Pirate Web Sites

There is a discussion on Facebook about a site that is offering people's books for download free. We're not talking about older books that have been around and probably run through the bulk of their sales. Authors are finding their books that have just been released on these sites. No one is posting the site, I don't blame them, and I won't either. YOU know if you've been downloading books for free though.

This reminds me of when they started offering downloaded music and people thought they were "clever" because they were getting music free. This isn't right, folks. I know some of us have limited funds and books, even some ebooks, can be expensive, but taking a person's work for free is just plain theft. It's the same thing as me finding out you're not home and forgot to lock your front door, so I go in and clean out your refrigerator because I can. It's the same as your neighbor finding a way to tap into your cable or whatever and getting internet, phone and TV services free while you pay the bill.

If you want to read books and your money is seriously limited, there are things you can do:

1. Ask your local library to order the books.

2. Many authors give away free books all of the time.

   Enter their drawings or whatever they're doing.

3. Borrow books from friends you know who buy them.

4. Many of the book publishers and different groups have

   ways of helping you get some books. Ask them.

5. Join one of the many online groups and see if there is

   someone there who will share with you or give you some

   books free. That doesn't get the author a sale, but

   someone paid for the book at one point.

Please don't take free books from any site "just because you can." Most of these authors don't make that much money to begin with. Don't drive them out of the business just so you can put something over on someone.

Besides, it's just not fair.

Tangled Roots by Marianne K. Martin

Publisher:                   Bywater Books

A good book has engaging characters and a plot that holds the reader’s interest. An outstanding book takes those attributes and adds a message, teaches a lesson or allows the reader to understand something that may not have been clear to that person before. An author rises to the top of a genre and gains the respect of the people who read those books by developing this ability. Marianne Martin has produced a string of award winning books because she spends her time writing carefully, researching the topic and going over the book to make sure it is in the best form possible before it is released. Martin also isn’t afraid to tackle difficult topics, which is abundantly clear in Tangled Roots, the prequel to her earlier work, Under the Witness Tree.

Tangled Roots is set in a period of US history that was almost as stressful as the civil war it followed.  Many of the characters remember that war and the period of adjustments that followed it. Those changes led to others that will sweep in the Progressive movement, a time when many people, especially women and African Americans, hoped that true justice and political equality would be achieved for everyone. Jim Crow laws, the Ku Klux Klan and lynching battled with the creation of the NAACP and the eloquence of Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. Du Bois. The stifling concept of women as nothing but breeders and homemakers was confronted by the steely determination of Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony and Alice Paul for women to have greater opportunities. The conflict in the book comes between those who cannot accept the new ideas and those who yearn for them.

The story focuses on Addy Grayson, her granddaughter Anna and Anna’s best friend Nessie, a descendent of the slaves who once worked for the Graysons. Addy survived the Civil War, but questions whether she has the energy to deal with raising her granddaughters and confronting their bigoted father. She is rejuvenated when a younger woman introduces her to new ideas and she finds the ability to finally deal with an old secret. Anna and Nessie begin as two little girls who like to play with each other and share dreams. They don’t recognize the racial divide that both of their families keep throwing in their ways until they are older, but they share the frustration of being told that women can’t have the lives they hope to pursue. They are caught up in the stresses of their time, the expectations of both families and the growing awareness that their childhood love has turned into something much deeper and forbidden. Addy is the pillar they both lean on.

Tangled Roots is a compact novel. It’s hard to believe that Martin deals with so many complex issues in just over 200 pages. She’s able to do so because she chooses her words and her scenes carefully. This isn’t meant to be a history of the period, but a snippet, the events as seen through the eyes of her three main characters. Martin avoids the trap of wandering around addressing issues that were important to the time, but not to her story. Yet there is a richness in the scenes that comes off of the pages and leads the reader to have a beginning understanding of what this period and these women were about. This is the type of book that is not too heavy to bog down people in the many conflicts of the period, but that leads readers to other books and resources to find out what else happened during this time of drama and change, triumph and dreams deferred.

Marianne Martin has written a book that weaves a tapestry of history and romance with the lives of the characters. It will cause the reader to think, but not to feel that she’s been lectured to. Don’t let its size fool you. There is a lot to be absorbed here. An outstanding book has engaging characters, an interesting plot and leads its reader to greater knowledge. Tangled Roots certainly does all of that.

The demise of Blue Feather and the role of small companies

I've been thinking for a while about what to say about the news that Blue Feather is closing.  I keep trying to straighten out the jumble of thoughts I'm having.

First, like everyone, I'm sad to hear about Blue Feather.  I talk to Emily Reed a lot and I know she's been struggling to keep the company going by herself while she dealt with children and a full time job and life in general.  I thought highly of Blue Feather before I ever met Em.  She focused on quality and not quantity, which appeals to me more and more.  She also published "different" authors.  By that I mean those that didn't always fit the cookie cutter mold.  I didn't care for every book the company put out, but I found them refreshing in their uniqueness.  How can you argue with a company that brought us Joan Opyr, Kieran York, Chris Paynter, Erica Lawson, Kelly Sinclair and others?  And I would defy anyone to find a mistake in a Blue Feather book.  Yes, this is a great loss indeed.

I don't think we give our "smaller" publishers enough credit.  It's almost funny talking about smaller publishers among small publishers.  Even Bella and BSB are small in comparison to mainstream companies, but our small presses are truly small. 

My sister Leigh and I toured the Bywater plant when we visited Marianne Martin recently.  It didn't take much.  We stepped from the house into the garage and there it was.  There is a little office with a copier and then the books are stockpiled in another section of the garage.  If you order a book from the Bywater site, you might not know it, but it's sent to you by Marianne Martin herself.  Yet, when I looked on the shelves, there was Joan Opyr, Bett Norris, Wynn Malone, Jill Malone, Georgia Beers and Marianne.  I suspect there are similar setups at Affinity, Bedazzled, Sapphire and the others.

In the rush to self-publishing, we need to give the really small presses more credit.  They usually can't hire full staffs.  They hire editors and cover artists by the job and when you email the company, you're just as likely to hear directly from the owner.  They don't have warehouses, secretaries or whatever.  They may use a distribution company, but that's about it.  Yet, many of the words I used about Blue Feather would also apply to these companies.  Bella and BSB turn out huge numbers of books now, but, with a few exceptions, they have a disturbing familiarity.  It's the really small companies that are taking a risk on some of the more daring writers.  For that reason alone, I hope we don't lose more of them.

Chris Paynter and Karen Badger have already announced they're going to self-publish.  Karen has a snappy logo for Badger-Bliss Books.  I hope they do well.  Catherine Wilson gave a wonderful presentation at the GCLS conference about how time encompassing this is if you really want to sell your books.

To the other authors, don't disappear on us.  There are companies that will probably come to you.  Find a place where you are comfortable.  Let us know what you're doing and keep the books coming.

Why you need to attend a GCLS conference if you read lesbian literature

In ancient times, it was common for tribes to split up their members and send them to live in different parts of the territory so that everyone would have plenty of resources to survive.  Once a year however, they would have a meeting of the tribe to reconnect with friends and family, celebrate accomplishments, perform important rituals and make decisions for the coming year.  It occurred to me today, as I began my journey home, that this is exactly what a Golden Crown Literary Society conference is about.  It is a coming together of a tribe.  We meet, we greet, we support, we laugh, we cry.  We hug, we argue and we tease each other.  Most importantly, we learn things about each other, the books and the components of putting them together.

 
I think this year's conference might be the best one ever.  I don't know if it was by planning or luck, but the sessions seemed to be very seriously planned and they provoked some very interesting discussions about the literature and where it is headed.  There were a lot of new people here and people who don't come very often.  I hope they're encouraged to keep coming after this conference.

The speeches by Ann Bannon (about what she went through to get published) and Lori Lake (about the history of the literature) were particularly effective and reached the crowd.  There was a powerful session where readers spoke out about what they wanted to see in the books.  I was very happy to see that a number of authors attended to hear what we had to say.  KG MacGregor facilitated a panel called "I Wish I'd Written That" that involved Georgia Beers, Katherine Forrest and Karin Kallmaker.  Salem West led a discussion about "Editors' Pet Peeves."  Excellent.

I attended the first half of a class by Lynn Ames and Sandra Moran on researching and writing historical fiction, then had to miss the second half to attend a session on character building given by Linda Kay Silva.  It's a shame they were against each other because every author could have benefited from them.  My sister attended the session about young adult literature offered by Andi Marquette and felt that it was very good.  I took notes on Katherine Forrest's Master Class about what has to be in a manuscript and there was a spirited discussion in the session on the role of tragedy in LGBT novels.  Catherine Wilson gave a commanding explanation how how to market your novel to the mainstream.  She had me convinced it could be done, if you're willing to invest the time.

Other sessions included writing freedom, how to write mysteries and horror stories, create cover art, researching complex issues in government, politics and law and many others.  There were also author chats and author readings.  There were things to engage a variety of people and, while a lot of serious discussion went on, there was plenty of laughter.  There was even a discussion about how to write about food, which I made a point to avoid.

After going through some shaky years, the GCLS seems to be on a firm footing and growing.  More importantly, it appears to be growing into the type of organization that I have advocated for over the years.  A number of the winners of this year's awards gave credit to members of the GCLS who mentored, beta read or edited for them.  They met at the conferences.  There are education programs being offered, online interview shows, and more and more books being nominated from companies and people not associated with the bigger publishers.  Now GCLS is going to make a push to add more diversity of all kinds to the membership.  We need to get those younger people involved.  GCLS can be meaningful for a lot of people.  My sister, who is the niece and sister of lesbians and the mother of a young gay man found Ann Bannon's speech especially meaningful.

GCLS is not cheap to attend.  There's the conference, room, food and other things to pay for, but the members didn't hesitate to dig into their pockets andto raise money to help support the programs and create scholarships.  A number of women attended because of the generosity of other women and even more will be able to do so next year.  It's not just a great learning experience, but where else can you get warm and strong hugs from so many women, many of whom are the authors you enjoy.  One young author said that, because of where she lives, she didn't think she'd ever been in a room with more than two or three lesbians at a time, so seeing 300 of them at once was a life changing experience.

The conference is in New Orleans next year during the last week of July.  That's the lower middle of the country, so most of us are within reach.  I feel pretty safe in saying that, once you attend a conference, you'll wonder why you didn't before.  Come and see if I'm right.

The Raid by Lee Lynch

Publisher:                   Bold Strokes Books

Every movement needs its historians, especially those who were in the actual vanguard of the activities.  People need to remember what came before them so that they can appreciate what they have because new generations tend to take what they have for granted and forget the struggles that led to their situation.  Lee Lynch is a name that belongs in the same category as Andrew Young and Jesse Jackson, Betty Friedan and Gloria Steinem, Cesar Chavez and Dolores Huerta.  She was in the gay rights movement before the infamous Stonewall riots and can speak to those struggles as the others can to civil rights, feminism and the Latino labor movement.

The Raid is the story of the Old Towne Tavern, an establishment in a part of a Massachusetts town that has seen better days.  As the neighborhood has transformed so has the bar that caters to people who work and live in the area, especially the gay community.  Although not billed as a “gay bar,” that is who makes up most of its clientele.  The cast is large – Murph, who has a story for everything and a hopeless love for a woman from her past; elegant Lisa; Rocky, the mild mannered narrator; Deej, the newly minted lesbian who isn’t sure how to fit in; the queenly Norm, who owns the bar with his closeted college professor boyfriend; and an assortment of friends, gay and straight.  Early in the book there is a police raid on the tavern that is brutal.  The rest of the book shows how these characters deal with their feelings about the event and how it changed their lives.

Anyone who is familiar with the events in 1969 at the Stonewall Inn in New York will recognize what happens at the tavern in the story.  The value of the book comes for those who don’t remember.  Lynch captures perfectly the fear of discovery that gays lived with and their difficulty in knowing who they could trust.  This was the time when homosexuality was still considered a crime and a mental disease.  Gay people had no rights and could lose their homes, their families and their freedom quite easily.  The changes going on so quickly in the US now obscure just how recently ago things were very different.  One of the most poignant themes of the book is how gays have always formed “families of choice” because they couldn’t rely on their blood families for support.

There is a drawback to the book however.  The old saying is that an author should write what he or she knows.  What should be added to that is the caution that an author shouldn’t over write either and Lynch does some of that.  Lynch has a message to impart, but she can’t seem to do it and move on.  There is episode after episode pointing out basically the same thing; it was difficult and dangerous to be a homosexual in the early 1960s and politicians often exploited them for their own aims.  The book goes on and tries to tie up each character’s story and what is going to happen to the tavern.  None of the characters are uniquely compelling or interesting, so the story seems to drag.  A tighter framework might have made the story itself hold the reader’s attention more.

The Raid is important because it creates a very powerful picture of the emotions, frustrations and political realities of the time.  No one can read this book and not feel the fear of some of the characters radiating off of the pages.  Because Lynch lived long enough, she’s also able to inject some hope into the story by having her characters wish for things that have now become possible.  This book might better have been written as a straight work of history.  That’s why it should be read.  The fact that it’s written into a work of fiction makes it more palatable for readers who might not try it otherwise.

Read it for the history though……………..and remember.

The Storm by Shelley Thrasher

Publisher:       Bold Strokes Books

The problem with a novel based on history is that the reader probably already knows what is going to unfold in the events.  The author however should not telegraph her moves ahead of time.  One of the tricks of a historic novel is keeping the reader believing that something different is going to occur from what she expects even though she knows it can’t.  Shelley Thrasher tells a typical romance, but she couldn’t disguise the history and that makes the story predictable.

Jacqueline “Jaq” Bergeron is one of those Americans who volunteered to help in World War I before the US actually entered the war.  It was an exciting time for women as they entered a period of greater personal freedom and hovered on the rim of gaining full political rights in the US, so Jaq seeks adventure by leaving her home in New Orleans to serve as an ambulance driver in France.  After seeing more than she needs to and a disappointing love affair, she returns home as the wife of a war hero she doesn’t love.  He agrees to give her a divorce if she will go to his home in East Texas and help with his family.  While there Jaq meets Molly, who is trapped in a friendly but passionless marriage.  Molly escapes from her overbearing mother-in-law and drab surroundings by caring for her son and immersing herself in music.  Jaq opens a window to a world that Molly never imagined could.  A killer brought home from the war has the power to reorient everyone’s reality.

The Storm is a routine romance.  Women meet, encounter an obstacle and have to decide a way around it.  What could have made it different is the time period in which it is set.  The book doesn’t have any energy though.  The story drags from one scene to another, following the formula and practically ignoring the energy of the time.  Women are on the move.  They are claiming a new existence for themselves.  Little of that is in here.  There is one episode where Molly decides to register to vote, but that interest level isn’t sustained through the book.  The rest of the book is uneven.  The characters don’t shine or stand out.

The situations don’t ring true either.  Molly fears the disapproval of her mother-in-law, but thinks nothing of sneaking off for hours with Jaq to do something else.  They don’t want anyone to know what is going on between them, but their behavior indicates that something is very much out of the ordinary.  Because Thrasher switches from the mind of one character to another, including Molly’s mother-in-law, it’s sometimes easy to lose track of who is “thinking.”  That means the reader has to backtrack and pick up the threads again.

The most disappointing part of the book is the way it handles the Spanish influenza epidemic that hit the US during World War I.  That was one of the most dramatic episode in recent US history and a societal change agent.  This could have been used to give the book a real punch, but it wasn’t.  Instead, the flu becomes a simple means to an end.

Those looking for a book to entertain them will find The Storm meets that requirement.  If you like to learn something about a period when you read, you’ll find this book falls far short of what it could have been.

Miserere by Caren J. Werlinger

Publisher:        Corgyn Publishing                                         

Writing about an excellent book is always difficult.  Finding the right words to convey to others  why it is so outstanding so that they will want to read it is a challenge.  Capturing the essence of a book without giving away the story is a tricky balancing act.  It would be easier to say “Mystery ….. Paranormal …..Love ….. History…..Buy it,” but that doesn’t seem to do the book justice.  Miserere definitely deserves to have justice done to it.

Caren Werlinger has constructed two parallel stories connected through time by family ties and the intolerance that people can practice towards each other.  Caitriona Ni Faolain and her sister are sold to an English nobleman in Ireland so that their destitute father can obtain five more acres of land to farm and support the family during the Great Famine.  They are sent to pre-Civil War Virginia to work on the nobleman’s estate as what amounted to white slaves.  There they make friends with the black slaves and deal with the events leading up to the war.  Eventually, Caitriona and some of the slaves are forced to flee and end up in West Virginia, where tragedy is waiting for them.

One hundred years later Connemara Faolain Mitchell arrives in West Virginia with her mother and brother.  Her father is MIA in Vietnam and they have returned to her mother’s family home to wait for further news of him.  Conn experiences visitations from her ancestor Caitriona’s ghost and learns that there is a curse on her family that only she can lift.  Meanwhile, she and her mother are not making friends with some members of the community because of their insistence on treating Negroes and other outcasts as their equals.  As Conn maneuvers through the events of both the past and the present, it becomes increasingly clear why she is the chosen one.  It’s also apparent that events and emotions separated by a hundred years are not only similar, but connected.

Miserere is an amazing book.  It moves easily between episodes from the different time periods, capturing the feelings and complexities of each era.  It addresses instances from US history that are often forgotten or that are fading from memory and makes them feel alive and in the moment.  Intolerance, ignorance and the tragic consequences of war are not unique to one period, which proves the point that history has an unfortunate habit of repeating itself.  However, it also speaks to how the chain can be broken by the actions of a few good, and determined, people.

One note to lesbian readers, this is not your typical lesbian novel.  Those who think books must contain scenes of lovers and the exclamations of feelings won’t find those here.  There are relationships, but they are gentle whispers in a story that ultimately proclaims the right of people to be different whether the differences are cultural, racial, gender related or in sexual orientation.  The book weaves an essence around the reader that draws you in and is compelling in the need to consume the story.  Connemara Faolain Mitchell may be one of the most remarkable characters created in literature period, regardless of the genre.

So what are the words to use to convince someone to try this book.  Buy it…..read it…..absorb it….marvel in it.  Hopefully, that does justice to the book.

The Raven's Heart by Jesse Blackadder

Publisher:        Bywater Books (reissue)

Jesse Blackadder went on a hunt to discover the origins of her family name and arrived at a fascinating telling of a period in Scottish history.  Her curiosity about her roots gave readers a very entertaining novel.

Alison Blackadder was raised by her father to believe that her family’s lands and heritage were stolen long before she was born, but that one day they would be reclaimed.  To protect her from assassins who are hunting her family, Alison was raised as a boy, Robert.  That gives her the ability to slip in and out of both the male and female worlds, a skill that brings her to the attention of Mary Queen of Scots.  Mary has just returned from spending most of her life in France and knows very little about her own country or the political forces there.  Alison comes to the court planning on using Mary to recapture her inheritance.  Instead, she becomes Mary’s weapon in trying to control Scotland and its notorious nobility.  Alison teaches Mary how to move among her people in disguise, to find out what they really want and need, but, as any student of history knows, it won’t be enough.  As Mary’s weaknesses begin to work against her, Alison, who now realizes she serves the queen out of love, fights for a future for her family, her country and herself.

Students of history might question the version that is presented in The Raven’s Heart.  Mary is portrayed as being more noble and heroic than most accounts would make her.  The basics of the story are true however and knowing what eventually happens does not weaken the tale that Blackadder spins.  If anything, Mary Queen of Scots is portrayed as a much stronger and determined woman than history would lead one to believe.  The book is marked by detailed character development, both in the strong and weak characters.  Blackadder’s descriptions of tavern life, the protocols in a royal court and the descriptions of the people’s daily lives create an atmosphere of reality.  It’s so realistic that the danger is in the reader believing that this is the way the real events unfolded.

The Raven’s Heart is an unusual lesbian novel.  Although the love interests are present, the story focuses on intrigue, dangerous escapades and 16^th century life.  Love affairs play a minor part as the reader will be swept up in the rich dialogue and twists and turns of the plot.  This is a book for people who like strong, interesting stories and fast paced action.  The fact that it might teach a little history is an added bonus.