Last month I brought you Ariadne's Diary. This month we've got Bridie, and the books couldn't more different.
Ariadne's Diary is pretty porny, about a young woman crushing on an older one. Bridie's Diary is about an older woman crushing on a younger one. So maybe they're not so different after all. I guess the difference is tone rather than content. Both contain plenty of sex, but Ariadne strikes me as more smutty, whereas Bridie is more literary.
Or maybe the tone of both books is exactly the same. Authors are terrible judges of their own books.
All I know is that, at this point in my life (midlife), I identify with Bridie far more than Ariadne.
I'm glad things work out for her. I hope it's not a spoiler to say that her future's looking bright by the end of the book.
Bridie’s Diary
by Giselle Renarde
Series: The Lesbian Diaries
Book: 2
Bridie never expected to find herself in this position at midlife: leaving her husband and moving to the ends of the earth, purchasing her childhood home, falling in love with her tenant...
Ness is everything Bridie is not. She’s young and bold and artsy and trans. Bridie can’t fight the attraction. It’s addictive. It’s overwhelming.
But when Bridie’s best friend shows up to remind her what life was like when they were lovers, she’s torn between fresh possibilities and familiar passions. Will Bridie choose the old or the new? Or will life choose for her?
Lesbian fiction from award-winning queer Canadian author Giselle Renarde.
Get it from Smashwords: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/987942?ref=GiselleRenardeErotica
Google Play: https://play.google.com/store/books/details?id=Fgi5DwAAQBAJ
Kobo: https://www.kobo.com/ca/en/ebook/bridie-s-diary
Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07ZJSPY4F?tag=dondes-20
Barnes and Noble: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/bridies-diary-giselle-renarde/1134377075?ean=2940163374076
Radish readers can read the serialized version here: https://radish.app.link/eNqKBykw50
Showing posts with label lesbian fiction. Show all posts
Showing posts with label lesbian fiction. Show all posts
Monday, November 4, 2019
Friday, October 4, 2019
Ariadne’s Diary: I’m in Love with my Teacher! A New #Lesbian #Erotica Novel from @GiselleRenarde
If you follow me on Twitter, you've heard me mention the "lesbian smut books" I've been writing.
This is the first in that series.
The series is called "The Lesbian Diaries" and it premieres with my novel "Ariadne's Diary."
I've written three "Lesbian Diaries" so far, and Ariadne's is by far the smuttiest. If you're looking for erotica with lots of sex scenes, this is it. The story's about an 18-year-old student who can't keep her panties on around her sexy teacher. Her brain turns to mush thanks to Ms. Bambini's magnificent breasts, which spells trouble for her grades. She might not even graduate--that's how dire her situation has become.
Luckily, Ms. Bambini is willing to help... in any and every way possible.
If you need a break from everything that's going on in the world, I hope you'll turn to my new book for a dose of escapism.
Enjoy this first-in-series. Every book will feature different characters and situations, but they will all be written in diary form.
Ariadne’s Diary
I’m in Love with my Teacher!
by Giselle Renarde
Series: The Lesbian Diaries
Book: 1
Ariadne is desperate for love, and she wants her teacher to give it to her.
Ms. Bambini’s about as buxom as they come. Just the sight of her in those silky white blouses and black leather skirts sends Ariadne’s brain to fantasy land. How can anyone be expected to concentrate with Ms. Bambini at the head of the class?
When Ariadne’s grades slip into the danger zone, Ms. Bambini offers up some most unusual tutoring sessions. Ariadne never imagined her life would head down such a torrid path, but will Ms. Bambini’s help become Ariadne’s downfall?
Lesbian fiction from award-winning queer Canadian author Giselle Renarde.
Buy Now from Smashwords: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/958701?ref=GiselleRenardeErotica
Google Play: https://play.google.com/store/books/details?id=vOOvDwAAQBAJ
Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07XZJ9FBT?tag=dondes-20
BN: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/books/1133609166?ean=2940163338610
...and many more ebook retailers!
Read at Radish: https://radish.app.link/0FAhbwlh6Z
The paperback should be available soon.
This is the first in that series.
The series is called "The Lesbian Diaries" and it premieres with my novel "Ariadne's Diary."
I've written three "Lesbian Diaries" so far, and Ariadne's is by far the smuttiest. If you're looking for erotica with lots of sex scenes, this is it. The story's about an 18-year-old student who can't keep her panties on around her sexy teacher. Her brain turns to mush thanks to Ms. Bambini's magnificent breasts, which spells trouble for her grades. She might not even graduate--that's how dire her situation has become.
Luckily, Ms. Bambini is willing to help... in any and every way possible.
If you need a break from everything that's going on in the world, I hope you'll turn to my new book for a dose of escapism.
Enjoy this first-in-series. Every book will feature different characters and situations, but they will all be written in diary form.
Ariadne’s Diary
I’m in Love with my Teacher!
by Giselle Renarde
Series: The Lesbian Diaries
Book: 1
Ariadne is desperate for love, and she wants her teacher to give it to her.
Ms. Bambini’s about as buxom as they come. Just the sight of her in those silky white blouses and black leather skirts sends Ariadne’s brain to fantasy land. How can anyone be expected to concentrate with Ms. Bambini at the head of the class?
When Ariadne’s grades slip into the danger zone, Ms. Bambini offers up some most unusual tutoring sessions. Ariadne never imagined her life would head down such a torrid path, but will Ms. Bambini’s help become Ariadne’s downfall?
Lesbian fiction from award-winning queer Canadian author Giselle Renarde.
Buy Now from Smashwords: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/958701?ref=GiselleRenardeErotica
Google Play: https://play.google.com/store/books/details?id=vOOvDwAAQBAJ
Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07XZJ9FBT?tag=dondes-20
BN: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/books/1133609166?ean=2940163338610
...and many more ebook retailers!
Read at Radish: https://radish.app.link/0FAhbwlh6Z
The paperback should be available soon.
Thursday, February 15, 2018
Breaking Our Own Rules #lesbian #erotica
The Girl on Your Skin
Lesbian Erotica by Giselle Renarde
How could I complain? I was breaking my own rule.
Nesta and I made lots of rules when we opened up. She wrote them down in the back of her daybook, and we kept those pages pinned to the corkboard by her computer:
-Don’t bring dates home
-Don’t fall in love
-Don’t rave about how great the sex was
-Don’t come to bed smelling like another girl
The list went on, but I was hung up on that last point. All night, I’d been tossing and turning in my sweat-soaked sheets. TV was boring. I went to bed with a book, but the book was boring too. Brought out my vibe. Didn’t do a damn thing. The room felt different when I was alone in it, when I knew Nesta was fucking someone else.
Waiting was killer. Lying alone in our bed, I waited to hear her key in the door, waited for the hinges to creak, for her to unzip those big boots and kick them off in the hallway. Even the sound of her breath, the shallow guilt as she tiptoed to the bathroom, flicked on the light, closed the door—it was all there, right in my ear. The squeal of the shower. I heard every step in the process like an echo as I waited for her Nesta to come home.
I felt feverish, searching for a cool spot on my hot pillow. My head was burning up, and buzzing like a bee hive. I bucked against Nesta’s side of the bed, smelling her hair, her perfume, her body. It was all there in the sheets.
Where the hell was she? Fuck, it was… nine-forty-five? How was it only nine-forty-five? Felt like three in the morning. I covered my eyes and rolled onto my stomach, growling. My breath saturated the pillow, and I rolled again—onto Nesta’s side of the bed this time. I wasn’t going to preserve it anymore. When she got home, she was just going to have to deal with messy covers.
“Do you know what time it is?” I asked, in my mind. But that was a stupid question, because it wasn’t really late. “I’ve been worried sick.” Or maybe, “Who was she?” Or, “How was she?”
No, I couldn’t ask that question. It was in the rulebook. We weren’t supposed to ask about sexual performance.
I rolled back onto my side of the bed. More and more, I was starting to think it took a special type of person to survive an open relationship, and maybe I wasn’t that special. Did everybody feel this jealous?
When I finally heard Nesta’s key in the door, it came as a surprise. Maybe I’d given up hope or something, because I sat straight up in bed, on high alert, like the figure coming through the front door might not be Nesta at all.
She unzipped her boots, kicked them off in the hall. I couldn’t see her until she tiptoed past the bedroom door, and even then she was only a shadow. The shower would come next…
No.
Something inside me was adamant about this. I whipped off the covers and stomped across the room in basketball shorts and a T-shirt. Nesta shrieked when I grabbed her wrist and pulled her out of the bathroom. She shrieked like she didn’t know it was me, like I was some faceless attacker in the night.
I pulled her tight to my body and held her there, like we were dancing. Her breath hit my chin in hot little bursts as I pinned her to the bed.
“I haven’t showered yet,” she said in a whisper.
That day, for the first time, I didn’t care. My lust for Nesta superseded any jealousy. I was so hot for her I didn’t even know where to start.
Pressing my body tight to hers, I kissed her hard. She was too shocked to react, and I had to pry her teeth apart with my tongue, dig inside her perfect mouth.
Her perfect mouth tasted like pussy.
The sweet tang, the aftertaste that stuck at the back of my throat—it was pussy, unmistakeable. And I shouldn’t have been surprised, because I knew what she’d been up to, but knowing and tasting are different things entirely. That girl, that other girl, whoever she was, had found her way inside my mouth. She was a stranger to me, but her pussy was on my tongue. I could taste it.
“She fucked your face,” I said, holding Nesta’s head in my hands. My palms looked huge against the fine line of her jaw. “You ate her. You ate her good. Her pussy’s all over your skin.”
“Is it?” Nesta asked, like she wasn’t sure if I was angry or what.
“Shh, shh, shh!” I didn’t want her being scared. “Baby, it’s all good. It’s all good.”
I licked her cheek and she shuddered. “Oh god.”
“I can taste her pussy,” I said, and kissed Nesta’s chin with an open mouth. “I can taste her cunt. It’s everywhere. That chick must have been riding your face hard.”
“Yeah,” Nesta admitted. “She was.”
“Tell me what she looked like, girl.”
Nesta inhaled sharply as I tore open her top. “Are you sure you want to know?” she asked. “I thought we said…”
“Forget the rulebook.” I leaned her down on the bed and kissed a sharp path from her neck to her nipples. They stood up hard against the cool night air, and I asked, “Did she do this too?”
Petting my hair, Nesta said, “Yeah, babe. She did, but not like this. We were standing by the window, all the lights on. She stripped me bare so everyone could see down on the street.”
My pussy clamped tight when I pictured my Nesta naked, all eyes on her, getting her tits licked by some girl I didn’t know.
“Was she wearing lip gloss?” I asked, because Nesta’s nips had a tacky texture that didn’t come from me. And they tasted like strawberries.
“Yeah,” Nesta said. “Gloss over dark lipstick. Fake lashes. Golden eye shadow and thick black liner.”
“A real femme, huh?”
“Yeah, babe.” Nesta pushed down on her pants, and I helped her. God knows what happened to her panties. I’d never seen her go commando before. She must have lost them at this femme’s place. Her pussy was bare where it mattered, with just a tuft of hair like a landing strip.
“You’re still wet,” I said, tracing my fingers over the slick line of her pussy lips. She was drenched with juice, just dripping with it. “Did this girl eat your pussy before you ate hers?”
Nesta nodded. “How’d you know she went first?”
I didn’t know. I wasn’t even thinking anymore. My body was taking her because that’s what my body wanted. There were days when I wished to hell I could grow a cock and fuck her with it, fuck her hard. My system was in overload mode. Too much heat.
“Get me off,” I said, begging for it. I didn’t even know what I wanted her to do, exactly. “Get up on the bed. Spread your legs.”
My cunt was throbbing for real, actually pounding like my clit had its own heartbeat. I pulled off my clothes as Nesta climbed fully onto the bed. Her top was open, hanging off her shoulders. Her bra was pulled down under her tits, but her bottom was bare. Even in the dark I could see her pink glistening. How much of that was pussy juice and how much was a stranger’s saliva?
I’d never wanted to know before. I’d never wanted to think about who Nesta fucked outside our bedroom. But that’s because I was scared. Scared these women were bigger than me, stronger than me, butcher than me, better.
That was it. That’s what I’d been afraid of—that Nesta was looking to replace me, when all that time she’d been looking in the other direction.
I don’t do feline and feminine. I like the look, but it isn’t me. The girl who’d planted her face between my Nesta’s legs had all that going for her. I could practically see her pouty purple lips parting to lap my Nesta’s nectar. Pretty girls playing in front of open windows, for all the world to see.
My pussy pounced. Turning Nesta on her side, I spread her legs so I was straddling one, the other launched over my shoulder. Yeah, I split her right in half and pushed my cunt right up close to hers. She shrieked and grabbed her tits, like that would protect her from me.
“You’re crazy,” she said, and I wasn’t totally sure whether she was amused or afraid. “What’s going on here?”
“I’m getting off on you,” I said, pressing my fuzzy cunt right up against her. “Fuck, your pussy’s wet, girl. You’re all slippery.”
I licked her smooth calf, and she moaned, thumbing both nipples. “God…”
She looked good like that, damn good, and I asked her, “Is that what you were doing while that other girl sucked your fat little clit? You twisted your tits just like that while she ate you?”
Nesta’s eyes were closed, but she nodded. “Mmm-hmm.”
“You keep tugging on those tits, baby.” I rammed my cunt right up against hers, banging our bones together, searching for the sweet spot. It wasn’t easy to find. Usually I’d have the patience for all sorts of bumping and grinding, writhing and adjusting, but not this time. “Squeeze your tits, girl, just like that.”
Nesta pushed her big breasts together as I pulled her ass off the bedspread, holding her up until my muscles trembled. She wasn’t heavy, but the effort got to me. I needed to come, and fast. I had to find that perfect place where I could rub my fat clit against her pink. I wasn’t getting there quick enough, and it made me want to scream.
I pictured this girl, this stranger, between Nesta’s thighs, lapping at her soft flesh. Would I be beat by some chick I didn’t know? Never. Never. I traced my clit up and across the plump folds of Nesta’s pussy until I found what I’d been looking for.
An imagined tongue licked our clits as we grinded together—hot, wet, slick and powerful. Every woman had a tongue, but not every woman knew how to use it. Whoever Nesta spent the evening with knew just what to do. I could feel it like an echo in Nesta’s pulsing body. I could feel it in the way she bucked against my pussy while we tribbed. There was something between us, something we could both feel even though it wasn’t physically there.
“What’s her name?” I grunted. I could barely speak.
Nesta pinched her tits and squealed. “We said we wouldn’t tell. It’s in the rules.”
“Fuck the rules.” I pounded her pussy with my clit, making it a cock, fucking her like she wanted. “Tell me her name.”
“Won’t you be mad?”
Holding her hips aloft, I traced my clit over hers, feeling her shudder. I trembled so hard I couldn’t speak. I didn’t care about that girl’s name anymore. I didn’t care about anything. My orgasm was coming on strong, riding up my thighs and swelling in my belly before shooting straight to my clit.
It was fireworks, the way we exploded together. Her hips rattled in my hands. My cunt blazed against the soft, wet pink of her pussy. There was another element in the mix, too—a lingering scent, or feeling, or taste. Something foreign, not of us.
Nothing else had ever felt this good, and I knew it was the unnamed femme, the ghost of a threesome. The tang of her pussy clung to my throat as I grunted Nesta’s name. Her tongue was there on my woman’s clit, lapping up hard while we climaxed together. The unnamed girl was there the whole time. No denying it.
My arms lost their strength. I dropped Nesta’s hips to the bed and our hot pussies came apart, making a wet kissing sound. Falling beside her, I spread my legs. My cunt felt so fat I couldn’t close them without sending aftershocks through my whole body.
Nesta was panting wildly when I found her hand with mine. For a long time, we didn’t say a word. We had way too much to talk about—a whole rulebook to re-evaluate. Hard to know where to start.
“I didn’t take my shower,” Nesta said, after a while.
“Yeah.” I slid my arm under her shoulder and rolled in to sniff her neck. The whole room smelled like pussy, but I could still distinguish the one that wasn’t ours. “You want to shower now?”
Nesta hesitated before saying, “Maybe in the morning. I’m too tired to stand.”
We pulled up the covers and buried ourselves underneath. Change was coming, but the conversation could wait. We could sleep together in the scent of that nameless femme who’d taken Nesta up against a window, for all the world to see.
*****
This story appears in my book Spicy Confessions, which is now available as an audiobook from such retailers as Nook Audiobooks and eStories.
If you're a patron of mine on Patreon, I've already read you The Girl On Your Skin. Remember that?
And if you're not yet my patron, get your fine ass over to http://Patreon.com/AudioErotica
Friday, September 9, 2016
Back in the Day
by Jean Roberta

What are the chances? In March 2016, the prolific Sarah Schulman got a big novel published. In October 2016, the slightly-less prolific but also well-known novelist and science writer Lucy Jane Bledsoe will have a work of historical fiction published, based on the life of her aunt, after whom she was named. Both books are set in the 1950s, and both are at least partly set in Greenwich Village when it was really “bohemian.” Both authors are major lesbian writers who were born in the postwar America they describe, and both writers discuss their personal connections to their subject-matter. I was lucky enough to get review copies of both books from The Gay & Lesbian Review.
The Cosmopolitans (New York: the Feminist Press)

This thick paperback by Sarah Schulman is loosely based on a nineteenth-century French novel, Cousin Bette by Honore de Balzac, and it occupies the same social space as James Baldwin’s Another Country (1962), which broke new ground by showing black and white, gay and straight characters interacting as approximate equals. Schulman’s two major characters, Bette and Earl, are social outsiders who live in exile from their original families and who have little in common aside from being tenants in the same building. Bette was disowned by her family in the 1920s after being jilted by a dishonest lover, and Earl, as a man-loving actor and a “Negro” from the South, can’t find a safe space anywhere. Their friendship (“for life,” as Bette points out to an interloper) is a type of relationship rarely seen in current fiction, now that “community” no longer refers to physical space. The purity of this bond shines against the grit of working-class urban life.
Despite the grit, the late-fifties arrival of television advertising, in the form of an ad-woman who dresses like Jayne Mansfield and speaks in snappy one-liners, introduces a note of social satire. Bette is dazzled but not fooled by this character, who inspires her to manipulate new circumstances to secure what she wants, which is simply the return of her friendship with Earl. To get him back in her life, Bette must arrange the breakup of his disastrous affair with a naïve young wannabe actress from Bette’s well-heeled family who can’t understand why Earl “loses” sexual interest in her, or why he would be desperate enough to regard her as a social life-raft.
As the author explains in an afterword on style, this novel was influenced by the “kitchen-sink” realism of the 1950s, yet the dialogue sometimes suggests vintage Hollywood and grand opera. (Schulman has explained that this novel was originally conceived as a play, and it has an “intermission.”) Characters express their emotional truth with startling eloquence, much as the author does in her non-fiction on moral issues. The reader is reminded that art, “realistic” or otherwise, is usually better-organized than life, which is why both fiction and advertising can hold our attention.
A Thin Bright Line (Madison, Wisconsin: The University of Wisconsin Press)

This novel takes place in some of the same territory, but its realist style has a harder edge. This is a fictional reconstruction of the last decade in the life of the author’s lesbian aunt, for whom she was named: Lucybelle Bledsoe from small-town Arkansas. In a lengthy postscript, the author outlines her methods of discovering as much evidence as she could about a remarkable science editor and possible novelist (although her novel was never found) who died in a house fire at age forty-three, in 1966.
The possibility that the original Lucy Bledsoe was murdered is troubling and not completely beyond reason, considering contemporary government policy regarding “homosexuals” (not to mention women with access to classified information) as security risks in the “Cold War” of the United States vs. the Soviet Union. However, the author Lucy Bledsoe has chosen to accept the official verdict, that the fire was an accident, and that the only smokescreen might have come from a smoldering cigarette. This approach allows her to focus on her aunt’s life rather than her death. It seems likely that the original Lucy Bledsoe would prefer to be remembered that way.
The result is a tightly-plotted, suspenseful novel which would be absorbing even if all the characters were completely fictional. This is the stuff of the lesbian paperbacks of yesteryear, complete with coded conversations, blackmail, and love that is all the sweeter because it comes with such a high price. There are convincing cameo appearances by actual writers of the time, including Valerie Taylor and Lorraine Hansberry, and references to Lucy’s idols: fiction-writer Willa Cather and science-writer Rachel Carson.
The story is told in a no-nonsense third-person voice, but Lucy’s personality comes through in her words and her actions. She appears thin and pale, straightforward and logical, with diverse skills: she earned a Masters Degree in Literature from Columbia University, dropped out of a Ph.D. program, and spent much of her working life editing reports by geologists and other scientists.
As an independent person and a closeted member of an outlawed community, the original Lucy Bledsoe has no qualms about spending time in Chicago with an appealing black ("colored," "negro") woman who runs her own taxi company (thanks to her training as a mechanic during the War) and who loves to take photos. However, when Lucy shows up at a bar in Stella’s neighborhood, looking for her, the presence of a white woman attracts a degree of attention that makes Stella uncomfortable. Police harassment is a fact of life that makes it necessary for Stella to pay regular bribes just to stay in business.
Aside from de facto segregation, does Stella have any other reason for running hot-and-cold with Lucy? Well, yes, and to make things more complicated, there is a spy in Lucy’s workplace who gets paid to report on her. Fun times.
The thin bright line of the title is a glow on the horizon which promises future discoveries about the nature of the earth, as well as a future in which lesbians like her niece could live openly, without fear. The semi-transparent brilliance of ice is a kind of motif in this novel, in which Lucy’s work on a project in the Arctic foreshadows the author’s repeated trips to Antarctica, and her use of that continent as a setting for fiction.
In both novels, a dazzlingly clear light is shone into dark corners. Queer life in the pre-Stonewall era has rarely been presented this movingly or well.

What are the chances? In March 2016, the prolific Sarah Schulman got a big novel published. In October 2016, the slightly-less prolific but also well-known novelist and science writer Lucy Jane Bledsoe will have a work of historical fiction published, based on the life of her aunt, after whom she was named. Both books are set in the 1950s, and both are at least partly set in Greenwich Village when it was really “bohemian.” Both authors are major lesbian writers who were born in the postwar America they describe, and both writers discuss their personal connections to their subject-matter. I was lucky enough to get review copies of both books from The Gay & Lesbian Review.
The Cosmopolitans (New York: the Feminist Press)

This thick paperback by Sarah Schulman is loosely based on a nineteenth-century French novel, Cousin Bette by Honore de Balzac, and it occupies the same social space as James Baldwin’s Another Country (1962), which broke new ground by showing black and white, gay and straight characters interacting as approximate equals. Schulman’s two major characters, Bette and Earl, are social outsiders who live in exile from their original families and who have little in common aside from being tenants in the same building. Bette was disowned by her family in the 1920s after being jilted by a dishonest lover, and Earl, as a man-loving actor and a “Negro” from the South, can’t find a safe space anywhere. Their friendship (“for life,” as Bette points out to an interloper) is a type of relationship rarely seen in current fiction, now that “community” no longer refers to physical space. The purity of this bond shines against the grit of working-class urban life.
Despite the grit, the late-fifties arrival of television advertising, in the form of an ad-woman who dresses like Jayne Mansfield and speaks in snappy one-liners, introduces a note of social satire. Bette is dazzled but not fooled by this character, who inspires her to manipulate new circumstances to secure what she wants, which is simply the return of her friendship with Earl. To get him back in her life, Bette must arrange the breakup of his disastrous affair with a naïve young wannabe actress from Bette’s well-heeled family who can’t understand why Earl “loses” sexual interest in her, or why he would be desperate enough to regard her as a social life-raft.
As the author explains in an afterword on style, this novel was influenced by the “kitchen-sink” realism of the 1950s, yet the dialogue sometimes suggests vintage Hollywood and grand opera. (Schulman has explained that this novel was originally conceived as a play, and it has an “intermission.”) Characters express their emotional truth with startling eloquence, much as the author does in her non-fiction on moral issues. The reader is reminded that art, “realistic” or otherwise, is usually better-organized than life, which is why both fiction and advertising can hold our attention.
A Thin Bright Line (Madison, Wisconsin: The University of Wisconsin Press)

This novel takes place in some of the same territory, but its realist style has a harder edge. This is a fictional reconstruction of the last decade in the life of the author’s lesbian aunt, for whom she was named: Lucybelle Bledsoe from small-town Arkansas. In a lengthy postscript, the author outlines her methods of discovering as much evidence as she could about a remarkable science editor and possible novelist (although her novel was never found) who died in a house fire at age forty-three, in 1966.
The possibility that the original Lucy Bledsoe was murdered is troubling and not completely beyond reason, considering contemporary government policy regarding “homosexuals” (not to mention women with access to classified information) as security risks in the “Cold War” of the United States vs. the Soviet Union. However, the author Lucy Bledsoe has chosen to accept the official verdict, that the fire was an accident, and that the only smokescreen might have come from a smoldering cigarette. This approach allows her to focus on her aunt’s life rather than her death. It seems likely that the original Lucy Bledsoe would prefer to be remembered that way.
The result is a tightly-plotted, suspenseful novel which would be absorbing even if all the characters were completely fictional. This is the stuff of the lesbian paperbacks of yesteryear, complete with coded conversations, blackmail, and love that is all the sweeter because it comes with such a high price. There are convincing cameo appearances by actual writers of the time, including Valerie Taylor and Lorraine Hansberry, and references to Lucy’s idols: fiction-writer Willa Cather and science-writer Rachel Carson.
The story is told in a no-nonsense third-person voice, but Lucy’s personality comes through in her words and her actions. She appears thin and pale, straightforward and logical, with diverse skills: she earned a Masters Degree in Literature from Columbia University, dropped out of a Ph.D. program, and spent much of her working life editing reports by geologists and other scientists.
As an independent person and a closeted member of an outlawed community, the original Lucy Bledsoe has no qualms about spending time in Chicago with an appealing black ("colored," "negro") woman who runs her own taxi company (thanks to her training as a mechanic during the War) and who loves to take photos. However, when Lucy shows up at a bar in Stella’s neighborhood, looking for her, the presence of a white woman attracts a degree of attention that makes Stella uncomfortable. Police harassment is a fact of life that makes it necessary for Stella to pay regular bribes just to stay in business.
Aside from de facto segregation, does Stella have any other reason for running hot-and-cold with Lucy? Well, yes, and to make things more complicated, there is a spy in Lucy’s workplace who gets paid to report on her. Fun times.
The thin bright line of the title is a glow on the horizon which promises future discoveries about the nature of the earth, as well as a future in which lesbians like her niece could live openly, without fear. The semi-transparent brilliance of ice is a kind of motif in this novel, in which Lucy’s work on a project in the Arctic foreshadows the author’s repeated trips to Antarctica, and her use of that continent as a setting for fiction.
In both novels, a dazzlingly clear light is shone into dark corners. Queer life in the pre-Stonewall era has rarely been presented this movingly or well.
Sunday, July 3, 2016
Fishing for Truth
by Jean Roberta
Backcast, A Novel by Ann McMan (Bywater Books)

In this big, sprawling novel, a kind of coven of thirteen writers from all over the U.S. come together at a hotel in rural Vermont to help create a multimedia art project. Sculptor Barb Davis (whose cousin owns the hotel) has landed a grant of over a million dollars (yeah, right) from the National Endowment for the Arts for an art installation to accompany a lesbian writing project.
After considering various famous names, Barb chooses the “CLITcon Thirteen,” a group of women who attended a literary conference and all ended up in jail in San Diego for unspecified reasons. (Clearly, none of them revere patriarchal authority.) One of the guests is Mavis, the bailiff.
When the women arrive, there is much talk about creative process. Several of the writers call themselves “pantsers” who prefer to write from the “seats of their pants,” some call themselves “outliners,” and convene to form a plan, while a neutral third group call themselves “pantyliners.” All this discussion, which clearly seems intended to satirize both feminist political process and alliances and divisions in writers’ groups, turns out to be unnecessary because each woman writes an autobiographical essay and nothing else.
Barb’s contribution is to form thirteen distinct images of fish, one for each writer. Fishiness becomes a motif when Quinn, a writer of BDSM erotica who has never fished before, enters an annual bass-fishing contest and learns about a legendary bass, said to be two hundred years old (named Phoebe by the locals) who speaks to her in dreams and claims to bring messages from Quinn’s subconscious, like a watered-down Moby Dick.
While Quinn proceeds to learn about fishing from two local brothers and to do everything “wrong,” thirteen anonymous essays appear in the text, sprinkled into a plot about the developing relationships among the writers. Kate and Shawn (actually Shoshanna), who have had a dysfunctional long-distance relationship, must decide whether to commit or to split up. Mystery writer Vivien gets into a catfight with Towanda (who is married to a man and has children) about whether Towanda writes worthless “porn” or literary erotica and whether she has any right to write about “real” lesbians, but this conflict is a smokescreen over the deep sexual attraction between the two women and their shocking connection: as a novice in a convent, Vivien fell in love with a fellow-novice, Towanda’s sister.
Readers are invited to guess which essay was written by which writer. At the end of the novel, all is revealed. While this strategy creates suspense, it looks gimmicky, like several of the plot twists and the self-consciously snappy dialogue.
The essays, on their own, are powerfully convincing. In Essay #9, the writer describes a series of traumatic experiences after her parents discover her teenage crush on Charlene, a girl she met at summer camp:
“I was never allowed to see her [Charlene] again. My parents made sure of that. And once my grandma became involved with the orchestration of a plan to ensure my salvation, I wasn’t home all that much anymore. They pulled me out of school and shipped me off to Kentucky to “study” with a man who had experience turning young people away from the evils of homosexuality. It would be an understatement to say that his methods were unorthodox. At first, the snakes terrified me. He kept dozens of them, stacked up in special little, glass-fronted boxes inside a boarded-up porch at the back of his house. They were mostly timber rattlers, but he had other kinds back there, too. It amazed me that his wife and three kids just breezed in and out of that dark, close space to retrieve things like jackets and canned goods. I stayed alone upstairs in another small room. I think it had been some kind of closet because it had no windows. It was at the back of the house, and I knew it was over the porch. Every night, when I’d be locked into my room, I’d imagine I could hear the white noise of the snakes moving around beneath the floorboards. I knew they were awake, too. And I knew that it would only be a matter of time before they figured out a
way to reach me.
I didn’t have to wait very long. It was on the sixth night that he finally showed up. I wasn’t surprised. I knew he was coming. I could see it in the way he looked at me. I could feel it in the way he touched me—touches that were supposed to be casual, but were tainted with malicious intent. I knew the difference—just like all women everywhere know the difference. When I heard the sound of a key turning in the door lock, I knew my time had come. My education was about to take another path. When his shadow filled
up the entrance to my dark asylum, I didn’t bother to call for help. I knew it would be pointless. Who would help me? Not the shopworn woman he called his helpmeet. Not his daughters—they had matching sets of empty, unseeing eyes. I was on my own, and I knew it.”
Egad. The reader is relieved that this writer eventually escaped and managed to survive to adulthood on her own.
This novel, like the art project it describes, looks like an interesting experiment that isn’t completely successful, but parts of it are memorable.
-------------------
Backcast, A Novel by Ann McMan (Bywater Books)

In this big, sprawling novel, a kind of coven of thirteen writers from all over the U.S. come together at a hotel in rural Vermont to help create a multimedia art project. Sculptor Barb Davis (whose cousin owns the hotel) has landed a grant of over a million dollars (yeah, right) from the National Endowment for the Arts for an art installation to accompany a lesbian writing project.
After considering various famous names, Barb chooses the “CLITcon Thirteen,” a group of women who attended a literary conference and all ended up in jail in San Diego for unspecified reasons. (Clearly, none of them revere patriarchal authority.) One of the guests is Mavis, the bailiff.
When the women arrive, there is much talk about creative process. Several of the writers call themselves “pantsers” who prefer to write from the “seats of their pants,” some call themselves “outliners,” and convene to form a plan, while a neutral third group call themselves “pantyliners.” All this discussion, which clearly seems intended to satirize both feminist political process and alliances and divisions in writers’ groups, turns out to be unnecessary because each woman writes an autobiographical essay and nothing else.
Barb’s contribution is to form thirteen distinct images of fish, one for each writer. Fishiness becomes a motif when Quinn, a writer of BDSM erotica who has never fished before, enters an annual bass-fishing contest and learns about a legendary bass, said to be two hundred years old (named Phoebe by the locals) who speaks to her in dreams and claims to bring messages from Quinn’s subconscious, like a watered-down Moby Dick.
While Quinn proceeds to learn about fishing from two local brothers and to do everything “wrong,” thirteen anonymous essays appear in the text, sprinkled into a plot about the developing relationships among the writers. Kate and Shawn (actually Shoshanna), who have had a dysfunctional long-distance relationship, must decide whether to commit or to split up. Mystery writer Vivien gets into a catfight with Towanda (who is married to a man and has children) about whether Towanda writes worthless “porn” or literary erotica and whether she has any right to write about “real” lesbians, but this conflict is a smokescreen over the deep sexual attraction between the two women and their shocking connection: as a novice in a convent, Vivien fell in love with a fellow-novice, Towanda’s sister.
Readers are invited to guess which essay was written by which writer. At the end of the novel, all is revealed. While this strategy creates suspense, it looks gimmicky, like several of the plot twists and the self-consciously snappy dialogue.
The essays, on their own, are powerfully convincing. In Essay #9, the writer describes a series of traumatic experiences after her parents discover her teenage crush on Charlene, a girl she met at summer camp:
“I was never allowed to see her [Charlene] again. My parents made sure of that. And once my grandma became involved with the orchestration of a plan to ensure my salvation, I wasn’t home all that much anymore. They pulled me out of school and shipped me off to Kentucky to “study” with a man who had experience turning young people away from the evils of homosexuality. It would be an understatement to say that his methods were unorthodox. At first, the snakes terrified me. He kept dozens of them, stacked up in special little, glass-fronted boxes inside a boarded-up porch at the back of his house. They were mostly timber rattlers, but he had other kinds back there, too. It amazed me that his wife and three kids just breezed in and out of that dark, close space to retrieve things like jackets and canned goods. I stayed alone upstairs in another small room. I think it had been some kind of closet because it had no windows. It was at the back of the house, and I knew it was over the porch. Every night, when I’d be locked into my room, I’d imagine I could hear the white noise of the snakes moving around beneath the floorboards. I knew they were awake, too. And I knew that it would only be a matter of time before they figured out a
way to reach me.
I didn’t have to wait very long. It was on the sixth night that he finally showed up. I wasn’t surprised. I knew he was coming. I could see it in the way he looked at me. I could feel it in the way he touched me—touches that were supposed to be casual, but were tainted with malicious intent. I knew the difference—just like all women everywhere know the difference. When I heard the sound of a key turning in the door lock, I knew my time had come. My education was about to take another path. When his shadow filled
up the entrance to my dark asylum, I didn’t bother to call for help. I knew it would be pointless. Who would help me? Not the shopworn woman he called his helpmeet. Not his daughters—they had matching sets of empty, unseeing eyes. I was on my own, and I knew it.”
Egad. The reader is relieved that this writer eventually escaped and managed to survive to adulthood on her own.
This novel, like the art project it describes, looks like an interesting experiment that isn’t completely successful, but parts of it are memorable.
-------------------
Monday, September 30, 2013
Unforgivable
By Lisabet Sarai
(Based on a dream)
It has been growing for the past three months, silent but
deadly, like some tumor eating away at my soul. Lila noticed, I'm sure, when I
came back from my trip, that I was quieter, more inward-focused than ever. I
guess she chalked the changes up to the fact that I'd been visiting my mother.
In any case, she didn't ask, much to my relief.
I fell back into her arms with a feverish desperation she
probably found gratifying. “Seems like you missed me, baby,” she'd tease,
gazing up from her favorite spot between my thighs, her café
au lait cheeks smeared with pussy juice. She wiggled the fingers buried in my
cunt and I spasmed into yet another furious climax, forgetting, for a few
seconds at least, my betrayal.
With uncharacteristic roughness I flipped her onto her back,
burrowed into her bush, gnawed on her clit, until she thrashed and screamed and
begged me for a bit of mercy. I drank deeply of the wine that poured from her
tender flesh and sought oblivion in her helpless fluttering around my fist.
Not since our first wild days together had we come together
in such frenzied passion. Our fiery couplings left us both drained and sore. In
the aftermath of these conflagrations, as we lay tangled in the soaked sheets,
still interpenetrated, I'd rake my fingers through her tangled curls and think
about how much I loved her, how desperately I needed her. The words I knew she
wanted to hear stuck in my throat, though, like some half-chewed chunk of meat
I could neither swallow nor disgorge.
Our bodies spoke, in the most direct of languages, but
as the weeks wore on, it became harder and harder for me to say anything at all
to my lovely Lila. At dinner, she'd try to draw me into conversation,
chattering about the Murakami novel she was reading, or the new Almodovar film
down at the Lido, or the latest office scandal at the ad agency where she
worked. Even my monosyllabic replies took enormous effort. All I could do was
gather her into my arms, fondle her ripe ass, suck her earlobe into my mouth
until she shuddered with desire, and finally, drag her off to bed.
Until tonight.
She wants me. She pants as I twist a plump nipple
through her teeshirt. Her skin is moist and warm under my wandering fingers. If
I can just worm my hand into the front of her jeans, I know I'll find her wet
and ready. Right now, I need that more than ever, the wordless certainty of her
surrender. But tonight, she pushes me away.
“No, Gretchen. We've got to talk.” She sits back down
in front of her dirty plate and swallows the last of her wine. “You've got to
tell me what's bothering you.”
I sink to my knees beside her chair and try to unzip
her fly. “Tomorrow. I'll tell you tomorrow, baby. Let's go to bed.”
She slaps my hand. “Stop it!” Then she clasps my fingers
in her own and raises them to her lips. “Trust me, Gretch. Talk to me. What's
wrong?”
She raises me to my feet, then propels me into the
chair next to her. I don't resist. I'm too busy trying to breathe. Guilt is
smothering me.
“It's
nothing, baby. Let it go.” I don't want to tell her. I can't tell her.
She'd never forgive me.
“Damn it, don't lie. Something happened on your trip
west, and it's driving you crazy. You've been like a zombie ever since you got
back.”
“Come on. Zombies don't fuck the way we do.” I try to
chuckle, to turn it all into a joke. My voice cracks with the strain.
She shakes her head, making her curls bounce. “Did
your mom start in again, about you being eternally damned? A daughter of Satan?
You should know better than to listen to her...”
“No, no – it's not her...” I want to sink through the
floor. I consider the possibility of dragging myself from her grip and storming
out the apartment. A half-dozen
beers at Sandy's Pub might dull some of this pain... But the look on her face,
focused concern and real distress, keeps me pinned in place.
“What, then? I know you're a very private person,
Gretch, but if you can't share this with me – I'm your lover, for Christ's
sake! You'll feel better afterward. You know what they say about burden shared...”
A glimmer of hope. Was she right? But then, she hasn't
heard the story yet...
“I – I can't...”
“You can. Take a deep breath and begin. Pretend I'm
not even here. I promise I won't say a word.”
I extricate my hands from hers and swallow the lump in
my throat. She's so earnest, so beautiful, so terribly in love with me. I'm
about to shatter her.
“It – it happened on the way back. Somewhere on I-80 –
Kansas, Nebraska, one of those places. I was planning to stop in Kansas City
for the night. About sunset. I needed a bathroom. The rest area seemed empty.
Didn't bother me, not at the time...”
I stop. It's coming back, coming up like vomit. I
can't fight it anymore, and I think it will choke me.
Lila keeps her promise and stays silent, but her eyes
beam encouragement.
“He – he was hiding in one of the stalls. Waiting.” I
stop again, trying to swallow the panic and the self-disgust.
“Oh, my god...” she whispers, pure pity in her
eyes.
“He let
me pee, then dragged me out of the stall and pressed me up against the sink.
Young guy, skinny, with hair like straw and blond stubble. But he was strong,
stronger than me, and he had a knife...”
“Oh, Gretchen, darling...” Her arms are around me, but
I can't feel them now. I'm back there, in that grubby rest area toilet, the
cold tip of his blade nudging the underside of my jaw. 'Take down your pants,
dyke,' he'd ordered and what could I do but obey, with his steel teasing my
skin? 'That's a good girl. Wouldn't want to have to cut a pretty gal like
you...'
I shivered. The blade slid down along my throat to my
carotid. He smelled like sweat and diesel. 'Gonna give it to you good,' he'd
crooned as he rubbed his slippery knob over my bare ass. A bit of a drawl, but
compelling, too, oozing with self-confidence. 'I'm gonna show you what you've
been missing, dyke. Gonna fuck you till you scream and beg for more.'
I remember the instant he pushed into my cunt from
behind, the feeling of being sliced open, even though he held the knife steady.
I wanted to scream, I did, but I was afraid of his oily power and his sparkling
blade so I let him fuck me, let him, let him, rough and hard, slamming my hips
against the cold porcelain of the sink as he fucked, fucked, fucked, the knife
like pricking my skin in time with his thrusts...
Lila holds me tight. I bury my face in her breasts,
soaking her tee shirt with my tears as I remember it all. The way he left me,
in the dusk-dark ladies' room, crumpled on the floor with his spunk all over me
and the shape of his fingernails carved into my ass. The way I scoured my skin raw later that night in the motel,
unable, it seemed, to wash his stink from my flesh. The terror and guilt that
wracked my dreams, where again and again he commanded me to bend over and I
still couldn't say no...
“Go ahead, baby, go on and cry.” Lila's voice sounds a
hundred miles away, as she rubs her cheek over my crew cut and peppers my
forehead with soft kisses. “It's okay now. You're safe. And I'm here. I'll take
care of you.” “
She's soft, seductive. She thinks she understands.
“I'm so glad you told me. Everything's going to be all
right, darling.”
You're wrong, I want to tell her. You don't know the worst of
it.
I should follow through, tell her the whole truth.
It's strangling me.
I'm weak, though. I let her cuddle me, let her believe
that her comfort can save me. Just like I let him fuck my traitorously soaked
cunt, until I came as hard as he'd promised, piss and disinfectant in my
nostrils and the taste of blood in my mouth.
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