Lesbian Historic Motif Podcast Episode 313 - On the Shelf for May 2025

Saturday, May 3, 2025 - 07:00

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Lesbian Historic Motif Podcast - Episode 313 - On the Shelf for May 2025 - Transcript

(Originally aired 2025/05/03 - listen here)

Welcome to On the Shelf for May 2025.

At the time you listen to this, I will officially be retired from my job as a failure analyst for biotech pharmaceutical manufacturing. It’s not the most fun time to be retiring on a 401K, but I’ll be ok as long as I watch my expenses. Of course, at the time you listen to this, I still won’t have an answer to “what does it feel like to be retired” because my first act is to head off on the train to the medieval congress at Kalamazoo. I’ve always wanted to take the train rather than flying, but I could never justify it when I was hoarding my vacation days. So I guess that’s one way it feels different.

You probably won’t notice any changes in the blog and podcast at first, because those have been at the top of the priority list. Mostly I plan to spend a lot more time working on my fiction, as well as starting to put the Lesbian Historic Motif Project book together. (I’m going to need to come up with a better title for it, because simply titling the book “The Lesbian Historic Motif Project” would be too confusing.)

I do hope to have time for doing a bit more promotion around the blog and podcast. It would be nice to increase our listener numbers and maybe add some special content on the Patreon to encourage people to support the Project monetarily. And that brings me to another aspect of retirement. In the past when I’ve debated whether to continue the fiction series for another year, it’s mostly had to do with listener numbers and the level of engagement. But now I need to take a hard look at the finances of the series. If I buy four stories at the maximum of 5000 words, that’s $1600 in royalties. If I hire narrators, rather than doing all the narration myself, that adds another few hundred dollars. (And I’m not even talking about hosting costs and whatnot.) Currently the Project’s Patreon brings in $240 a year. I haven’t pushed the Patreon as strongly as most people do, because covering expenses out of pocket wasn’t a big deal. Well, going forward it’s going to be a somewhat bigger deal. So I’m going to start putting a more active emphasis on soliciting support. Whether or not the fiction series continues past next January is going to be influenced by whether listeners value it enough to support the show. So if you think it’s a good thing that the Lesbian Historic Motif Project exists, and especially if you enjoy our fiction series, consider whether you’re able to express that appreciation with cash.

That said, we’ll have our second story in this year’s series at the end of the month and it’s absolutely amazing. Make sure you don’t miss it!

News of the Field

One thing I hope to have more time for is analyzing trends in sapphic historicals. I used to do a year-end analysis of settings, publishers, and so forth, but I let that slide a few years ago. I want to pull up my database and fill in the missing years to get caught up. We are seeing more and more sapphic historicals from mainstream publishers, but what feels like a serious drop in historicals from the most prominent small queer presses. The greatest diversity of stories and settings tends to come from independent authors, but those books often have limited distribution due to an over-reliance on Kindle and struggle to find visibility. I want to bring the data to these questions and return to tracking the market more closely.

I hope to have more time to do reviewing and to have author interviews on a more regular basis. Any other ideas for things to add to the Patreon or the show will be cheerfully entertained.

Publications on the Blog

No recent book shopping for the blog. I’ve followed up on my impulse to start focusing on books on queer history in the USA, but haven’t put any of it up on the blog yet. Let’s just say that the past month has been a bit distracted.

Recent Lesbian/Sapphic Historical Fiction

Before plunging into the new fiction, I want to return to a topic I’ve been discussing for the last couple of months. As you may recall, I’ve been noticing a new phenomenon flooding my book spreadsheet. It involves series of relatively short books, typically revolving around a specific theme but not usually a connected narrative. The series is all released in a very brief timespan. But there are a number of other features of this trend. The stories are typically only loosely rooted in history—more “vibes” than facts—and often involve ahistorical gender-neutral casting. Regardless of the author, the cover copy tends to all have a very similar feel, and when I’ve dipped into the contents previews, the prose also has a very consistent feel. Another consistent feature is that the authors have essentially no online presence outside of the book listings, and most commonly have published only series books, rather than also including stand-alones.

So: all of that being said. I have become increasingly more and more suspicious that this phenomenon represents books generated from large language models. (The covers have strong AI vibes, but that’s a more widespread issue.) Therefore I’ve made an executive decision not to include books that fit this profile in my new book listings. (I’m still tracking them in my database, but with annotation.)

If anyone listening to this show is, in fact, an author using this model and has additional information that might change my mind on this point, I’m willing to entertain it. But currently, I’m following my gut. My show, my rules.

On a more positive note, here are the new and recent books I’ve found this month.

There are two April books, one of which I held over to this month to coordinate with interviewing the author. This is The Unlikely Pursuit of Mary Bennet by Lindz McLeod from Carina Adores. I’m always a sucker for a good Jane Austen take-off.

When Mr. Collins dies after just four years of marriage, Charlotte is lost. While not exactly heartbroken, she will soon have to quit the parsonage that has become her home. In desperate need of support, she writes to her best friend, Lizzie. Unable to leave Pemberly, Lizzie sends her sister, Mary Bennet, in her stead.

To Charlotte’s surprise, Mary Bennet is nothing like she remembers. Mary’s discovery of academia and her interest in botany (as well as getting out from under her mother’s thumb) have caused her to flourish. Before long, Charlotte is enraptured—with Mary, and with the possibilities that lie beyond their societal confines. With each stolen glance and whispered secret, their friendship quickly blossoms into something achingly real.

But when her time at the parsonage begins to dwindle and a potential suitor appears, Charlotte must make a choice—the safety and security of another husband, or a passionate life with Mary outside the confines of the ton’s expectations.

The other April book is Midnight Letters by Rowan Wilder.

In the gilded halls of Victorian London, Eleanor Blackwell's carefully arranged life is unraveling at the seams. Trapped in a loveless engagement to the controlling Lord James Harrington, she finds herself drawn to Vivian Foster, the rebellious portrait artist hired to immortalize their impending union.

What begins with a mysterious sketch and a provocative question—"You seemed trapped. Are you?"—soon blossoms into a secret correspondence that awakens desires Eleanor never knew existed. As midnight letters pass between them, Eleanor and Vivian risk everything to steal precious moments together in moonlit gardens and hidden alcoves.

But in 1890s London, two women daring to love is more than scandalous—it's dangerous. When their forbidden relationship is discovered, Eleanor must make an impossible choice: surrender to societal expectations or follow her heart into the unknown with Vivian.

From the rigid drawing rooms of aristocratic England to the bohemian artist cafés of Paris, Midnight Letters is a sweeping tale of courage, sacrifice, and the transformative power of love. As Eleanor and Vivian build a new life together against all odds, they discover that the most profound revolution can happen in the human heart.

There are six May releases, most of them from major publishers. (This has a lot to do with indie books not having advance publicity, so they tend to get identified only after they’ve been released.)

The Starving Saints by Caitlin Starling from Harper Voyager had a note in my database to confirm the hints of sapphic content, but I was able to find advance reviews that satisfied me.

Aymar Castle has been under siege for six months. Food is running low and there has been no sign of rescue. But just as the survivors consider deliberately thinning their number, the castle stores are replenished. The sick are healed. And the divine figures of the Constant Lady and her Saints have arrived, despite the barricaded gates, offering succor in return for adoration.

Soon, the entire castle is under the sway of their saviors, partaking in intoxicating feasts of terrible origin. The war hero Ser Voyne gives her allegiance to the Constant Lady. Phosyne, a disorganized, paranoid nun-turned-sorceress, races to unravel the mystery of these new visitors and exonerate her experiments as their source. And in the bowels of the castle, a serving girl, Treila, is torn between her thirst for a secret vengeance against Voyne and the desperate need to escape from the horrors that are unfolding within Aymar’s walls.

As the castle descends into bacchanalian madness—forgetting the massed army beyond its walls in favor of hedonistic ecstasy—these three women are the only ones to still see their situation for what it is. But they are not immune from the temptations of the castle’s new masters… or each other; and their shifting alliances and entangled pasts bring violence to the surface. To save the castle, and themselves, will take a reimagining of who they are, and a reorganization of the very world itself.

The enthusiasm for books set in the Roaring 20s continues with Murder at the Cabaret by Dana Gricken from Bella Books.

In New York City, 1925, twenty-two-year-old Penny Fox has a lot on her plate.

After her father’s untimely death, she’s just inherited his cabaret club—The Primrose—complete with a speakeasy in the basement, made possible by local mob boss Sonny Hargrove. By night, she’s managing her father’s business while being hounded by a greedy crime lord, and by day, working as a private investigator at her agency called The Sly Fox to help women flee abusive partners and catch their husbands affairs.

To make matters worse, she’s currently being sued by a client’s husband for snapping pictures of him with his secretary and ruining his marriage. When she comes across another woman being abused, Cora Bellinger, she decides to help her and falls in love, making her fiancé a sworn enemy while trying to process her feelings.

But it isn’t until the dancers at her club begin going missing—and then murdered—that Penny realizes a serial killer is on the loose. If she wants to save her club and stop more women from being killed, she’ll have to put her private eye skills to good use—before it’s too late.

We haven’t had as many cross-time stories lately, but Give My Love to Berlin by Katherine Bryant from Walrus Publishing follows a popular structure that jumps between the past and present, following memories and family secrets.

In 1927, the beautiful city of Berlin is the gay capitol of the world. Ruth, a performer at one of the nightclubs in the city, and her girlfriend, Tillie, are living their lives and enjoying the freedom of the Weimer Republic. They are surrounded by a chosen family that includes drag performers, transgender women, and the prominent physician, Dr. Magnus Hirschfeld. Ruth, Tillie, and their best friends, James and Ernesto spend much of their time at the Institute for Sexual Science, the hub of the queer community in the twenties and early thirties. As the ’20s come to a close, Tillie watches her father, a prominent lawyer, as he becomes more entrenched with the Nazi Party. Working in his law office as his secretary, she meets prominent figures in the Nazi Party, including Joseph Goebbels and Hermann Göring, and becomes increasingly concerned as time passes that there is much more at stake than just her relationship with Ruth, who is also Jewish. Tillie becomes privy to the planning of rallies, the plans the Nazi party is making in order to ensure Nazi victories in major elections, and how the Nazis are taking over Germany one neighborhood at a time. The novel jumps between the twenties and thirties and the early nineties and a young woman named Thea. Thea is dealing with the onset of her grandmother’s dementia, and discovers secrets hidden away that her grandmother never intended for her to uncover. Alternating between Tillie’s perspective during the ’20s and ’30s as the Weimar Republic slowly gives way to a dictatorship and Thea’s perspective in the ’90s as the secrets of her grandmother’s history come to light, Give My Love to Berlin follows the lives of two gay couples—Tillie and Ruth, and their best friends, James and Ernesto—trying to navigate falling in love, thriving in their community, and coming to terms with the danger they are in just by being who they are.

Actual medieval epics had a fascination with stories in which a woman in disguise earns fame as a knight and attracts the romantic interest of a fair lady. To the Fairest by M. Walker takes up this motif, although it turns the “convenient twin brother” trope on its head.

In medieval Europe, Elena Montfort has always dreamed of competing in the knights' tournament—an arena forever closed to women. When her twin brother falls gravely ill before an important competition that could save their financially struggling family, Elena makes a daring decision: she will don his armor, assume his identity, and enter the lists as "Sir Elric."

What begins as a desperate gamble transforms when Elena presents a rose to the beautiful Lady Isolde, setting in motion a romance neither woman anticipated. As Elena continues her masquerade through increasingly prestigious tournaments, she must navigate court intrigue, jealous rivals, and her growing feelings for Lady Isolde, who believes herself in love with a man who doesn't exist.

Will Elena's deception be discovered? Can love flourish when built on necessary lies? And when forced to choose between duty to family and the desires of her own heart, what will this unlikely knight sacrifice?

Another standard structure in the cross-time group is the “romance of the archives” in which research into a historic document uncovers a sapphic romance. Time After Time by Mikki Daughtry from G.P. Putnam's Sons combines this with the supernatural version in which past lives may be intertwined.

Libby has always been inexplicably drawn to the old Victorian house on Mulberry Lane. So much so that when she sees a For Sale sign go up in the front yard, Libby uses all the money her grandmother left her to pay for college to buy the house instead, determined to fix it up herself—even though she knows her parents will be furious.

Tish, a brash, broke fellow student, doesn’t need much to get by. She can fix almost anything, so she makes do by building sets for the theater department and working odd jobs at the nearby salvage yard. Tish passes by the house one day and is mysteriously compelled to knock on the door. Libby offers her a room in exchange for her help with repairing the old house, and as they begin to work together, the two young women quickly find themselves growing closer.

Soon after moving in, Libby discovers a journal written by a young woman, Elizabeth, who lived in the house a century earlier and was deeply in love with her personal maid, Patricia. As Elizabeth’s journal entries delve deeper into her secret affair with Patricia—a love that was forbidden and dangerous in their time—Libby can’t help but notice uncanny similarities between that young couple and Tish and herself.

Have she and Tish lived this life before? And is this their chance to get it right?

Paranormal themes underly A Spell for Change by Nicole Jarvis from Titan Books.

Kate Mayer has always been troubled by visions of the future. No matter what she does, her disturbing premonitions come to pass—often with terrible consequences. But Kate has a secret: swirling, romantic dreams of a strange boy, and a chance meeting in the woods.

Oliver Chadwick Jr. returned from the Great War disabled, disillusioned, and able to see the dead. Haunted by the death of his best friend, Oliver realizes that his ability to communicate with spirits may offer the chance of closure he desperately seeks.

Nora Jo Barker’s mother and grandmother were witches, but she has never nurtured her own power. Always an outsider, she has made a place for herself as the town's schoolteacher, clinging to the independence the job affords her. When her unorthodox ideas lead to her dismissal, salvation comes in the form of a witch from the mountains, who offers her a magical apprenticeship. Yet as she begins to fall for another woman in town, her loyalties pull her in disparate directions.

Rumors of a dark force stalking the town only push Kate, Oliver, and Nora Jo onwards in their quest to determine their own destinies. But there are powers in the world stronger and stranger than their own, and not all magic is used for good...

Other Books of Interest

I put one title in the “other books of interest” category due to it teetering on the edge between historic fantasy and pure fantasy. For some reason, authors seem to find it impossible to write about ancient Greece without treating myths and gods as real. It’s not the only setting that seems to exist only in the mythic imagination as far as fiction is concerned. This one is: The Olive and the Spear by J.A. Rainbow.

In the midst of the Greco-Persian War, where the clash of swords and the cries of warriors fill the air, an unexpected love story unfolds. Athena, the revered Goddess of War and Wisdom, watches over the battlefield with a keen eye. Her divine duties are interrupted when she encounters Andromeda, a fierce and valiant Spartan warrior whose courage and strength are unmatched.

As Andromeda fights to protect her homeland, she captures not only the admiration of her fellow soldiers but also the heart of the goddess herself. Drawn together by their shared valour and unyielding spirits, Athena and Andromeda forge a bond that transcends the mortal and divine realms.

But in a world where duty and honour reign supreme, their love faces insurmountable challenges. As battles rage on and enemies close in, Athena must navigate her divine responsibilities while protecting Andromeda from both human and celestial threats. Together, they must find a way to preserve their love amidst the chaos of war.

What Am I Reading?

And what am I reading? Not much, I’m afraid, and nothing new. I did a re-listen to Kate Heartfield’s The Chatelaine in preparation for discussing it on someone else’s podcast. But mostly I’ve been too distracted by retirement preparations to settle down with books.

Author Guest

As previously mentioned, today we have an interview with Lindz McLeod about her new release The Unlikely Pursuit of Mary Bennet.

[interview transcript will be available at a later date]

Show Notes

Your monthly roundup of history, news, and the field of sapphic historical fiction.

In this episode we talk about: