Category: read around the rainbow

#ReadAroundtheRainbow: How to romance a romance writer

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.

When we were deciding what topic to pick this month, half of us were really twitchy about this one. It turns out that lots of romance writers are really cynical and don’t much like hearts and flowers in their non-fictional lives. There was a general flurry of oh, I’m not sure I can write about that! And then one of us confessed that they weren’t romantic at all and lots of other people followed suite.

Reader. It was me. I was the first.

A very long time ago I had a couple of screwy relationships where there was a lot of performative romance in public and a lot of unkindness behind closed doors. It turned me off the whole caboodle. It hardens your heart to declarations of love and devotion when a the same time you have someone chucking you over the sofa at home.

Mr AL and I have been married twenty years this year. I didn’t want to get married for the opportunity to float down the aisle on a cloud of orange blossom. I wanted to get married so if I ended up on life support, he’d be the person who got to decide when to turn the switch off. We talked it over for a few months and eventually, he proposed.

I’ve told this story before. It was New Year’s Eve and we were walking home from a friend’s house. It was sleeting sideways and we were both very drunk. He got down on one knee under the No Dogs Fouling sign on a lamppost on a backstreet and popped the question. I was so unsteady on my feet I had to hold on to it to stay upright. The next day we were both so hung over neither of us mentioned it for ages because we weren’t sure we hadn’t hallucinated the whole thing. Then the day after that, we went and posted the banns and booked the registry office for three months time. We asked a dozen people along and afterwards we went to the pub.

I wouldn’t have a wedding ring for a decade because I was sure I’d lose it and then become convinced the marriage was jinxed. I’m not sure that’s anything to do with romance though, more paranoia?

To me, romance is the doing of small things, not big performative gestures. It’s a smile across a room full of people when you catch each other’s eye. It’s a bunch of flowers you’ve picked from the garden because the sun was out and they caught your eye and you know they’ll make someone smile. It’s making a sensible supper when you’re both tired and beat and no-one has eaten a vegetable for days. It’s noticing someone’s in pain and finding their medication for them. It’s a proper letter saying you’re missed when your loved one is away from home.

Those are the things that count. Grand gestures are just that, gestures. It’s being there when it counts that’s truly romantic.

Here’s everyone else who wrote this month. Click through to read what they have to say!

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

#ReadAroundtheRainbow: Writing advice I take with a grain of salt

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.

This month, we’re all blogging about writing advice we take with a grain of salt… and…I’m not sure about this one! Do I say I rigidly follow all the rules? And have people think I’m a formulaic work-to-rule sort of writer? Or do I say I pick and choose what received advice I follow, and have people think I’m arrogant and self-important and not a proper writer?

It’s a dilemma! Probably the first advice I should actually listen to is to ignore imposter syndrome 😊.

In all honesty though, there’s so much completely conflicting advice out there for people who write, whether they’re published or not:

 Write every day. It doesn’t matter if you write every day. Attend a writing group. Write alone. Self-edit. Always have an editor. Have lots of social media. Don’t bother with social media. Write different genres under different pen-names. Put everything under one pen name. Hone your skills in fanfiction. Take a course. Self-publish. Look for a publisher. Get an agent. Don’t bother with an agent.

And Oxford commas…well. That’s how decades long feuds begin.

I think the only thing you can say for certain is that what suits one person won’t suit another and the less you get hung up on all the dos and don’ts, the happier and more confident you’ll be.

I’m definitely not confident enough to self-edit for example. But I know several people who do, very competently. The writing every day thing…well. My life is very, very fragmented right now and that’s impossible for me. But it doesn’t make me any less of a writer. Everything is still ticking away inside my head and when I do sit down with my laptop I often find it springs more fully formed onto the page than it does if I’ve been writing every day. Not always! But sometimes.

So, I’d have to say that the only thing I’d take with a grain of salt is to follow all the advice you’re given. Pick what works for you and have the confidence to say ‘I tried that and it was rubbish for me, it didn’t work’.

It’s not a competition, there are no rules that dictate conformity or success. If you’re happy as you’re actually writing and happy with what you’re creating, then…that’s working. You’re a successful writer.

Here’s everyone else who wrote this month. Click through to read what they have to say!

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

#ReadAroundTheRainbow: My favourite creepy story

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.

This month we are, obviously, writing about our favourite creepy or Halloween story. This is a dead easy post for me to write, as I have an outstanding all-time-favourite Halloween story–The House on Druid Lake by Isabelle Adler.

It’s kind of a cosy mystery as well as a Halloween story, which should be counter-intuitive but turns out not to be at all.

The House on Druid Lake

Oliver’s a bit of a mess–his last relationship was abusive and he’s moved from Florida to Baltimore for a new job and a fresh start. He moves into a flat in an interesting old house, sight unseen except for the photos in the listing on the internet. The very attractive landlord is a bit odd as are the rest of the tenants. It was such a set-up…creaky old house, mysterious tenants…I loved it and immediately began working out what particular kind of entity each person was.

The house turns out to be the target of an unscrupulous developer and Oliver and his new landlord have to outwit them. Nym, the landlord, has his own secrets and hang-ups and I found their relationship development satisfying and well-rounded. There are some pleasingly inexplicable little bits…I don’t like my magic systems to be spoon-fed to me and there were little loose threads independent of the main story that gave me things to ponder once I’d finished. It’s a very happy Halloween book and I love it!

Here’s everyone else who wrote this month:

Amy Spector : K. L. Noone : Ellie Thomas : Nell Iris : Holly Day

#RAtR: Favourite M|M books clothed in autumnal covers

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.

This month, to celebrate the start of autumn, we’re talking about our favourite books with red, yellow and orange covers! Mine are The Salisbury Key by Harper Fox, Slippery Creatures by K. J. Charles and The Lawrence Brown Affair by Cat Sebastian.

The Salisbury Key by Harper Fox

The Salisbury Key is one of my favourite Harper Fox books–and there are so many to choose from. Most recently I’ve listened to this in audio and it’s a perfect rendition.

There’s a lot of pain in this story. Warnings for suicide, grief and the trauma that falls out from them. It’s a long time since I read it and because the audio is much slower than I read myself, I think the grief had much more impact on me.

Dan is devastated when his older partner kills himself, and sets himself to find out why through the haze of emotion and guilt he’s surrounded by. He meets a young soldier, Rain, who he has an instant connection with and together they open a can of worms containing biological weapons and evil. It’s a bit of an odd mixture with the archaeology thread, but it works really well and it’s a favourite of mine. The narration is perfect. I loved Rain’s voice in particular and I love this version of the cover.

Slippery Creatures by K. J. Charles

This is the first of the Will Darling Adventures and I cannot tell you how much I love all of them. Not quite as much as The Green Men…but the cover colour was wrong, so here we are :).

1920s stories are very much my bag both to read and write and this one hits all my beats. Sparky flappers, wounded heroes, people utterly messed up from four years of war finding their feet again and a long, involved mystery arc that threads all three books together.

Highly recommend.

The Lawrence Browne Affair by Cat Sebastian

I love this series of Cat Sebastian’s. They are early eighteenth century historicals with an excellent portrayal of late Georgian England.

In this episode, we meet Lawrence, the definitive Mad Scientist archetype. He’s shut up in his ruinous castle in the middle of the countryside. Is he mad, though? Or is he just neurodivergent? YOU DECIDE! I love him.

I also love Georgie, who’s a proper con-artist, but goes straight for love and has to get himself out of the pickle he’s got himself and Lawrence involved with.

There is also a very large dog, which is another reason to highly recommend it.

Find everyone else’s favourite’s here!

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

#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