London Calling by Clare Lydon

A well crafted and juicy lesbian chick-lit that is one of the strongest to come in publication since the deluge of self-e-publishing came along.
 
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Release Date: February 28^th 2014

Available digitally: from Feb 28^th on Kindle
Print version: Coming soon 

While accessible publishing has led to a marked increase in lesbian fiction, the quality across the board is variable. That is not the case with Clare Lydon's London Calling which is as strong as any mainstream straight chick lit from a major publisher. 

It a nutshell, it's got everything you would expect from the genre, along with a heavy dose of real-world lesbian culture thrown in.

Jess Sharp is at a crossroads - back in London, living in her parents’ spare room, jobless and single. Not quite the irresistible package she was aiming for at age 32.

One night, things take an upward turn when she meets someone who could be a game-changer.  However, everything in her riotously chaotic life seems to get in the way, including her best friend’s wedding, far too much tequila and the ghosts of girlfriends past.  The course of true love has never been so injury-prone.

Will Jess eventually overcome her romantic ineptitude and find her happy ever after? Or will she continue to trip over her own feet in the race for romance?

Lydon says that the inspiration came from reading a lot of similar style novels but many tended to be set in America. "I enjoyed those greatly but wanted to read books set in the UK, books that reflected the world I live in. So I put finger to keyboard. Of course, as soon as I did that I started discovering all the other UK-based authors but thought I’d carry on anyway…"

The novel's been a long time coming, Lydon says "I’ve started and stopped writing this novel many times over the past four years, but last year I put on my serious game face and finished the first draft. Then it was a case of getting feedback and editing like a ninja. What I learned in the edit process was that I write the word ‘arse’ a lot. I’m arse-obsessed, clearly."

Find out more at: www.clarelydon.co.uk

Twitter: @clarelydon

Absolution – S Anne Gardner

Tragedy overtook Cristina Uraca Alacala when she was 9 years old. Her socialite parents, linked to the Spanish Royal family, killed in a road traffic accident along with her adored younger sister. Ever since her loving grandmother has shielded her from the world and refused to talk about her family.

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But inside she seethes with the need to know what really happened. She knows there was scandal, but nobody will explain why. She knows she has blocked memories – she didn’t speak for a year after the trauma – but nothing has yet triggered her recall.

Eventually she breaks away from her grandmother’s enforced cocoon to search out the answers in America. Her research uncovers just one name, Annais Francesca D’Autremond. So when the opportunity presents to meet the woman who can explain her past Christina cannot resist.

She knows her life will never be the same, but has no idea how far her discoveries will take them both.

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This is the third of S Anne Gardner’s books I have read and reviewed. They are all well written, well crafted and, most unusually, all completely different.

Unlike the more traditional lesbian romance of “The very thought of You” (which I loved) I complained that “Till there was You” was melodramatic and bodice ripping. It was. But now I have read “Absolution” I think there is also a trace of madness in the overwhelming passion.

“Absolution” was an interesting read. Almost the whole book is written in the first person. We only get Grandmother and Francesca’s emotions from Christina’s viewpoint. Inside Christina’s head is not a settled and balanced place to be. As the story unfolds her moods and emotions take increasingly wide swings which make it heard to follow and sometimes hard to empathize with. As her memories wake she is literally torn between the desire to forget and stay in a cocooned ‘here and now’ with Francesca, and the history which is dragging her into reality and self realization.

I am not going to discuss the end of the book, not even close, as the concluding chapters take us somewhere I didn’t expect to go. No matter how clever you are you wont have guessed all the twists this plot unfurls.

What I can say is that what we witness is a character unraveling as the truth invades her sheltered mind on all sorts of levels. From her own memories, the poignant reminders Francesca brings, visiting Spain, everything leads her to a tortured place which took me back to the “Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman. Having spent her life believing she was different from her selfish and uncaring parents she gradually recognises quite how like her family she really is.

What the book left me with was a sense of disquiet. I think I enjoyed it, I was certainly challenged by it. I am glad I read it. And now I can’t quite decide if I am really looking forward to Ms Gardner’s back catalogue or feel like following Christina’s example and walking away from reality.

First published 2014 

Publisher: Affinity Ebook Press NZ LTD (20 Jan 2014)

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Also published on Lesbian Reading Room
By Velvet Lounger

 

Secret Lies – Amy Dunne

Jenny is one of those popular girls who appear to have it all. She is attractive, put together, confident. The other girls want to be her, the boys want to have her. But underneath the false bravado is a mess. She blames herself for the death of her adored Gran, hates what she has made herself into and the never-ending pretence to keep it up. She hates herself to the point of self harm. She has sought help, but that doesn’t stop the feelings, doesn’t stop the pain.

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Nic is the outcast. Wearing her winter uniform in a heatwave, ostracized as an oddity, she doesn’t mix, doesn’t integrate. She is bullied and abused by the girls at school. She feels invisible. But under the long sleeved top she hides a terrible secret, one of violence and abuse. Away from the nastiness of teenage girls she is fighting for her very survival.

Nobody would ever expect these two 17 year olds to be friends. They inhabit polar opposite places in their social world. But a chance encounter makes Jenny reach out in kindness, revealing to Nic that there is another side to her from the shallow, selfish, bully. And as Jenny coaxes Nic to open up a friendship starts to form.

Nic is the observant one, more sensitive to other people’s emotions. Soon she recognizes that Jenny also has a secret. And although it takes her a while to break through, her gentle persistence eventually allows Jenny to open up for the very first time.

As their friendship develops so does their attraction. Thrown together by an accident, they quickly become each others strength. Together they can escape from the secrets and lies, from the pain they have both suffered.

They both know that ‘coming out’ is a huge step. They plan to keep their love secret while they sort out their lives. But Jenny’s bitchy and dominating older sister, alerted by her spys, comes home for the very purpose of removing Nic from Jenny’s life. When she discovers that Nic is a lesbian, she uses every means to separate and destroy them.

Will Jenny fight for her new found love, fight to be the person who is emerging from under the brittle façade or will she cave in to the social pressure and bullying older sister? And while Jenny is deciding who she wants to be, can Nic hold on to hope for a future and stop the abuse to reclaim her own life.

This is an excellent and enthralling first novel.  Amy Dunne has caught the mood of 17 year-old emotions and experience brilliantly. On the one hand it is a tale of young adults emerging and exploring, with all the angst and melodrama that entails. On the other it is a serious exploration of both abuse and self harm and the impact they have on these girls internal and public lives.

The two main characters are wonderfully complex and layered. They are still children, investigating live and love, finding their sexuality and passion, learning who they are and who they want to be. But they are also adults, at least partly because of the secret pain they both suffer and the growing up that has caused.

What we see is the juxtaposition of those – the young adult emerging and trying to balance their teenage hormones and dramas with adult sensibilities and emotions. One minute they are falling in love and in lust, they next they are sulking and fighting like children. They both understand the pressures of their social world, but are not yet quite sure how to manage it and be themselves.

The story resonated with me. Despite being old enough to be their parent it brought back memories of those angst filled days. The pain of falling in love, the fight to be oneself, to create a space and a separate identity while still wanting and needing parental support and love.

Ms Dunne’s portrayal of the abuse was hard to read. I can’t speak to its realism as a survivor, but it felt all too real. Nic’s internal fight to stay alive, stay sane, stay together under the brutal mental and physical torture was intensely emotional. And Jenny’s self loathing and self abuse was extremely well written, along with her Rizzo like shell and underlying vulnerability.

The book flows. It is well written and well crafted. The dialogue is realistic. It is a well paced story which kept me reading into the night. As well as the teenage melodrama of first loves and social pressure the novel contains real tension. There are places you can see the pain about to descend and almost want to stop, but were dragged forward waiting to see how these two girls would survive, if they would survive.

There are also ongoing and layered peaks and troughs. Jenny and Nic face emotional battles coming to terms with their new sexual identity both internally, between them and with family and friends. At the same time they are facing a literally physical battle to stop Nic’s abuse, and in the build up and aftermath there is real fear for the outcome.

My only criticism, and this is minor, was that Elizabeth’s complete reversal from Bible-bashing super-bully bitch to supportive sister was hard to believe. Unlike Laura and Jack who are lightly drawn and allowed to develop their natural goodness, Elizabeth’s transformation feels forced. Her ‘protective’ excuse for her overbearing behavior is not enough to explain her extreme volte-face. In retrospect she was, perhaps, too viscously drawn as a homophobic bully to realistically change so completely.

But that slight jar does not detract from a wonderful book. I thoroughly enjoyed reading it, couldn’t put it down. Congratulations to Amy Dunne for an excellent first novel and to BSB for picking it up. While the American audience will no doubt complain that they don’t understand our school system (we Brits have had to learn yours) I for one am delighted to see a new British talent emerge. Looking forward to watching Ms Dunne develop this gift.

Also published at Lesbian Reading Room
By Velvet Lounger

High Desert – Katherine V. Forrest

High Desert is the ninth in the Kate Delafield detective series and once again plunges us into a combination of crime and personal crisis.

 

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Nearly ten years after the last installment Kate has retired and now faces an empty world without ‘the job’ which has filled her world for 25 years and the love of her despairing partner, Aimee. She even has to cope with the imminent prospect of losing her best friend, Maggie Schaeffer.

Kate has always struggled with her own demons, and in this book they provide the biggest battle. She can still front aggressive bikers, sweet-talk nutty neighbours, out-think pyromaniac murderers and out-run a ring of fire. But she has yet to deal with her own internal issues.

The plot finds Kate helping her old lieutenant, now Captain Walcott, who is concerned that Kate’s ex-partner has vanished while on enforced leave. Kate soon discovers that he has disappeared on purpose and carefully covered his traces. As her off-the-record investigations develop she tracks down his sister and finds the reason for both his long-term reticence to share his family background and his current precarious hideout, where he is waiting for his vengeful brother to appear.

Of much more importance to long-term Detective Delafield fans are the personal stories threaded around and through the ‘detective’ novel. First Maggie Schaeffer, owner of the Nightwood Bar and Kate’s closest friend, confidante and rock, is dying of lung cancer in a hospice, and pleading with Kate to help her end her life with dignity. Second, Kate’s forced retirement has left not just a void, but a vacuum in her life. She was ‘the job’ and without it she is lost. But even more than that, the horrors of a life filled with death can no longer be buried by the next case and the next crisis, and so they come back to haunt Kate in blood-drenched dreams.

Kate’s reaction to a lifetime of loss, a lifetime of suppressing her feelings and protecting those around her, both physically and emotionally, is to drink until she can no longer feel. And so the adorable and long-suffering Aimee, on-again, off-again partner of 19 years, has gone as well – relegated to a cold and empty rented cottage, living out of boxes and reading magazines while she waits for Kate to sort out her life.

For those who just read this book as a one-off crime novel this may all come as a revelation. But for those of us who have been reading Forrest’s books for 30 years, Kate and Aimee, Maggie, Joe and all the rest are old friends. They have lives and histories and have been part of our psyche since the first novel, Amateur City, was published in 1984. Revisiting their lives, remembering the earlier stories and re-engaging with them 10 years on is like going to a school reunion with a bunch of people you had forgotten, but never stopped loving.

Forrest’s brilliance is in the depth of her characters and the honesty and integrity of her story lines. Both her main players and the minor characters are very real. Kate has always touched the lives of many during her investigations; indeed, it is her interactions with the people she meets which make her more than just a detective – from women at the Nightwood Bar who became her family to the Hollywood has-beens of the Beverly Malibu. High Desert reminds us of them and introduces new faces. The lightest of touches brings back Patton and her yachting cap, Taylor’s retirement to grow avocados in Fallbrook, Tori and the friendly fire.

We have a myriad of lesbian crime and lesbian romance novels these days, in no small part thanks to the pioneering work and leadership of Forrest herself. What sets the Kate Delafield novels apart is that they are painful for their characters, they are not easy rollercoasters to follow and they don’t have happy emotional endings. The characters have matured as the series has progressed, as have we, the readers. The only person who hasn’t developed is Kate herself, because she has refused to face the biggest truth: that ‘protecting’ those closest to her has allowed her to hide from herself.

The importance of Katherine V. Forrest in modern lesbian literature cannot be overstated. Curious Wine was the first unabashed, modern and full-on lesbian romance written by a woman for women. While today it may strike some as tame and dated, at the time it was groundbreaking in its honesty. Before Curious Wine we had the depressing melodrama of Radclyffe Hall’s Well of Loneliness and the pulp fiction novels of the 1950s and ’60s that felt more like male porn than something women could relate to. Forrest gave us something romantic and soppy, unrealistic in its simplicity, but real in terms of how we felt and how we loved. Then she introduced a whole new genre – the lesbian detective novel. Before the hugely successful Val McDermid, before Claire McNab, Radclyffe and all the others who have followed, there was Katherine V. Forrest’s Kate Delafield.

Forrest has won multiple Lambda Literary Awards, a Golden Crown and the Lambda Literary Foundation’s Pioneer Award. She was senior editor at Naiad for 10 years, and supervising editor at Spinsters Ink during the critical blooming of lesbian fiction. She has edited hundreds of women’s works and dozens of anthologies, and has written book reviews and articles for many major publications. She served on the Lambda Literary Foundation board as president for many years and was instrumental in founding the LGBT Writers’ Retreat.

For many writers and readers Forrest is not only a groundbreaking leading light who opened up lesbian literature for new authors and audiences; she is one of the cornerstones who has supported, improved and developed the whole genre. Perhaps now she has retired from her key roles her fans can look forward to a flurry of books to make up for the long silence. Roll on the next Kate Delafield story – I can’t wait.

Product info:

Paperback: 264 pages First published 2014 Publisher: Spinsters Ink Books (18 Jan 2014)  ISBN-10: 1935226657

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Also published at Lesbian Reading Room
By Velvet Lounger

Heart Stopper by RJ Samuel

Heart Stopper By RJ Samuel

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Available: RRP $4.99 All e formats


Heart Stopper is RJ Samuel's first novel, and allows the author the opportunity to explore and demonstrate her first hand medical knowledge.

Opening with the discovery of a dead body, Priya quickly recognises her boss has died and possibly been murdered in his own apartment, where she finds herself but can't remember how she got there.

Part medical drama, part crime thriller, part romantic drama, the story follows Priya as she tried to unravel what happened to her boss that night, her role in his death and a complicated new love interest. 

Heart Stopper is right on the money with the scientific detail - reminiscent of early Michael Crichton - and an intriguing love story between two appealing female characters, and both are stories of the heart.

A fantastic first novel that combines drama, attention to detail and a compulsive attraction. 

We caught up with author RJ Samuel about the writing process and the story behind Heart Stopper. 

Samuel explains, "Heart Stopper was my first novel so I had to do a lot of research on writing novels first. Then I focused on the pacemaker-specific research. My background is in medicine and IT. As I hadn’t been near anything academically medicine-related in over 20 years, I needed to re-learn some basic physiology, learn about the pacemaker/medical devices industry and pacemaker programming, and study electrophysiology. 

"I was very conscious that readers in the technology-based thriller genre can be very critical if the technology is not accurate or at least plausible (if invented from scratch). I did not have access to pacemaker specialists (as I was reluctant to take up anyone’s time), so I used old textbooks, websites, company brochures etc. I wanted the details to be as accurate as possible and I wanted to make the scenario as realistic as possible, so I ended up having to work out a plausible technical solution to an invented problem (I’m a little frightened that it could actually work).  

"I tried to incorporate it into the story and tried to explain much of the medical side in a non-technical way, in the way I would like to get it as a reader myself. I thought I had managed that, but I do get a few readers who would have preferred less medical detail. And I have to say, when I re-read it after a year, I couldn’t remember my research and found I had to pay close attention when I got to the medical bits. The great thing is that readers have been gripped by the story and the characters and those who don’t seek out medical nitty-gritty have said it didn’t take away from their enjoyment of the book."

As the role of  geography plays such an important part in both Heart Stopper and the Vision Painter series, Samuel talks about what Ireland means to her, "I’m only realising now that location has had more of an influence on my writing than I thought. I describe myself as an outsider looking out and my first three books are written from the point of view of characters like that. So my sense of place colours my descriptions i.e. even though I ‘ve live here for almost thirty years, the Ireland I describe might highlight little details that an Irish person living in that location all their lives might not focus on, might not even notice as special. 

"My experience of the weather in Ireland, for example, is influenced by my childhood in Nigeria and (a little bit) in India. Again my descriptions of Kerala are based on my visiting there as an outsider who has an ‘in’ i.e. I appear Indian, I have family there, but I have not got the insider’s experience of living there. Sometimes, visiting the locations also has a direct influence on the story line e.g. a character appears in Heart Stopper (and affects the story) who is based on a chance meeting when I went to research an area in Connemara. I’m finding it difficult to write protagonists who should feel like they belong in a location i.e. Irish-born, Irish-grown, Irish-stayed, so I’m having to working twice as hard to describe the locations from their point of view."

On genre, Samuel says "I found it challenging at first to write in the thriller genre. I started Heart Stopper intending it as a pure medical thriller and I tried to follow the rules of writing in that genre, but I found myself telling a story of how an ordinary character would react when facing extraordinary circumstances, circumstances that were not necessarily dramatic and obvious, but were the result of decisions made over a period. Issues came up in the story that I had not expected to write in a medical thriller, - outsider, racism, family, cultural issues. 

"As a result, readers and reviewers have expressed a difficulty in categorising Heart Stopper, but the consensus is that it is more than the sum of its individual genres."

By Katie 

The Vision Painter - Falling Colours & Casting Shadows by RJ Samuel

Falling Colours and Casting Shadows by RJ Samuel
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Get your copy: £3.08 (E book all versions & print and Casting Shadows)

These two books are part of a series about Kiran the only vision painter in Ireland, a concept, I found so fascinating I looked it up on Google, before realising these books are written within the magic realism and crime genres. I would say that the lesbian aspects are incidental, by that I mean unlike much lesbian fiction where the whole book centres around two woman meeting, falling in love and graphic descriptions of them having lots of sex. In these books two lesbians meet, fall in love and build a life together in the midst of the main plotlines of vision painting and murder. I don't want to say too much more about the story lines so as to not give anything away and spoil your enjoyment of these books.

R. J. Samuel is a captivating writer, her stories are intriguing and I couldn't put the books down in my urgency to see what happened next. She creates wonderful worlds that are easy to picture and imagine because of the way she brings them to life. She captures life in Ireland extremely well and I imagine does the same with India although I've never been there. Her characters are well developed and believable, I really felt like I was with them as they faced their life challenges. For example, she writes well about a proud Indian man's struggle around having a lesbian daughter and his internal and external expression of that struggle.

Once I started reading each book I couldn't put them down but they are also quite different from each other. The first one is faster paced, there is a race against time and a criminal force which makes the book exciting as you wait to find out what happens. The second book is gentler and slower paced but equally gripping as you share Kiran's journey to understand the traditions behind vision painting and its influence on the people she loves today.

In summary I would definitely recommend these books, they are well written, engaging and absorbing. I look forward to reading what she writes next. 

The interview

We caught up with author RJ Samuel who gave some insight behind the series. "Like many people, I had encountered The Secret, and other books like it, and I sat down one night and wrote out what I thought I wanted in my life and I ended up focusing on and going for what I wrote. 

"I got everything on the piece of paper, but things went spectacularly wrong. I used to joke that The Secret ruined my life, but I also knew that was only true because I had focused on what I thought should be in my life, on what other people wanted for my life, or for their lives. I had forgotten to mention what would make me happy, to even consider my own dreams, because at the time I did not figure out what those dreams were. 

"As I got my life back together, I joined a writing class, wrote short stories and did writing exercises, and then published Heart Stopper (a medical thriller). I began to freak out slightly over the appearance in my life of things that I wrote about and when I had to do an exercise in writing magical realism, I had a few ideas floating around in my head - of wishing for things, writing about things that then happened, and being careful to focus on happiness.   

"I didn’t want to write about a writer so as one of my hobbies is painting, I sat down to write a short story about a vision painter, amalgamating those ideas into the concept of a painter who could paint people’s visions for their lives and how things could go wrong if people did not ask for the things that might make them happy.  The story flowed out in one go, it felt right, and it was very well received. When I decided to turn it into a novel, I kept the concept and the beginning and some of the end of the short story, but then I started asking ‘What if’ questions and from there I worked out the story that became ‘Falling Colours’."

Samuel discusses process "My writing process has panned out differently for each of the four novels so far. I started Heart Stopper with enthusiasm and was more than halfway through when I got stuck, bogged down in detail. I was lucky enough to find a book on structured writing (Story Engineering – Larry Brooks) that appealed to my logical side and I developed a way of working on a novel that suits my rational as well as my creative sides after I found that it worked very well for me on Heart Stopper. 

"I used the same process for Falling Colours and Casting Shadows, but the two books progressed at very different paces and with different levels of energy. My first three novels were each written within 6 months, but the fourth is taking a lot longer. 

"My process involves - taking an idea through stages of ‘what-if’ questions until it becomes a premise, working out the structure of the story and developing the characters, researching any areas in which I don’t have experience, writing out the planned scenes (adjusting for necessary changes based on my character/plot development), editing (I do a lot of editing as I write – I wish I didn’t, but my left brain won’t stop interfering), getting feedback from beta readers, and incorporating useful feedback. 

"The rational process has been the same for all the books, but the emotional process has been vastly different. For example, Falling Colours flowed out easily, and even though it dealt with some darker issues, I had fun writing it. In contrast, Casting Shadows was more emotionally draining and while it still has humour, (I try to express the lighter side as much as possible), it delved further into dark issues, some of which I could not find a way to lighten. 

"I’m finding it difficult to finish the fourth novel. It has been, again, structurally fine, but emotionally harrowing. I know I have to conquer the emotional side of writing to be able to continue writing professionally and the challenge for me is to do this while remaining true to what I want to express in my stories. I read a lot about writing, in books and online articles, written by professional writers who have successfully managed this, and I hope to learn how to overcome this latest challenge."

By Claire