amreading – A. L. Lester

#RAtR: Seasonal Reads, yes or no?

Read Around the Rainbow

As you’re probably aware, #RAtR is a blogging project I am doing with a few friends who also write LGBTQIA romance. You can find everyone by clicking here or on the image to the right.

Morning! We had a quite a long rambling discussion about this topic when we were discussing what to write this month. It turns out the group is firmly divided in to “I love seasonal reads!” and “I hate seasonal reads!”.

I’m pretty firmly in the latter group; except when I started actually thinking about it, it’s more that I usually avoid stories about Christmas. This dovetails nicely with my not-much-liking-Christmas-generally thing, so I feel I understand myself better now 😊.

Summer reads though…are they books set in the summer? Or books you are supposed to read whilst lying on the beach?

I never do the latter and although I’m sat in my conservatory looking out at the garden, this British July day is full of grey drizzle, so to get in to a proper summer mood I would need to be reading something where the main characters are wearing waders and sou’westers.

I think it’s the flavour of the book that makes something reminiscent of a particular season for me. Cider With Rosie by Laurie Lee will forever be associated for me with the summer of my O-Levels where we studied it for English Lit. But also for the scene where he talks about the women bringing the men their dinner out to the fields and sitting and eating with them; and hanging the stone cider flagons in the stream before they started work to cool them down for dinner time. I don’t know why that resonated so strongly for me. But it did. I can’t remember that happening, although I can remember playing in and out of the rows of drying hay as a child—the smell, the feel of the sun on your skin, that sense of freedom—that’s the essence of summer for me.

Perhaps that’s why I find it hard to make a list of books in the queer romance genre that I can put on a summer reads list? I like my romance with some angst, generally speaking. And angst tends not to vibe with long summer evenings and swifts dipping low over the river. Although perhaps I should see that as a challenge and try and write one. You could try Taking Stock, I guess? That does have kissing by the not-quite-magical pool and sun dappling the sheep shearers through the chestnut trees and lots and lots of angst, because Laurie has had a stroke and can’t farm his own farm any more; and Phil has been set up by his ex-boyfriend to take the fall for fraud.

I’m much happier with Halloween, which seems to be the next thing in the calendar people write around. I like Gregory Ashe’s DuPage Parish Mysteries, which are satisfactorily creepy but also funny in Ashe’s inimitable style. Wendigos, anyone? I’m also keen on The Pumpkin Patch by Darien Cox and Kade Boeme, which is the only time I’ve ever voluntarily picked up something I knew to be a Halloween story before I read it, largely because the cover is smothered in pumpkins! It’s still a murder-mystery, which is why I like it. Darien Cox is an auto-buy for me, which is what overcame what I like to think of my natural reticence to engage with what’s mostly a US-ian holiday :). I’ve also got my own sapphic Sleeping Dogs, which is a short story based on the Celtic myth of black dogs. It seemed like Halloween was a good time to release something creepy. It’s just come out of KU and should be making its way wide in the next couple of weeks.

As far as Christmas is concerned. Well. Don’t get me started. I hate the drama around the whole season! And I just don’t get the whole Christmas in July thing. However, as far as Christmas-themed stories go, I make an exception for Miss Claus by J. R. Hart, which is a lovely story of Santa Claus’ daughter which also happens to have excellent trans rep. Plus…who can forget Masters in This Hall by K. J. Charles, the third in the Lilywhite Boys series? If light-fingered thieves and fake-medieval Christmases are your thing, I recommend. And also… my own sapphic Surfacing Again is set over Christmas on the island of Lindisfarne. It’s kind of sad? But also it has a happy ending. And otters.

I hope that gives you something to get your teeth in to. I’m looking forward to reading my colleague’s recommendations for their ultimate summer reads and I’d love to hear your own favourites.

To read what my Read Around the Rainbow colleagues have written about seasonal reads, click through below!

Nell Iris : Ofelia Grand : Lillian Francis : Fiona Glass : Amy Spector : Ellie Thomas : Holly Day : K. L. Noone : Addison Albright

RAtR: As a reader, what’s more important to you, the story itself or the way it’s told?

I’m late to this one as Mr AL and I are trying, for the fifth time in twelve months, to have a holiday that doesn’t end in rearranging because we got COVID (May22), me turning yellow with Gallbladder issues (Also May 22) or flying home because Littlest is admitted to intensive care (Oct 22 and Jan 23). So far we are on day #3 and we’re good, though, so I feel I can turn my concentration to the topic!

For me, I think my enjoyment of a story is a mixture of plot and presentation. I could end the post very satisfactorily there and leave you hanging :). However for example… I will forgive eg proofing errors and awkward grammar if the plot is sufficiently gripping. I find it hard to read through those and concentrate on the story if it’s not got me by the heart. And clunky plotting is going to stop me reading even if the prose is lyrical in of itself. So I guess we conclude that plot is more important for me.

I’m not going to give examples of books I haven’t got on with, because that’s mean and there’s a strong personal preference involved. However, I’ve got some other preferences in my reading that I occasionally get completely turned around by and then question my whole self :).

For example…I would say I don’t usually like stories written in the first person. But I LOVE S. E. Harmon’s Spookology series. And Shattered Glass by Dani Alexander. And the Dalí series by E. M. Hamill. They are all extremely well told.

And I would say I don’t like stories with neo-pronouns because my brain just has a sort of wobble and takes ages to process them, despite being quite happy using them IRL. However, I’m just re-reading Foz Meadows A Strange and Stubborn Endurance and I love it. And of course, there’s The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula Le Guin, which is one of my desert island books.

And I don’t like Epistolary novels, which is ironic given I’m maybe writing one ATM and also that I love A Land So Wild by Elyssa Warkentin.

So… I think we can say it’s all about the story itself for me.

Finally, here’s an image of my current view.

If you’d like to read what the other members of the webring are writing about this month, for now please click on the #RAtR link on the right and follow the links to their blogs. I’m writing on my phone and adding all the links is a bit beyond me right now, although I’ll have another go later on.

#RAtR: My three favourite non-romance books

Read Around the Rainbow

As you’re probably aware, #RAtR is a blogging project I am doing with a few friends who also write LGBTQIA romance. You can find everyone by clicking here or on the image to the right.

I missed August’s topic because I’m still convalescing from what I think I have to say is the absolute worst summer I’ve ever had, including the one where we went bankrupt, lost our house three weeks before our baby was due, my dad and two good friends died and Mr AL’s parents went bonkers.

HOWEVER. It was a good topic and I am feeling incrementally better each day. I’m thoroughly enjoying not having a gallbladder. I recommend it. For your delectation therefore, may I present you with my three favourite non-romance books?

I’ve pulled the covers of my own editions from Goodreads, but all of them have a lot of alternatives. I read sci-fi and historicals, basically!

The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula Le Guin

This was transformative for me. Firstly because LeGuin’s writing is so lyrical. And secondly because of her portrayal of a society where people are of both/neither gender. The book is part of her Hainish universe and I devoured them all, repeatedly, via the travelling library that visited my family farm during my teenage years.

Although her books are hard sci-fi, they are very people-centred. She examined the classic what would happen to society if I changed these one or two things? question again and again in her stories, perfectly.

Genly Ai is an emissary from the human galaxy to Winter, a lost, stray world. His mission is to bring the planet back into the fold of an evolving galactic civilization, but to do so he must bridge the gulf between his own culture and prejudices and those that he encounters. On a planet where people are of no gender–or both–this is a broad gulf indeed.

The Lymond Books by Dorothy Dunnett (blatant cheat, there are six)

Another series I owe the travelling library! I graduated to Dorothy Dunnett via Jean Plaidy when I was about thirteen or fourteen. Dunnett was a historian and her work reflects that…her portrayal of sixteenth century Europe and the Ottoman and Russian empires are absorbing and detailed and her characters step off the page and haunt you. I can remember reading Pawn in Frankincense in the common room at breaktime at school and being in tears.

The “Lymond Chronicles” is a series of six novels exploring the intricacies of 16th-century history through the exploits of the soldier Francis Crawford of Lymond.

A Deepness in the Sky by Verner Vinge

It was a toss-up between this one and Vinge’s A Fire Upon the Deep, which has the best alien life-form ever–they are distributed systems made up of puppies.

However, this one is the prequel so it slipped in by a fine hair. I’m not going to tell you what the aliens are like, because that would entirely spoil it for you. But they are fantastic. Their planet circles a star that switches on and off (and we’re left with the possibility it might be artificial) and the whole ecosystem is wired around that, including the intelligent lifeforms. There are two groups of humans who are fighting it out in orbit around the planet for trading rights with the first alien species they’ve discovered. And the aliens are also involved in what’s basically a planet-side foreverwar.

After thousands of years searching, humans stand on the verge of first contact with an alien race. Two human groups: the Qeng Ho, a culture of free traders, and the Emergents, a ruthless society based on the technological enslavement of minds.

The group that opens trade with the aliens will reap unimaginable riches. But first, both groups must wait at the aliens’ very doorstep for their strange star to relight and for their planet to reawaken, as it does every two hundred and fifty years….

Then, following terrible treachery, the Qeng Ho must fight for their freedom and for the lives of the unsuspecting innocents on the planet below, while the aliens themselves play a role unsuspected by the Qeng Ho and Emergents alike.

For my fellow #RAtR bloggers posts about their favourite non-romances, follow these links:

Ofelia Gränd :: K.L. Noone :: Amy Spector :: Addison Albright :: Fiona Glass :: Ellie Thomas :: Lillian Francis : Nell Iris

#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.

#AmReading

This week I’m all about the gay. A contemporary MM, To Take a Quiet Breath by Fearne Hill, a fantasy YA with a queer background romance (or is it NA? I’m never sure, I am neither and it was right in my ballpark, regardless) Fragile Remedy by Maria Ingrande Mora and a fantasy MM with dragon shifters, The Dragon Hunter’s Son by Hanna Dare.

To Take a Quiet Breath by Fearne Hill

I have a secret yen for books with ex-cons-gone-straight MCs and this fulfilled it perfectly. Guillaume killed a man who was abusing his younger sister and has done his time. He is befriended by Marcel, a high-up in the government department responsible for prisons, when Marcel meets him on an information-gathering exercise. Marcel is a chronic asthmatic and this is so well represented in this book. Stories with good disabled rep are another not-so-secret yen of mine. Disabled people are entitled to happy endings too.

This is perfectly realised in this story–the author doesn’t paper over the difficulties and challenges Marcel faces, but they don’t rule out his desire for (and right to!) love and intimacy. It’s book three of a series and I haven’t read the others yet, but I’m going to. I really enjoyed this.

Fragile Remedy by Maria Ingrande Mora

This is a YA dystopian. The main character is Nate, who is sixteen. He’s also genetically engineered and needs the eponymous ‘remedy’ at regular intervals to prevent his body breaking down. This is hard to get hold of, as he lives in the lawless slum he escaped to as a young child to avoid being harvested for his organs.

This has everything you want from your dystopian read. Brilliant characterisation, a gritty plot and an interesting social set-up. The cast is a racially diverse queer found family with good trans rep. It’s plot-heavy with a background romance that chugs along nicely. Highly recommend!

The Dragon Hunter’s Son by Hanna Dare

I’m a Hannah Dare fan from her Mind-Metal-Machine series, so I was predisposed to like this one from the start. It’s about Philip, who is the son of Jaxon the dragon hunter. Jaxon is, quite frankly, a jerk. I hated him. We’re supposed to hate him, so that’s okay–the author has done a brilliant job making that possible! Philip is kind and a bit bewildered by life, but toddles along behind his father because that’s what his dying mother asked him to do. He falls for Ejoler when they stop at a town Jaxon rid of a dragon decades ago. Ejoler is, of course, a dragon.

This was such a lovely take on the shifter trope. It’s a sweet low-heat romance and I thought Ejoler was wonderful, particularly his take on gathering jewels and precious things. It’s a lovely low-drama comfort read and I recommend it.

That’s the lot for this time!