Tease me, please!
2600 Paragraphs, One Sentence at a Time
This time they spoke more, whispered love, encouragement, needy things. Some of the emotion was slaked and now their bodies woke in familiar ways. There, more and yes flowed between them, even when words were impossible. – The Kiss that Counted (216)
What Inspires Writers? Interview at After-Ellen.com
AfterEllen.com has a two-part feature with twelve writers, including yours truly. Contributing writer LeeAnn Kriegh asked Lillian Faderman, Nancy Garden, Sarah Waters, Kelley Eskridge, Sammin Sarif, Val McDermid, Charlotte Mendelson, Ariel Shrag, Amy Bloom, Joan Larkin, Rebecca Walker and me what inspires us about what we write.
Since the writers represent everything from short story to comic book to international to genre writing, the answers are correspondingly diverse — and interesting! I hope you’ll take time to read it!
Three Hundred Rabbits… and One Photograph
One of my early influences as a baby lesbian fiction reader was Shiela Ortiz Taylor. I still have my first edition Naiad Press copy of Faultline. It has a favorite opening line of
“I realize that my three hundred rabbits are the most serious piece of material evidence against me.”
Faultline was one of the first novels featuring lesbian characters that I ever read. It remains one of the funniest, and proved to me that it ws okay to laugh about ourselves. But what really changed me was a couple of pages inside: a large photograph of the author, with her real name.
It was the first time I’d ever seen such a thing. Read More