The theme for the current Lesbian Book Bingo square is "Fantasy" and Daughter of Mystery is featured as suggested reading, though of course the Alpennia books would work for any number of thematic squares. See my first post in this series for information about the Bingo challenge and to find the start of my series of mini-stories on the themes of the bingo squares.
writing
Blog entry
The submissions have all been read and sifted through, the contracts have been sent out and signed, and now it's time to announce the Lesbian Historic Motif Podcast's 2018 original fiction line-up! When I finished the first read-though of submissions, I knew immediately that I had a problem: there were just too many good stories that I wanted to buy. Fortunately, I could solve this with an executive decision. Rather than buying two stories for a half-year trial run of the fiction project, I'd just go ahead and buy four to cover all the "fifth Saturday" episodes for the entire year.
I've gotten a little behind on the Book Bingo story schedule, as this post was meant to go up over a week ago. I need to work harder at these ficlets being easy off-the-cuff things! The most recent square for Jae's Lesbian Book Bingo was "doctors and veterinarians" so I got a little tangled up in researching the state of woman physicians in western Europe in the 1690s.
My friend Karen periodically holds a "backyard writing retreat" for a small circle of friends. The idea is to set aside the day for actual writing, not chit-chat (though we do some of that) or web surfing (though that happens too) or getting caught up on ancillary tasks (yup, check). So for this past Sunday's writing retreat, I committed to actually starting the revisions on Floodtide, which has been "fermenting" in messy first draft since...oh my goodness, since before last year's Worldcon? I'd have to check.
The second category of Jae's Lesbian Book Bingo 2018 challenge is Historical Fiction. Check here for the thread with suggestions of books for this category, and for a chance to win prizes if you comment.
The countdown is running to the release of Lace and Blade 4 containing my new Alpennia story "Gifts Tell Truth". Preorder links are up at all major e-book dealers. (There will also be a trade paperback edition.) Editor Deborah J. Ross is running a series of interviews with the contributors on her blog. Check it out and watch for when mine appears!
Lesfic author Jae has set up a fun reading challenge game for 2018: Lesbian Book Bingo. It's your basic genre/trope-based bingo card to encourage people to read a variety of books in 2018 and win a chance for prizes. I was invited to participate by donating some prizes and having one of my books listed in the Suggested Reading Lists.
Last week I talked about how manipulation of point-of-view can change the entire flavor of what I’m writing. This week, rather than talking about my own writing, I’d like to bring together three things that have passed through my brain recently about understanding and portraying romantic relationships between women in historical settings.
Readers and writers both have strong opinions about point of view, even when that strong opinion is, “Any point of view can work if you’re skilled enough.” I’ve heard authors proclaim that they’ll only use one specific type of point of view because that’s the only one that works for them. Fair enough. One can’t argue with what works.
It may seem premature to think about the results of some of my recent activity, but the fact is that there have already been significant results—and most of them are all in my head.
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