There's an entire book on the Benson family that I should probably add to the blog to-do list at some point. She seems like a fascinating person, though the interpersonal relations within the Benson family are not exactly a pinnacle of functionality. Still, to think that someone who came into a marriage so disadvantaged in terms of social power (I mean, her husband arranged to train her up to be his future wife when she was only 11 years old!) was able to come to a no-fucks-to-give point where she renegotiated the entire basis of their marriage and relationship. That's quite a story.
LHMP
Blog entry
When Romancelandia became more generally aware that Georgia voter activist Stacey Abrams was also romance author Selena Montgomery, they took her and her cause to their heart big-time. Thus was born "Romancing the Runoff", a fund-raising project to support various organizations in the state of Georgia working on voter registration, turnout, and education. While putting together a fund-raising auction with all manner of fascinating book-related stuff, they raised nearly $100,000 in direct donations.
Lesbian Historic Motif Podcast - Episode 185 - Sapphic Historical Fantasy in Asian Settings - transcript
(Originally aired 2020/11/21 - listen here)
I hadn't quite intended to take a vacation from the blog, but the stress of the US elections and their aftermath was more distracting than I'd anticipated and I gave myself a pass. And then, this past Sunday when I was planning to get the nose back on the grindstone...I ended up in the hospotal instead with a pulmonary embolism (i.e., blot clots in the lungs). I'm ok and following treatment, but it was, shall we say, disruptive to my schedule?
As I emphasized repeatedly in my podcast about Charlotte Cushman, the community of women discussed in this chapter deserved to have an entire historical mini-series created around them. There are so many personalities, so much drama, you could easily fill several seasons of tv. If you're writing sapphic historical fiction in the Victorian era you need to know about this milieu, if only so you are aware of the range of possible lives for those willing to do the work of slipping through the blind spots of society.
The “meat” of the chapters in this book are detailed biographical sketches of specific couples or women. This leaves me with the dilemma of whether to skim lightly over the details of their lives, or to dig deeply. For my own survival, I’m going to have to go with the first approach. I’ll summarize the introductory material in each chapter, which situates the biographies in the larger discussion, then mention just the essentials about the couples themselves.
Lesbian Historic Motif Podcast - Episode 183/52a - On the Shelf for November 2020 - Transcript
(Originally aired 2020/11/07 - listen here)
Welcome to On the Shelf for November 2020.
What Did I Wake Up To?
Lesbian Historic Motif Podcast - Episode 184 – Interview with Jane Walsh
(Originally aired 2020/11/14 - listen here)
Transcript pending.
Show Notes
A series of interviews with authors of historically-based fiction featuring queer women.
In this episode we talk about:
The five people who read this blog regularly may have noticed that I skipped a LHMP post last week. I was feeling a bit overwhelmed by my "assignment" to do an entire series of dense books in a row, so I took a brief vacation before plunging in again. I'll try to find a balance between covering these next two book in a reasonable amount of time versus burning myself out. Especially because I'm thinking of doing NaNoWriMo this year, since I have a project that will be just at the right "detail outline but not started" stage.
Lesbian Historic Motif Podcast - Episode 182 – Give Us This Day by Jennifer Nestojko - transcript
(Originally aired 2020/10/31 - listen here)
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