The #LesbianHistoricMotifProject podcast tells you what's "On the Shelf for September 2023” with announcements of new historical fiction releases and interviews with https://mastodon.org.uk/@rhiannongrant and Katharine Quarmby.

https://lesbianhistoricmotif.podbean.com/e/on-the-shelf-for-september-2023-the-lesbian-historic-motif-podcast-episode-267/

#LesbianFiction #LesbianHistory #SapphicFiction #SapphicHistory

I did two lovely interviews this morning for next week's #LesbianHistoricMotifProject podcast! We'll be talking about fiction inspired by historic archives and how to imagine queer lives in the Neolithic.

If you're an author or historian working around the topic of women loving women in history, and you'd be interested in talking about your work on my podcast, drop me a note to ask!

#LesbianHistory #SapphicHistory #LesbianFiction #SapphicFiction

Inspired, in part, by our recent fiction episode, this month the #LesbianHistoricMotifProject podcast brings you another “Our F/Favorite Tropes" show, featuring female spies in history!

We love our adventurous, angsty spy-vs-spy historic romances, right? But if you think the main hurdle for a sapphic historical spy romance is the believability of women as spies, you should think again.

https://alpennia.com/blog/lesbian-historic-motif-podcast-episode-266-our-ffavorite-tropes-part-9-spies

#LesbianHistory #SapphicHistory #HistoricalRomance #LesbianFiction #SapphicFiction

The #LesbianHistoricMotifProject podcast has interviews out the wazoo in this month's On the Shelf episode. Hear from Annemarie K.D. (author of last week's story), Meredith Rose (whose Shelockian "A Study in Garnet" is my current read), and Lee Swanson (author of a fascinating series featuring medieval Hanseatic merchants).

Plus the usual round-up of new books!

https://alpennia.com/blog/lesbian-historic-motif-podcast-episode-265-shelf-august-2023

#LesbianHistory #SapphicHistory #LesbianFiction #SapphicFiction

New fiction on the #LesbianHistoricMotifProject podcast! Annemarie KD's story "To the Fair Muse who, Loving Me, Imagin'd More" imagines a romantic interlude for 17th c poet, playwright, and spy Aphra Behn.

https://alpennia.com/blog/lesbian-historic-motif-podcast-episode-264-fair-muse-who-loving-me-imagind-more-annemarie-kd

#LesbianFiction #LesbianHistory #SapphicFiction #SapphicHistory

Me pondering, “How will those two chipmunks find each other again now that they ran in different directions?”

#IScaredaChipmunk #TheyWereInLove #chipmunklove #pridemonth #queerlife #lgbtwriters #lesbianbooks #lesbianfiction #lesfic #lesficauthor #lgbt
#lgbtq

There's something sexy about money and status! The #LesbianHistoricMotifProject podcast's "Our F/Favorite Tropes" series tackles the possibilities for aristocrats and billionaires in sapphic historical romance. Can you make a "duchess romance" work without sliding sideways into fantasy? And how do the parallels between aristocracy and wealth play out differently for female couples?

https://alpennia.com/blog/lesbian-historic-motif-podcast-episode-261-our-ffavorite-tropes-part-7-aristocrats-and

#LesbianHistoricalRomance #LesbianFiction #SapphicHistoricalRomance #SapphicFiction

I read The Language of Roses by Heather Rose Jones, also author of the Alpennia series. It's a feminist, L(gbtqi)A, retelling of the French literary fairytale La Belle et la Bête (Beauty and the Beast), in which beauty is the power of different types of love and the beast is coercion and domestic abuse (whether familial or marital). It retains the fairytale setting and plot alterations are expertly done. I didn't work out what was going on until about a third of the way through, but our heroine has to wait even longer. The lesbian side-couple are sweet, and the heroine's aromantic nature is given its due. A very good read and recommended to people who like well-written retellings.

#LGBT #reading #books #LesbianFiction #FantasyFiction #FairyTales #retellings

Happy Pride Month to everyone who is being gay and doing crimes...

...and by "doing crimes" I mean reading books, obv. I'm currently in 1860s Edinburgh with Death Wore a Diadem by Joanna McGregor, which is a teen/young adult, historical mystery, lesbian romance, novel published in 1989 (I started reading The Microcosm by Maureen Duffy, 1966, but her Joycean stream of consciousness was too much for my brainz).

#LGBT #reading #books #LesbianFiction

Lesbian: Making The Rounds: Defying The Norms in Love and Medicine by Patricia Grayhall https://www.lesbian.com/making-the-rounds-defying-the-norms-in-love-and-medicine-by-patricia-grayhall/ #Lesbian #LesbianNews #LGBT #LGBTQ #Trans #Dyke #2SLGBTQ #QueerLitCats #PatriciaGrayhall #lesbianfiction #Fiction

When your book is described as "unique", you never know if it's good or bad. In this case, I think I'm doing alright?

Have you read it yet? If so, drop a review on Amazon. I might share it on social media.

#diversebooks
#fiction
#fictionbooks
#lesbianbooks
#lesbianfiction
#lesfic
#lesficauthor
#lgbt
#lgbtq
#lgbtqbooks
#lgbtwriters
#ownvoices
#queer
#queerbooks
#queerlit
#queerliterature
#queerreads
#queerfiction
#romancebooks
#wlw
#books
#wlwbooks
#summerreading

A Half-Built Garden by Ruthanna Emrys 👽👶 Judy takes her wife and baby along to check out pollutants in the Potomac and finds herself in a First Contact with aliens who consider children an indispensable element of diplomatic talks.
https://www.librarything.com/work/26944302/ #QueerSFF2023
#LesbianFiction #SolarPunk #Hopepunk @bookstodon

The story concludes with Ardulum: Third Don! Find out what happens with #space #magic, #planets, #scifi, #LGBTQ elements, and more!
#lesbianfiction #sapphic #spaceopera
https://amazon.com/dp/B0BXNDF4NH

Finally starting to document this again - here's my Every Speculative Fiction Book About Queer Women I read in 2023 thread. 📚 🤖 🌈 🦄 ‍👩‍❤️‍💋‍👩

Last year's:
https://mastodon.nz/@aquila1nz/109339725265843855

#QueerSFF2023 #LesbianFiction #WLWFiction #Booktodon #BookRecs, #books #WLWbooks #QueerBooks #LesbianBooks #BookTwitter #SpeculativeFiction

Baseball season starts tomorrow! So if you haven't met the Chicago Shrikes yet, now is as good a time as any!

"The Only Game In Town feels like a television show. Geonn Cannon gives us a full cast of characters with their baseball team. There is drama, romance, fists flying, and of course baseball.
At times I felt like I was sitting at a radio listening to the game. The tale just has that old-fashioned feel to it."
#writing #lesbianfiction #wlwfiction

https://www.amazon.com/dp/1952150361

I read Queendom Come by Ellen Galford, a satirical novel which is almost as relevant today as when it was published in 1990. 6/eventually 7

On privatisation and selling assets owned by the nation, and on polluting our waters:
"'It would make a superb site for a marina. And the Americans are very interested in quarrying the hill...'
[...] 'But what about the flasks, ma'am?"
'What flasks? Oh, those. They're buried miles offshore...'
'But what if they really are leaking?'
[...] 'Stop fussing! When we write the description of that site in the auction catalogue, we simply make sure to mark the lot As Seen. That covers everything. Besides, it's only going to be some foreigner who buys up the site. Who else has that sort of money to throw about? Caveat emptor is what I say. It's the law of the market.'"

For comparison see recent news stories about toxic waste dredged up then re-dumped to enable the Conservative's Tees Freeport sell-out, which appears to be causing mass deaths of sea life that the government first claimed were caused by an algal bloom nobody noticed and then a new disease nobody has been able to find: "Hartlepool fisherman Stan Rennie, chairman of Hartlepool Boat Owners’ Association and a leading player in the industry’s campaign for a full investigation into the die-offs, said the government did not want to carry out a full investigation because it feared it would prove the die-offs were caused by toxic dredge spoil and jeopardise the Tees Freeport project."

https://fishingnews.co.uk/news/outrage-as-defra-closes-file-on-die-offs/

#QueendomCome #satire #parody #reading #quotation #quotations #books #LGBT #LesbianFiction #FantasyFiction #pollution

I read Queendom Come by Ellen Galford, a satirical novel which is almost as relevant today as when it was published in 1990. The protagonist is a doctor in a privatised NHS hospital. 5/eventually 7

Water privatisation: "I'm faced with thousands of agitators stirring up hysteria about the contamination in Standard Class tap water. As if they weren't perfectly free to pay the higher charge and opt for Premium Grade. You pay your money and you take your choice, we tell them."

#QueendomCome #satire #parody #reading #quotation #quotations #books #LGBT #LesbianFiction #FantasyFiction #pollution

I read Queendom Come by Ellen Galford, a satirical novel which is almost as relevant today as when it was published in 1990. 4/eventually 7

On media manipulation (and the Duchess of DeadCatShire): "The resulting bluster and ballyhoo succeeds in pushing an inconvenient collection of gas, radiation and security leaks right off the front pages. The tabloids, by Prime Ministerial diktat, make much of her. Everybody loves a Royal."

#QueendomCome #satire #parody #reading #quotation #quotations #books #LGBT #LesbianFiction #FantasyFiction

I read Queendom Come by Ellen Galford, a satirical novel set in Scotland, which is almost as relevant today as when it was published in 1990. 3/eventually 7

On Scottish history: "the Regimental band of the Countess of Sutherland's Own Displaced Highlanders"

#QueendomCome #satire #parody #reading #quotation #quotations #books #LGBT #LesbianFiction #FantasyFiction

I read Queendom Come by Ellen Galford, a satirical novel which is almost as relevant today as when it was published in 1990. 2/eventually 7

On censorship (the current Online Safety Bill comes to mind): "the entire all-star cast of the banned crypto-feminist musical comedy Pigs Will Fly, who have finished their prison sentences for contravening the Official Viewpoints Act."

#QueendomCome #satire #parody #reading #quotation #quotations #books #LGBT #LesbianFiction #FantasyFiction