amwriting – Page 2 – A. L. Lester

#RAtR: What were your characters like as teenagers?

This month’s topic for Read Around the Rainbow is another brainchild of Addison Albright! As some of you already know, #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, and I will link to everyone’s post on this month’s topic at the bottom of this page.

This month, we have chosen to pick a character and write about what they were like as teenagers. I’ve chosen to write about Kevin from As the Crows Fly.

Kevin is a veterinarian–I keep having to remember to write the word out in full as in the UK we usually shorten it to vet and I think in the US that’s more commonly used for a military veteran!–and he’s also an artist. He lives on the edge of the sea in Wales and he has befriended a murder of crows, one of which lives in the house with him.

That’s pretty eccentric, right?

When I was writing the story I didn’t work up a back-story for him, he more or less sprang fully formed from my pen/keyboard/fingers. I very rarely do a lot more than an an initial sketch for my characters anyway; any back-story usually develops as I go along. For longer length stories I usually have quite a good feel for where they’ve come from by the time I’ve finished writing. It’s not so usual for me to have that relationship with the characters in my shorter stories and it’s only now I’ve sat down and thought about it hard that I’ve worked out what Kevin might have been like in his last few years at school.

I think Kevin probably wasn’t out at school. But he wasn’t closeted either if that makes sense. He was one of the nerdy kids who concentrated on his results and getting into uni so he could follow the career path he was set on. He was very conscious that if he tanked his grades it would be much more complicated for him to get where he wanted to go.

He was also working really hard at the weekends and in the school holidays, helping at the local veterinarian so he built up relevant experience. And when he wasn’t working he spent time drawing. It was a kind of chill-out thing for him and it began when he started sketching the animals at work.

He had friends; but he didn’t have much time to hang out with them because he had so much else going on. He’s always been a bit of a loner. Not a lonely person, but just as happy with his own company and those of his animals as with people he likes.

Apologies that this is a really short post from me this month…I only got back from holiday on Monday and so far, today being Thursday, I have had two zoom meetings, one in person meeting and…erm…about eight sizeable phone-calls from various professionals about one or other of the children. I’m finding it very hard to get in back in to a post-holiday routine, let alone a blogging routine, but I’m hoping next week will be a bit less mad!

As always, to catch up with the character sketches of my Read Around the Rainbow colleagues check out their blogs here: K. L. Noone, Addison Albright, Nell Iris, Ofelia Grand, Holly Day, Fiona Glass, Ellie Thomas, Lillian Francis, Amy Spector.

Read Around the Rainbow. Writers and bloggers of LGBTQIA+ Romance.

#RAtR: Weird Internet Searches

This month’s topic for Read Around the Rainbow is the brainchild of Addison Albright—and I’m really looking forward to her post revealing whatever prompted this suggestion! As some of you already know, #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, and I will link to everyone’s post on this month’s topic at the bottom of this page.

So. My weirdest internet search? For this question, I usually talk about researching butter lamps for The Flowers of Time and making my own butter from scratch and then rendering it to ghee and making a lamp in a jam-jar with a bit of string. I got a bit obsessed. I’ve downgraded that particular search to ‘only mildly obsessive’ over the last few years though, as things have moved on!

photo of brown metal cage with lighted candle — Photo by Craig Adderley on Pexels.com

I’m pretty sure that everyone who writes about murder or death has a disturbing search history story; and for The Quid Pro Quo I joined the team. I researched what a body would look like after being submerged for twenty four hours. I don’t recommend googling this for fun—I can still see some of the images in the articles I read and it was deeply unpleasant and upsetting.

When I’m researching things I know nothing about I find it very easy to get sucked into a rabbit-hole where I spend an unnecessary amount of time on subjects that are only going to be mentioned in passing in the story. I need to get the background straight in my head in order to be able to drop a couple of colourful details in there. If it’s something I know a bit about already, even if that’s only incidental knowledge, it’s much easier to know what it is I don’t know, if that makes sense?

For example, Out of Focus is set in the world of contemporary theatre. I know quite a bit about how the technical side of that works and I knew what I didn’t know…I went off and found out about scissor lifts and health and safety regulations and it took me a couple of hours. In contrast I spent two days searching and reading up on how eighteenth century women dealt with menstruation for The Flowers of Time—not because it featured in the story particularly, but just because I felt as if it was something that would impact my characters even if I never mentioned it.

I think that’s partly why I’ve set seven books in the post-WW1 period now. I’ve done my research and I feel confident with the background colour of the era. Yes, okay, I have to toddle off and read up on what treatment you’d use for migraine, or whether medicals were required by then to join the army. But I’ve got all the building bricks in place, I know where to find the resources and I’m comfortable.

It’s a very nice feeling, being able to hunker down in a setting you’re reasonably knowledgeable in and just get on with the narrative. I think that’s why I’m enjoying writing my short contemporary stories so much—the only searching I did for Surfacing Again for example, was to use Google Earth to walk the old pilgrim route to Lindisfarne.

When I have the time and inclination I try to gather my research sources together for particular books and time-periods. You can find them under the menu Interesting History Stuff at the top of the page. It’s a bit of a work in progress and it’s not comprehensive, but it also serves to remind me what I looked at 😊.

So what am I going to leave next in my browser history? Honestly, I don’t know. This year I have crashed and burned a bit as far as longer projects are concerned, but I had planned to write the final book in the Bradfield trilogy, so if that happens I’ll be going back to the 1920s. And perhaps a companion book to The Flowers of Time, which is going to take a bit of a jump-start as I’ve forgotten quite a lot about the 1780s. I feel as if I want to get those done, interspersed with contemporary Celtic myths and the Theatre Fach world, before I begin a completely fresh project. However, it might be that I just stick with the contemporaries for now rather than forcing myself to concentrate on anything longer.

Watch this space and you’ll be the first to know!

http://www.amyspectorauthor.com/blog2To find out what’s in the internet search histories of my Read Around the Rainbow colleagues, visit their blogs here! K. L. Noone, Addison Albright, Nell Iris, Ofelia Grand, Holly Day, Fiona Glass, Ellie Thomas, Lillian Francis, Amy Spector.

#AMA: The Nix List

This week’s question is another by Anabela (who gave me a wheelbarrow-load of really good ones!) Do you have subjects you think you could never write about?

Yes! Definitely! Is the short answer—I should think everyone does. And I should think everyone’s answer is very different and probably changes with time.

The first one that jumps to mind though is children. I’ve always been very disinclined to write about characters with children. Mine are in their early teens now and I was first published in 2017 when they were…thinks very hard…nine and ten. The absolutely last thing I wanted to do was revisit that in fiction. Likewise now, I can’t see myself writing in the parental romance genre any time soon. I had a rubbish time when they were tiny babies and it’s simply not something I want to explore, whether it would be a story that sells or not. I’m utterly baffled by epilogues in romance that show characters having children. I read them and they leave me cold, they’re not my thing at all. So I can’t ever envisage me writing one.

Having said that I do have a character in the Theatr Fach world who has a child; but that’s accidental—I wrote them as a side character in Out of Focus and threw in a kid they had to pick up from school as an excuse to leave Alex alone at the hospital; and I’d quite like to explore them further, so ta-da, they’re a parent. But generally speaking…writing about characters with children is a nix.

Also a nix is mpreg. Does that come under the ‘people with children’ caveat? It probably does, but it should also be a category on its own. I just…can’t. I think it might be my own dysphoria that makes me so revolted by it. Let me emphasise people should absolutely read and write what they want, this is my own personal reaction, not a judgment. I think, actually, giving it more thought whilst writing this, it’s not just mpreg, it’s an entire pregnancy thing. So let’s expand the nix to cover pregnancy. I cannot envisage ever writing a pregnant character. Even writing this paragraph has made me shudder. I did not enjoy being pregnant—I loathed it, every single minute of it. I had the two children very close together—sort of by design as I was nearly forty by the time the first one came along—but so close together that at one point I was pregnant and had post-natal depression. When Littlest was born, my lovely obstetrician wrote me a letter of congratulation expressing the wish never to see me in her clinic again. So a nix to pregnancy completely, please!

I don’t think there’s anything else I am conscious of definitely not wanting to write about. I’ve written about death and violence and assault, all sort of horrible things. I do find writing about sexytimes quite difficult sometimes. I don’t think that’s an inherent disinclination though, more that sex is inherently messy and funny and stupid and I find it hard to do right without slipping in to cliché. I’m always worried that readers will come across a sex-scene and it’ll throw them out of the story because I’ve done sexing in a way that no-one else will find acceptable/interesting/arousing/relevant to the narrative.

I’m sure there are other things and I don’t know it, simply because I haven’t come across them yet or I’ve buried them so deeply I don’t have a clue they’re there!

I’m really enjoying these posts…if you have an #AskMeAnything question, do drop me an email or pop in to Lester Towers to ask.

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

Category: amwriting