First off, the winner for the Free Book Drawing is (drum roll please) Catherine Wilson, an author in her own right. Congrats, Catherine! And thanks to all who entered.
Now, onto a subject that has been captivating me.
If you’re like me, you covet well-written novels with lesbian characters. Make it a lesbian protagonist and it’s downright thrilling. But (and here’s the catch) you don’t always want a romance. And that last distinction, my friend, is what makes us the rare breed of reader. Romance readers (of both the lesbian and straight persuasion) outnumber us a zillion to one. Okay, I’m exaggerating a bit, but you get my point.
Surprised? I know I was. But that’s because lots of romance readers don’t admit to reading romance. They tuck those steamy novels into their Wall Street Journals, read them by the light of the fridge when everyone else has gone off to bed, hide them under their mattresses during the day. But romance readers are out there. Oh yes. The numbers tell us so.
Maybe that’s why when I tell people I write lesbian fiction (lesfic) they always assume I write romance. That, or they can’t imagine lesbians doing anything worthwhile besides falling in love. Which make me crazy!
I emailed my friend Justine Saracen, also an author of lesbian fiction, about these woes and, low and behold, found I wasn’t alone. So we’ve hatched a plan to create a new genre. I want to call it Mainstream Lesbian Fiction. She suggested the tag line: More than Romance.
What say you to this? We’re still in the planning stages and could use your input.
Seems to me we readers and writers of non-traditional lesfic need to stick together.
Women and Words
Jove Belle
Andi Marquette
Clifford Henderson
Georgia Beers
Sandra Barret
Patty G. Henderson
Larkin Rose
Moondancer Drake
neneadams
Carsen Taite
R.G. Emanuelle
sacchigreen
What timing! Lesbian stories without the “main” attraction being romance. I am on my second draft of my first novel, protagonist lesbian, but the story is about pain, abandonment, loneliness etc. I have noticed publications such as Writer’s Digest has no lesbian catagory for their writing cometitions, not that I have finished my first fiction novel. But just sayin’! What is up with that? Anyone out there who would like to “friend” me on FB? Let me know! I would love to have a group of women who love women writers to correspond with! Excuse my dangling preposition!
Jaime Ste.Joan
Hey Jaime, I’ve got a facebook dedicated to the likes of us coming next. Stay tuned.
Great! Standing by. Let me and others know when! Jaime…
Will do.
I would add that there’s a distinction between “romance” and a book that contains a love story. There’s nothing that says Mainstream Lesbian Fiction wouldn’t contain a love story (though it might not). Where it will differ is in delivering the expected formula of the romance genre – girl meets girl, girl and girl have conflict before, during and after falling in love, girl and girl have sex (in varying degrees of explicitness), declare love, live happily ever after. Emphasis on the happily.
This is such a complex and sometimes touchy subject, one that has dogged lesbian fiction forever. I think we can all be ambassadors for the great breadth of lesbian fiction that’s out there. There’s something for everyone, and probably much more of it than you know.
Beautifully said, my dear friend. It is complex. Didn’t know it’s dogged lesfic forever. But then, I’m a newcomer. Thanks for putting in your two cents.
Try getting the lesfic reading community, fattened by an overabundance of romance and erotic, to read lesbian supernatural or horror mysteries with very little romance but lots of good mystery and paranormal stuff going on. I’m not exactly on the top ten reading lists of most of the major lesfic communities. LOL.
I write my supernatural stories with gripping plots, engaging characters and lots of action and character development. Unfortunately, there is little to no romance, no sex. It has been a hard trude. LOL.
I’d love to see where you can go with this, Clifford.
Patty G. Henderson
I feel your pain! But am excited by the description of your work. Will keep you posted.
Hey, Clifford.
When we started our ezine Khimairal Ink, we had the hardest problem convincing authors that they could write stories with lesbians in them without romance. One author said, “But I always want people to know how they met.” Our response was, why does there have to be a “they”? We wanted stories about women who happen to be lesbians. There doesn’t have to be two of them, attracted to each other to make a story. We were told no one wanted to write or read such stories.
We have 20 issues produced over six years that prove that writers and readers are interested in such stories. And these stories were written by lesbians, gay men, straight men, and straight women.
To bring it into perspective, when we announced that we were going on hiatus in putting out Khimairal Ink, one of the impassioned responses we received was from a straight woman who looked forward to reading every issue.
By the way, the inhouse term we’ve always used for the stories we seek for Khimarial Ink is Mainstream Lesbian Fiction.
We also follow the same philosophy for our Nuance Imprint. Romance may happen but that’s not what the books are all about.
Casey
Hey Casey,
Fascinating. I’m just learning about all this. I love the story about writers not knowing what else to write about besides love. Sheesh. Aren’t we all living complex lives? I think most romance writers, or the ones I know, are much more savvy. They know what readers want and aim to please. I just don’t have that built into my DNA I guess.
Cliffi
Sounds way cool. Keep us all posted!
I love it! Count me in. I hate the constraints of paranormal/mystery/romance – what about just a damn good story that happens to have lesbians in it?
I like that “damn good story.” : )
I like a “damn good story” too! A story with red meat and dry bones.
One of my reviewers wrote:
The plot is amazing and there is a tender love story cradled within it like a shy subplot peeping out from behind the hero.
This happens to be a perfect description of the kind of story I like best! I enjoy a love story, but I prefer it to be in a wider context.
I wish we could get away from genre categories. When asked what genre my book is, I never know what to say. When asked to describe it in 25 words or less, I usually say “it’s a hero’s journey story with a female protagonist,” which doesn’t mean much to most people who haven’t at least minored in comp lit.
I like the tags system on Amazon. For each element the story contains, you can create a tag. That tells me a lot more than the genre the author or publisher placed it in.
You and me both on the “what genre are you” question. Eek. I fumble and stutter finally landing on good stories with lesbian protagonists. How’s that for sad? ps. I’ve got an email in to the woman who does our ebooks to see how best to get “your prize” to you. : )
Let me stir things up a bit. There is a hierarchy out there–with genre and especially romance at the bottom of it. So I have to question why people feel the need to be ‘More than Romance’ instead of ‘Different than Romance’, or to claim that they don’t write genre. Even so called literary fiction is a genre. I think books are books and different books serve different needs and that’s okay. Sometimes it’s been a sucky day and it’s nice to curl up with two people as they fall in love.
That said, I don’t often read romances and I do not write romances. I totatly get that too often lesbians just expect lesbian books to be a romance. I recently saw a discussion that complained that my books don’t end ‘happily ever after.’ I write hard-boiled, noir detective books. Happily ever after? I think not. It is very frustrating to have your books read for the wrong reasons with the wrong expectations (or not read at all) because we don’t just through the ‘happily ever after hoop.’
Ultimately, genre is marketing tool. It’s a way for readers to find the kinds of books they like and it’s a way for writers to target the audience that will appreciate their books. The problem comes when a book contains elements of several genres.
My books are often considered fantasy because they contain many elements typical of the fantasy genre–a quest, a hero’s journey with the usual cast of archetypal characters. But there are no fantastical creatures, and no magic other than what the people of the time and place would have believed in. So technically it’s historical fiction, except for the fact that most people associate historical fiction with costume dramas or something set in the last few hundred years, not Bronze Age Britain.
Add a lesbian maintext and now you have a hero’s journey story with a female protagonist who happens to be a lesbian and it has a quest and it’s historically, if not accurate, at least plausible, and it has a love story that ends happily. Somebody tell me, please, what genre is that?
Jean, You are not the only one to point out that More than Romance isn’t quite right. Others have emailed me directly, however. Perhaps not wanting to make waves. Still looking for a good tag, though. One that would leave room for those of us floating between genres. Ruth suggested: Spinning LGBTQ Tales for Discerning Readers. Which I think is fun. Any suggestions?????? Anyone? I’m listening.
Hey, Cliffi, I didn’t mean to call you out–but to spur debate. Why are lesbians so attached to romances? Even in the straight world romance is considered at the bottom rung–perhaps sexism? How do we as writers communicate with readers about our books? How–or even can we educate the audience to be interested in soemthing besides happily ever after?
Hey. All good. I’m thrilled for the dialogue. And as soon as I can get the wording right, I’m putting a facebook page together for writers and readers of non-romance lesbian fiction so we can continue this dialogue. It seems to be hitting a nerve, which I think is great!
To the best of my knowldge, in the straight world romance outsells all other fiction genres combined. It’s in no way bottom rung, at least not in terms of sales. Lesbian romance also outsells all other lesbian fiction genres combined. Again, definitely not bottom rung. And not surprising, really; why would lesbian readers be all that different to straight female readers with regards to the genre they prefer? You can’t make people read something they don’t want to. However, the enduring existence of other genres — fantasy, murder mysteries, horror — demonstrate that these genres do have readers. The lesbian proportion of that readership, however, will be small, and probably won’t cross over to romance readers. It’s why the lesbian presses seem to always insist on their books having a romantic subplot: the nonromance lesbian readership is too small to make it worthwhile to publish books for them.
I will agree though that romance is, while not bottom rung in sales, often dissed as “not real writing”. This is partly because it is written by women for women. Literature throughout history has been dominated by men. Women’s writing has never been taken as seriously as men’s, and fiction written for women has always been dismissed as trivial compared to fiction written for men. (You see this in all genres: there are constant ongoing battles, especially in science fiction, as to why women are so under represented and why all of the “Best Of” and “Must Read” lists never include female authors.) It is also partly because heterosexual romance novels (with historicals in particular being exemplifiers) reinforce the stereotype that there is only one brief period in a woman’s life where she herself is interesting, where she does things worth reading about, and where she has any control over her life: the period where she is coming out of the protection/ownership of her father but not yet under the protection/ownership of her husband. It’s an ugly subliminal message in fiction: men do interesting things throughout all their lives; women are only interesting when they are being courted and falling in love.
Oops. Quick, someone push me off my soapbox…..
An interesting idea about women’s “brief period where women are interesting.” Makes sense. As for the rung, I think it depends on what ladder you’re looking at. Certainly, if it’s sales, Romance is top rung! I guess what I’m trying to do is stir up some interest in lesbian fiction that is not strictly romance. There must be other readers out there like me who prefer books about lesbians facing other challenges. Thanks for weighing in!
I’m a reader of lesbian books. I’m not a lesbian so I never looked for it before. I’ve only come to read lesbian recently but through the door of romance and erotica.
I only even started reading romance/erotica in the last few years. Before that was mostly mystery/suspense with the smatterings of off beat authors like Tom Robbins. I even read all of Rita Mae Brown’s books years ago not even getting the lesbian angle of it. I just loved her writing and books thinking them quirky and funny.
I’m one of those readers who doesn’t need the romance or the sex, I want a good story. But I find that before I started reading ebooks, I would have never come across a book with a lesbian character in a book store because they are usually tucked away under women’s studies and not visible unless you ask and all of them are usually romance or erotica or non fiction.
And at this point, I still find it hard to find stories with lesbian characters when the story is not a romance. The only books that come to mind that I’ve read are Laurie King’s Kate Martinelli’s mystery series. And I only found out about that because I met her at a Bouchercon and looked up her books and saw she was listed under lesbian. So a lot of it is just chance for me.
I would love, love to read more mystery/suspense/adventure with lesbian characters in which a love story is not necessarily the main target.
Do you authors always put the label Lesbian in even if the story doesn’t revolve around the character being a lesbian, but a character who happens to be a lesbian? Because the first thing I type in is “lesbian” and then romance, or mystery, or sci fi, etc to find books. I’d have to wade through thousands of books if I just typed in mystery and hoped that I’d see a blur with lesbian in it.
Clifford,
If you do set up the Facebook page, I may be forced to get back to Facebook. I quit it and don’t miss it, but would love to support such a movement within the lesfic community.
Can you post here when you’ve got the Facebook page up? This has been a wonderful conversation with intelligent and thought-provoking posts. It is evident that there is a sizable amount of lesbian readers who are eager for lesfic lit that isn’t a romance or erotica.
Let’s get to it, then. I’m for marching arm n arm, sistahs! LOL.
Patty G. Henderson
Hey Patty, will for sure post. I’ll be singing it from the rooftops. I think we all need to stick together. Power in numbers. Let’s give our readers a place to find us. We’ll “reach across the aisle” so to speak, authors from all publishers to make our voices heard. Sheesh. I think I missed my calling as a politician. : )
Interesting post, Fran. I tend to agree with most of your points. Sure, Clifford, there are definitely lesfic readers who like something other than romance, but the problem is, as Fran pointed out, the lesfic niche is so small, that the proportion of those readers is miniscule. Pittance. And then you have to split that small slice of the pie with multiple genres…..mystery, sf and horror. And even in those genres, romance is oftentimes very prominent if not the driving force. It has been a real struggle for me to find a readership…..