Happy Wednesday! I think I can officially say that Spring has sprung in New England, but I also don’t want to jinx it. Are you enjoying a break in some bad weather? Let’s get to some links!
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Last year, historical romance author, Miranda Neville passed away. In her honor, her family would like to a establish a memorial fund. The fund would go toward one of Neville’s favorite libraries and would help said library in curating a bigger collection of history, historical fiction, and romance books. As of right now, their goal is to reach $10,000 and they’re just shy of raising $3,000.
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The Cats and Paperbacks blog published an amazing piece on lesbian romance and the lack of it in Romancelandia:
Romancelandia has a role and so called LGBTQIAP+ romance publishers has a role. More push and marketing needs to be put behind f/f books. More publishers need to publish these books. More people need to read them, to buy them, to support them, to recommend them. A lot of the time, when romance releases are talked about it’s focussed on m/f with maybe a token m/m, but f/f is pushed under the rug. And I’m tired that nobody seems to care.
The Ripped Bodice also chimed in on Twitter, coming at it from a bookseller standpoint.
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If you’re looking for reading recs with bisexual and lesbian heroines, The Lesbian Talk Show has a podcast episode dedicated to it:
NEW: 8 Awesome Books With Bisexual Leading Ladies @Sheena_LE is joined by @taramdscott talking books by @SusanX @DogEarAudio @Rizzleslovr72@YlvaPublishing @camryneyde@meghanobrien78 @boldstrokebooks @RiptideBooks @authorbenson #LesFic
Listen here: https://t.co/YKucWTj6cP
— TheLesbianTalkShow (@LesbianTalkShow) April 17, 2018
Shout out to their guest Tara Scott, who has also written some great guest reviews for us on lesbian romances.
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Sarah: I am still loving my daily Shine Texts, and this particular link has been hanging out in my brain, especially since I’m working on my own garden now that it is (FREAKING FINALLY) spring.
Sarah Joy Shockey drew a terrific visual series comparing her mood and feelings to a garden: Gardening, Kind Of. The metaphor for tending my own mental environment as a garden works so well for me, and changes the framing of how I treat myself substantially. I hope you like it, too.
If you’d like daily encouragement with messages backed by research and sent via text, you can sign up online.
(NB: this is a referral link but I don’t earn money if you sign up, only the potential for swag.)
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HIDDEN LEGACY NEWS! THIS IS NOT A DRILL! I’m pretty sure one of the Bitchery told me about this, but I couldn’t find it in the comments section. If it was you, I’m terribly sorry. Andrews will be coming out with a novella and then three more books that focus on the rest of the House Baylor family! Can you hear my squeeing?
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Don’t forget to share what super cool things you’ve seen, read, or listened to this week! And if you have anything you think we’d like to post on a future Wednesday Links, send it my way!
Entertainment Weekly did a write-up of the forthcoming Hidden Legacy books. Lots of juicy details at the link. http://ew.com/books/2018/04/21/ilona-andrews-new-hidden-legacy-series-announcement/
Thanks for the f/f and romancelandia link. I think about this a lot as a queer woman and romance reader – I’ve been consciously expanding beyond mm romance but I still read more m/m than f/f. Some of it is a chicken and egg thing – I read less f/f because there’s less f/f available – some of it is price, and some of it is probably just inertia.
I’m surprised by the Avon Gale examples in the link – I think I’ve read all of the books mentioned and I really enjoyed The Love Song of Sawyer Bell (and I rated it on GR). I should be used to liking things that the majority don’t, but that still surprised me.
For people looking for other recommendations, AutoStraddle has decent coverage of queer genre fiction, with an emphasis on queer women. My favorite feature is the Ask Your Friendly Neighborhood Lesbrarian column –
https://www.autostraddle.com/tag/ask-your-friendly-neighbourhood-lesbrarian/
One more thing – if the only way to get more ff (and mf with bi female leads) is for authors to write ff that reads like all the mm that’s a weird fantasy / fetishized version of what it’s like to be queer, I think I’d rather f/f stay niche.
Thank you for sharing the Shine Text gardening link. My garden club recites a touching prayer at each meeting about gardening as it pertains to life (i.e. weeding out bad thoughts and nurturing the good).
BTW, tomorrow is Garden Meditation Day and Saturday is World Naked Gardening Day!
@LauraL, thanks for the info but I’m going to have to decline the World Naked Gardening day. Aside from some gnarly and prickly (!) weeds, the bees are already out in my yard. No way I’m giving them access to more, not to mention more tender parts, of me. But the garden meditation part is a definite yes.
This is a great article published about AOC in romance – one of the feature subjects of the article is Alyssa Cole and her Loyal League series!
https://www.buzzfeed.com/bimadewunmi/meet-the-black-women-upending-the-romance-novel-industry?utm_term=.mhzJqAD8q#.mpe49Q5q9
Illona Andrewssssss!!!!! Yes!
@KatieC- Thank you for sharing the Buzzfeed article, what a great piece! Alyssa Cole’s covers are some of my absolute favorites and so it was terrific to read about the cover artist who worked on the Loyal League series. Plus a sneak peek at the last book’s cover!! love love love!
@Emily – I thought the first two covers in the series were awesome, but the third is AMAZING!
Sarah Deimer’s The Dark Wife is a YA revisionist telling of the myth of Persephone where Hades is a compassionate goddess. It’s uneven, but that’s understandable in a first novel and there’s some very evocative scenes. CW for rapey Zeus.
OMG, Hidden Legacy is my FAVORITE Ilona Andrews series. Involuntary sqeeing may have just scared my dog.
Be honest: A whole lot of the folks here would watch this https://entertainment.theonion.com/new-historical-drama-just-90-minutes-of-woman-holding-u-1825713565
I’m not sure there’s less F/F available, but it still seems to be getting less attention and fewer promo dollars than M/M (so what else is new?). It’s a vicious cycle of “Publishers don’t *think* it sells-Authors have a hard time getting it picked up, but if they do publishers don’t put as much money into it-Readers don’t see it-Readers don’t buy as many” Wash. Rinse. Repeat.
I find way more F/F stories via word of mouth than through actual publisher promo, unless it’s an established WLW-focused house.
Speaking of f/f and word of mouth – this upcoming release looks promising – When Katie Met Cassidy by Camille Perri.
Just saw this advanced review –
https://www.autostraddle.com/when-katie-met-cassidy-lesbian-romance-review-417806/
Yes! Just saw that : )
OMG, I’m an Ilona Andrews fangirl, yet I’d missed the EW interview so thank you so much @Cassandra for making my week with that link! I pre-ordered the new novella as soon as Ilona mentioned on her blog that it was up for sale but she didn’t mention the interview. I had no idea that the new trilogy was going to feature Catalina. I’m so excited. I just hope we don’t have to wait 2 years between book 1 and 2 like we did for the last trilogy.
I think a lot of f/f romance comes from different literary traditions than mainstream romance, anyway, and tends to be promoted and talked about in different venues targeted mainly at bisexual, lesbian and queer women. Lots of different themes and tropes, and a different shape to the pacing of the books, than in mainstream romance, I find. I suspect a lot of readers of lesbian romance prefer that it’s largely by and for the people it’s about.
That said, there’s always The Lesbrary which is a pretty good book review blog that updates regularly, and there’s always Autostraddle’s book tag though they mainly look at non-romance books.
There’s also other small romance publishers, like Evernight, that produce more F/F romance than you’d expect, and a lot of self-publishers.
I’m really glad you shared that link about F/F romance. I have so many feelings on this topic. I’m a bisexual woman but in terms of queer romance I find myself reading more M/M because it’s a larger pool of books to choose from and it’s more likely to go on sale. I don’t have trouble discovering new F/F romance but I would like to see it given the same attention from mainstream publishers that M/M has been getting lately (really, the best example I can think of is Cat Sebastian’s books published under Avon Impulse, but I know there are others). The marketing effort for F/F romance is almost nonexistent.
My library will order most of the queer romance I request (they have a great customer-driven method of purchasing) but they never seem to add it without being asked. They’re far more likely to go after the queer YA titles, probably because those books actually are being published by mainstream publishers. And, of course, the ratio of M/M romance to F/F romance is quite extreme.
That said, I’m so excited for “When Katie Met Cassidy!”