him were very upsetting.

Walter from The Quid Pro Quo

The same with Walter. Walter’s happy enough. He’s got his friends and his work and his travelogues. But he’s hiding his big secret from the world and no-one but his very closest friends know it. So he keeps that bit of distance from everyone else to protect himself. I am not out as non-binary or pan to the little village I live in. Some people know—I don’t make a secret of it exactly, but it’s not something that comes up in the village jubilee committee meetings. I present as a short, round, grumpy, middle-aged, straight married lady. And so I feel quite a bit of kinship with Walter. He’s short, soft around the middle and a bit grumpy…and he hides his gender and sexuality. It’s not the same. But there’s elements of me in there and that resonates.

Walter Kennet. Born 1880, East End of London. Profession, army nurse (orderly). Smokes a pipe. Appearance. Small, running a little bit to fat, dark brown hair and eyes, London accent. Personality, sarcastic, loyal, competent. Pansexual, transgender. Can cook. Reads travelogues for pleasure. The Quid Pro Quo.

The fact I was able to give both characters happy endings means a lot to me. A lot of what I write is about people finding a home in other people—found family as well as a romantic happy ending—and I guess that’s what I desire for myself. I do have a large and supportive family of choice, so I draw from that in the real world and hope my characters can have that too. But these characters also carry the sense of dislocation I still sometimes feel when the world gets out of whack and that also makes them close to my heart.

Thank you, Fee, for asking the question and making me think about it!

*Dear Reader, ALLY DOES KNOW

#TheWeekThatWas

Right then…it’s been a while and this is a bit of a rambling personal post to get myself back in to the swing of things.

patio table and chair set on a garden — Photo by Deeana Arts on Pexels.com

I stopped blogging over Christmas because I thought I’d have a break—things were a bit tough with the kids and my mental health wasn’t great. And then…my mental health still wasn’t great and there we were in January. And then I got a bit anxious about not having posted…so here we are in February!

I pushed back the release of the third Bradfield village novel to try to take some weight off; instead my March release (on the 26^th) will be Out of Focus, a twenty-thousand word contemporary novella set in a theatre community in Wales. I think I might revisit some of the secondary characters at some point, I enjoyed writing it so much.

At the moment I’m working on a project for May with Ofelia Grand, Nell Iris, K. L. Noone and Amy Spector. We are all writing short stories/novellas for World Naked Gardening Day.

It began as a bit of a joke…Ofelia’s other pen name is Holly Day, and she writes stories to celebrate different days all through the year. (Her latest release is The Wingman, a 11,000 word short story to mark National Wingman Day on 13^th February!)

She and Nell and I were laughing about there being a day for everything in our early-morning writing session one morning and eventually we decided it would be fun to write something together. We are all writing stories of between fifteen and twenty thousand words that will be released on 7^th May. Each one features…you guessed it…naked gardening in some way. I’m about half way through and hope to be finished in the next week or so.

I may revisit Bradfield then; or I may write something else first. I needed a palate-cleanser I think. It all felt very heavy and difficult and once I made the decision to put it down for a while I felt quite a bit better.

This is a something-and-nothing blog post in a way, just to get back on the horse. Those of you who follow my newsletter or facebook group will know that Littlest has had a mild dose of covid this week. It’s been a bit stressful because she’s clinically extremely vulnerable and we panicked when she got the two lines last Friday. We spent last weekend trying to sort out antibodies for her—we had a letter saying she was eligible for the treatment when it became available a few months ago. However, it turns out that you need to be over forty kilos and she is only thirty four, so we needn’t have wasted our time and everyone else’s. She’s okay now though, a week on. Asymptomatic, just very, very tired.

The rest of us have been testing consistently negative, but both Mr AL and I have had what could be mild symptoms. It’s only the last couple of days that I’ve felt like a human again.

So…to round off! I’ll be blogging regularly from now on (they said, very firmly). AND finally…JMS Books has a 40% Valentine’s Day Sale on ebooks, Friday through to Monday!

Valentine's Day Sale, 40% off all ebooks at JMS Books.

Category: #WritersLife