Pride weeks flags Progress, Rainbow, Dublin, California, United States flags photo by Karin Kallmaker

I Stand with The T – Public Thread

Karin Kallmaker LIFE + STYLE, Sisters of the Pen 6 Comments

Why This Post

The post below captures a thread I released on eXTwitter on May 2, 2022.* It’s been roughly 18 months since and I wouldn’t change a word – except the misuse of “whose” in the second paragraph. My account there is dormant.

There are so many lies and intellectually dishonest “What Ifs” being told directly to us, by some of us, about our trans family. It’s their goal to make us feel as if someone else’s rights come at the expense of ours. This is the antithesis of feminism and there is nothing radical about it. It’s the same old same old same old.

As I’ve said for years, rights must be universal or they’re not rights.

Sisters of the Pen who Shaped Me

My philosophy around these complicated issues comes from learning the words of Judy Grahn, Joan Nestle, Joanna Russ, Octavia Butler, and Dorothy Allison. And so many more. Their fortitude, brilliance, and ability to sit with complexity without being numbed or overwhelmed into inaction are beacons of unity and love in a fractured world.Read More

woman listening to headphones

Love Comes in through the Ears (Audio Giveaway)

Karin Kallmaker Above Temptation, Car Pool, Just Like That, Love by the Numbers, Making Up for Lost Time, My Lady Lipstick, One Degree of Separation, Roller Coaster, Simply the Best, Stepping Stone, Touchwood 30th Anniversary Edition, Warming Trend, Wild Things 84 Comments

Drawing and comment period is now closed. Winners announced in the comments and by email.

Thanks to the supportive people at Bella Books and Tantor Media, this year alone three of my stories became audiobooks, with at least two more in production!

Equally wonderful are the narration talents of Quinn Riley for all three of these stories. Quinn seems to get me and my characters all the way to our DNA. She even seems to understand my sense of humor. Which, I admit, is an acquired taste. Read More

A Jolly Wee Tune and One Big Tease

Karin Kallmaker Checked Out 0 Comments

Fresh off the reel, here’s the trailer for Checked Out.

 

It’s a light-hearted tale that recognizes the importance of this time of year when, after the longest of nights, the light comes back. (At least in the northern hemisphere!) If you like grumpy meets charming with a touch of magic, this one’s for you. Books in the Coin of Love Series can be read in any order.

For those waiting on a paperback – shipment is now “promised” to me by tomorrow, 12/5. Orders will be in the mail on 12/6.

For those waiting on borrow services like Scribd, you should be able to find Checked Out on most, including Overdrive which feeds to Libby. If your library isn’t showing it in Libby, why not ask them to? Most systems have a request form. All you need to say is that you want to read it.

Hoopla, however, is still pending.

Happy reading to everyone, and a happy, safe holiday season however, if-ever, you may observe it.

Caption: “Peri thought a small-town librarian would be awed by her badge. It doesn’t go well. (Who could have guessed?) The disarming Lisette bakes cookies like a demon, wears sexy boots, and has a spine of steel. Dash of Grumpy. Dollop of Charm. Magical Attraction. eBook available everywhere. Paperback from Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Signed from Kallmaker.com.”

decorative fir and ivy winter greenery with red bow over a blue ribbon
Snippet from Chapter 21 of Checked Out by Karin Kallmaker

Holiday Baking – It’s All About Love and Cookies

Karin Kallmaker Checked Out 0 Comments

I’ve long known that food is romantic. How can it not be? The time spent planning, shopping, and making it becomes part of the gift in that way that means we do taste the love.

I come from a family of bakers and good cooks and only have a fraction of their skills, but it taught me to, as my father would say, “know what’s good.” Paraphrasing a poem, I believe that all types of love happen at a kitchen table, in a cafe, at a food truck, or over a picnic basket.Read More

The world conspires to keep women apart. To let their sacred knowledge disappear into the cracks between them. To keep them suspicious of their own strength. To reward them if they make enemies of each other. "Nomisma's Lament" from Wind in Her Hair, A Coin of Love Romance. Cover image of blonde 1950s woman in cat's eye sunglasses driving a fancy car.

“Pulp” vs “Purity” Romances and 1950s Women Somewhere in Between

Karin Kallmaker Book News, Wind in Her Hair 2 Comments

Perky. Courageous. Patriotic. Sensible, sacrificing, generically pious, always devoted to family. Virgin. All of those words describe the heroines of the many 1946-1970 respectable “purity” romances that I read like book candy during my teens.

Even if she was a widow, she was somehow a virgin. Or so lightly touched by a previous marriage she was considered pure enough for the purposes of being an appropriate wife in the 1950s post-war mystique, which was eager to yank women out of workplaces and into pedestal-shaped cages.

Pulp vs. Purity

Pulp Romances

At the time, there was a distinct separation between pulp romances and what I’m calling “purity” romances. Pulp romances were distributed through bus stations and drug stores. Their love stories didn’t arrive at a happy ending without lurid events, like lesbian side affairs or dalliances with bad boys that lead to brushes with the law. While they could be exploitative, pulp romances had real world problems like sexual assault, battering and bullying, substance and alcohol abuse, and the lack of financial autonomy that drove women to desperate measures.

Cover, Spring Fire by Marijane Meaker writing as Vin Packer, 1952

Pulp novels of this era were the first to posit lesbian stories that didn’t end in death for the “predator lesbian.” They were books so inexpensive and brief they could be read on a bus journey and left behind, no one the wiser that you’d been gobbling up tales of premarital sex, walks on the wild side, and the temptations of Those Kinds of Women. It’s a pulp romance, Spring Fire, that opens Irene’s mind in Wind in Her Hair to the idea that women can not only be true and valued friends to each other, they can also be lovers. Read More