Week #22 Fish out of Water, I Heart Sapph FIC 2024 Reading Challenge. A blue and yellow fish leaps happily between stacks of books.

The Beloved Fish Out of Water Trope

Karin Kallmaker Book News, Checked Out 0 Comments

It’s one of the tropes I love to explore: the Fish out of Water. It provides opportunities for misunderstandings that aren’t contrived and humor that arises organically from the situation. It gives characters a way to compare/contrast cultures, and to poke gentle fun at the unique foibles of any group. It can do all of that on the lighter side but can go alongside darker themes, like the universal experiences of alienation, yearning for that place that means “home” to us, and wanting to belong to a place and people who value us.

For the character out of her element, the world is upside down. In a romance that means the world will go rightside up with the right mate comes along. Eventually.

When writing my very lesbian version of The Little Mermaid, I called it A Fish Out of Water as both literal and figurative allusion to the mermaid’s plight. I had a wonderful time plopping a city girl right in the middle of a steamy Iowa summer in One Degree of Separation. But I digress.

This Week at I Heart SapphFIC

The all-things-sapphic site is highlighting stories with the Fish out of Water trope. (You’ll also find Return to Hometown stories being featured this week too! And a lot of books on sale!) The Fish out of Water focus includes my Checked Out where a federal agent determined to complete an assignment finds an equal steely resolve in a local librarian. And lots of cookies.

Cover of Checked Out by Karin Kallmaker in paperback

It seems fitting that this theme is featured as we begin Pride Month. I don’t know about you, but I spent a lot of my younger life feeling like a perpetual fish out of water. And then I found the right waters to swim in.

Here’s the entire I Heart SapphFIC list of Fish out of Water stories. It’s a great trope for romance, but you’ll see that it’s in mysteries, sci-fi, horror, and fantasy. Books like Eule Grey’s Pest Control, Rachel Parisi’s Magic and Mead, and Cameron Darrow’s Death Has Golden Eyes. It even works for creative non-fiction, like Shaley Howard’s Excuse Me, Sir?: Memoir of a Butch.

Happy reading and happy pride!

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love spelled in scrabble tiles

Transitions and Thank You

Karin Kallmaker Cheers & Chocolate 12 Comments

So many people have commented on my blog and social media posts sending love and kind thoughts for my mom and dad. My dad passed away very peacefully last Friday with my mom, my brother, and me near.

My mom is doing just fine, though he will be much missed. Since he had advancing dementia, in many ways we’ve all been saying goodbye to pieces of him for some time, and this final goodbye – sudden but quick – was perhaps easier because of that. It was time, and my dad would have been the first to think so.

Thank you everyone for your many well wishes and generous thoughts. I’m spending time with my mom as we continue this transition, which includes the arrival of spring weather in the everchanging Sierra foothills. The trees are leafing out, and there’s still snow on the Sierras in the distance. New beginnings!

And my mom and I are both kicking ourselves because we forgot to get chocolate bunnies to enjoy for Easter. We’re much cheered by the thought of day after sales, however. Happiness can come in small bites.

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love spelled in scrabble tiles

Life Happens – and Then Some

Karin Kallmaker Book News, Covered Hearts, Frosting 3 - Still Crazy After All These Years 7 Comments

You’ll notice that there aren’t any fancy pictures in this post. I’m composing it on my tablet via a thin, very thin!, WiFi signal. The quick version: my father had a stroke almost exactly a week ago and is now in hospice care at home with my mom. My brother and I are here with them until his body decides its time to let go.

That said, we were fortunate in one small aspect. My brother and I had both already set aside time to get their family home ready for sale since they’ve moved into a wonderful independent senior facility. Yes, until this happened, at 86 and 91, they were largely independent and proudly so. They’ve been married for 68 years and wherever one of them is, it’s home for both of them. (I wrote about how they met in this post about a family Thanksgiving.) Hospice is a great concept for care, too, because, in final days, home is so much better than a noisy hospital.

My father has had a good and long life. He loved the outdoors, worked in a lumber camp as a teen, spent four years in the Navy making sure the USS O’Brien’s secondary engines would work if needed (a supply ship that took fire every day for over three years), and moved on to a long career as a highway patrol officer. During that time he flew in search and rescue missions for years, using his extensive knowledge of the Northern California Sierras. He loved flying so much he got his private pilot’s license, then qualified for commercial status so he could fly the CHP speed control plane. That’s right, if you got a speeding ticket on I-5 coming into Sacramento in the 1980s-90s, it might have been him!

Down to business. Read More

From the hand drawn 1989 Naiad Press cover of In Every Port, a silhouetted women in blue gazes out an airplane window at clouds.

In Every Port – History on a Flyleaf

Karin Kallmaker In Every Port, Readers and Libraries 6 Comments

I’ve seen hot debates in more than one group over that photo of really really long books that someone split in two to make them easier to carry. The reaction is often horror, and many people have strong feelings about dog ears, note taking, and other forms of “destruction” of the book.

This picture is why I don’t mind what people do with books they own. This is the flyleaf of my first book, In Every Port [Naiad Press, 1989], about 15 years after it had been passed hand to hand or was left in base libraries for others to find, and with enough information that maybe these women could find each other.

Had anyone split it into sections so it could be better hidden or shared, I’d be fine with that.
 

This copy of the book was gifted to me by a reader who came across it in the later 2000s – what a find, and how validating for me to see that my story of love was read by women surviving in dark places around the world at a time when it was unsafe to show anyone who you were.

Do I mind that they wrote it in? That it’s a bit water stained and pages are dogeared? No. No I do not. I do hope, however, that Arisha did get it when she got back, at least for a while.
 

book cover in every port lesbian romance classic

The original, classic Naiad Press cover, 1989.

 

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Image Read an Ebook Week. Smashwords. Your ebook, your way. Sapphic Stories on Sale. Cartoon image of young woman holding a paperback.

Read an Indie Ebook – Gigantic Smashwords Sale

Karin Kallmaker Book News, Events and Appearances 0 Comments

The short version: All of my indie works are 50% until the end of the week. You can see all nine titles here. In particular, Knight of Nights I don’t believe has ever been this discounted!

Curious for more? Here’s a handy click to all the sapphic/lesbian romance that’s on sale. You’ll see familiar names and new ones, series starters, and box sets. You can also roam through mainstream mysteries, LGBTQ horror, and all the other categories that Smashwords has that are designed around how readers actually search for books.

One reason I like Smashwords is that my dollars go into pockets that aren’t that giant near-monopoly. I also like that it’s an old school online shopping experience, and that is a good thing to me. In the last year, that big site and that big search engine have deliberately gotten worse at search results in the hope that you’ll buy something you weren’t looking for that makes them more profit.

I guess they’re crossing their fingers that I won’t forget the thing I was going to buy and don’t leave the site when I can’t find it with an exact title match search. /endrant

Still reading? I do have one quibble with the sale, and that’s the Smashwords graphic you saw above. It’s an ebook sale. What’s the reader holding in her hands?

Famous meme of little girl in pigtails with a pink jacket shrugging her shoulders, palms up, as if to say "I super don't know why this is happening."

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