RepLGBTQ+

Yup!

Out On Good Behavior by Dahlia Adler (Pansexual MC but lesbian LI)

The Belle vs. the BDOC by Amy Jo Cousins

Take Them By Storm by Marie Landry

Looking For a Complication by Tamsen Parker

Treasure by Rebekah Weatherspoon

What’s been the response from public high and middle school libraries? “Librarians are rock stars. And I receive so many emails from LGBTQ+ kids saying how much they love reading a snarky gay teen who doesn’t hate himself. He just hates the world, ha ha.“

As of last month, I’ve republished these 7 bonus standalone short stories set in my Jewish fantasy world, for only $1.99! Please help me spread the word.

Tales from Perach features characters from the novels having independent adventures. Most the stories are extremely fluffy and queer; the exception is “Rivka in Port Saltspray”, which has some violence because it’s about a warrior woman, but still ends happily.

“Your Name is Love”, cis lesbian f/f: An energetic royal guard takes her artist wife on a scavenger hunt around the city so she can stop having artist’s block about the lesbian graphic novel she’s supposed to make for the queen. (That’s them in the cover art, by Caroline C.)

“No Whining”, slice of life w/background bi, trans f/cis m: A chef dithers over whether to switch wine sellers when hers is incompetent but the delivery girl is a trusted ally.

“Every Us”, cis bi m/gay m: A prince with anxiety is comforted in the arms of his partner when he wakes up from a nightmare. (Remember Kaveh and Farzin?)

“Take Time to Stop and Eat the Roses”, trans m/cis f: A teenager and his girlfriend go on a midnight quest for flowers for her sister’s wedding. (Remember Micah?)

“The Generous Princess”, cis bi f/lesbian f & cis bi m/gay m in family setting: A royal family with two moms and two dads puts their own special twist on celebrating Purim.

“Rivka in Port Saltspray”, demisexual MC, aro ace rep as well. Trapped in a seedy port town because an innkeeper is holding her shapeshifting dragon-horse hostage until she can pay all the charges he invented, nomadic warrior Rivka finally has a chance at some decent money when a wealthy but weak man hires her to rescue his fiancée. But she has to think on her feet when she learns there may be more at stake.

“Aviva and the Aliens”, cis bi f/lesbian f. On the night before the royal Passover seder, Aviva has to outsmart the aliens who abducted her to cook for them because they had grown sick of their spaceship’s food replicators. Will she get home before Queen Shulamit wakes up and panics from her absence? 

Why? Because what do I not have the spoons for, often? Full books, no matter how wonderful. Which is truly sad; I want to read so much more than I do, and not having the energy, or even thinking about it and finding it overwhelming - it’s a loss. But what do I (and probably many of my disabled/chronic-illness-and-or-pain-having followers) find much easier to handle?  Short stories. Bite-sized bits of loveliness. That’s what these are.

Here’s my review if you need more convincing.  And forreal, I don’t think you have to have read the rest of the series to enjoy them - I read Rivka In Port Saltspray/Aviva and the Aliens first of anything in this universe (they were released on their own originally) and they hooked me before I read the main series books.

So I’m going to take a moment and gush over a theme in these short stories and Shira’s work in particular. That is, in addition to showcasing a wide range of orientations, gender identities, and gender expressions, they also showcase a wide range of ages and relationships.

I mean, we get the characters meeting and falling in love for the first time and it’s beautiful and popular and everyone loves it.

But we also get established relationships, queer relationships, that are depicted as healthy and lasting and just as loving as in the beginning. We get characters who are devoted to each other and support each other and are legitimately building a life together.

And we also get characters who are not just teenagers and early twenty-somethings, also in queer relationships. I’m not saying that stories about teenagers and young adults building positive lives for themselves are bad, but there’s just so little available of characters who are older than that.

I mean, remember the Real Life Trans Adult thing from a while back? Yael, the trans chef mentioned above, is at least middle-aged in the short story, and she has a full, rich life with people she loves, and she’s a successful business owner.

One of the most demeaning effects homophobia has had on me is to try to convince me, from a young age, that we in the LGBT umbrella were cut off from the sweeter, more innocent sides of the human experience. Poppy Jenkins by Clare Ashton gives the f/f romance world a gift — a sensual, emotional story with modern sensibilities, pairings, and politics, but a definitely old-fashioned feeling that’s usually the sole purview of cis women being romanced by cis men (in fiction, anyway.)

The two-second pitch is that Poppy’s estranged childhood best friend Rosalyn comes back to the village, meaning the two of them finally have to deal with a lot of unresolved stuff. Rosalyn is incredibly sexy and exciting but also a little aggressive for Poppy’s chill, dainty village life — for example, when a local business owner tries to bully a village woman into shutting down her craft fair, Rosalyn jumps to her defense at the town meeting far more stridently than these folks are used to. She usually does the right thing, but is scary about it and often insulting, including to people and traditions Poppy cares about. She’s the hardened one whereas Poppy is the ultimate optimist.

There were many themes close to my heart in this one: how there’s often a vast gulf in the coming out experience between someone who has a lot of social support and someone who’s already disliked or unpopular for other reasons, the ins and outs of running a tiny restaurant (did I mention Poppy is a chef? This is such a Shira book), and strong cultural traditions — in this case, it’s a Welsh setting by a Welsh author. Bits of Welsh are scattered through the text, and traditions pepper the book in a way that lightly immerses you. There was a scene at Poppy’s friend’s wedding where I teared up because everyone was singing some beloved old Welsh hymn even though I’m not Welsh and didn’t know the tune, because I can identify with what that means, and was thinking of my own culture. Poppy’s non-romantic relationships also play a key role in the book — her family especially the female relatives like her sister, mother, and grandmother,  her best friend (a straight guy, and a pretty cool one!), and other women in the village.

Poppy may as well be a 21st century Anne of Green Gables or other costume drama small-town girl, full of buoyancy and enthusiasm, as well as love for her village and its people. But by making her this, the author doesn’t rob her of her sexuality, and that’s what makes this so wonderful. A woman’s sexual–not just romantic but sexual–attraction to another woman is depicted as innocent and wholesome. Do you have any idea how fucking healing that is? For Poppy to come back from college to her village with a couple of ex-girlfriends’ worth of experience under her belt and still be covered all over with the tinsel of “this character is An Innocent” is revolutionary.

Also, women’s attraction to other women is unique from person to person and Poppy’s — like Dahlia Adler’s Frankie from Out on Good Behavior — is very similar to mine (curves! softness!), so I appreciated that on a personal level as well. There’s more than one scene where she’s quietly fascinated by Rosalyn’s breasts, without being portrayed as any less cute and charming herself for these feelings, and I can say right here and now that if I’d have had a book like this to read when I was a teenager I would have grown up happier and felt way more validated.

Warning that this is one of those books where if people actually communicated on page 20 instead of page 200, things would go a lot easier for them, but I found the setting, characters, and story so delightful that I could put up with Poppy’s occasional “don’t you know you’re in a romance novel, silly????” denseness. Just know that going in, in case it makes your decision for you. The ending is super satisfying.

What if I told you there was a real, published novel, from trans author @austinchanted at @lessthanthreepress, in which Peter Pan was trans, had grown up, and was slowly falling for Captain Hook as they both confront the toxic masculinity to which their story ties them?

It’s the wonderful Peter Darling, and you can read my gushing, detailed review here. It has a blissfully happy ending, too.

Please help me to signal boost this amazing book since I’ve seen many people looking for trans lit by trans authors, or trans m/m books, or trans SFF, and since it’s with a small press and by a marginalized author there’s a good chance many of those people will only hear about it through word of mouth if they’re gonna hear about it at all.

The Alpennia books by Heather Rose Jones are everything I wanted when I was a teenager and I’m so happy they exist now–19th century costume drama fantasy taking place in a tiny imaginary country near France, Switzerland, and Italy, starring a bunch of lesbians who do magic or swordfight and also featuring bi women and a trans guy. The books are full of political intrigue, pretty clothing, all types of relationships between women from romantic to friendship to rival princesses.

In the first book, Daughter of Mystery (review), a young mystic is forced into close proximity with her godfather’s crossdressing bodyguard girl when he leaves his entire fortune to her on condition that she retains the bodyguard as her own until they both reach the age of majority. That’s them in the top pic. By the third book, the mystic has literally founded a women’s college.

The second book, The Mystic Marriage (review) is about a middle-aged social butterfly who falls for a young demisexual alchemist (in purple.) This is a story of wildly contrasting personalities coming together while creating magic rocks, and introduces Sephardic Jews, a trans man, and a woman whose parents are from Ethiopia into the cast, all of whom also appear in the next book too.

Mother of Souls is the third book, focusing on both the above couples plus detailing new adventures of the Ethiopian-Italian woman who has a few relationships with other bi women while trying to navigate the complex worlds of both magic and Alpennian society. I can’t wait until she finds her permanent female partner in a future book (according to the author) so that I can hire art of her and that woman together to add to this art series.

Each book features a different threat to Alpennian national safety, and truth and light and rescue can only come from sapphics with magical powers (which we already knew, right?)

They’re a little pricey, but thoroughly worth it. If you can afford to get all three at the same time, the publisher @bellabooks has the eBook bundle for $23.95. Otherwise, here they are on Amazon; if you’d rather try the library, my local branch has had very good luck getting them after I fill out a request form, and if yours isn’t, consider borrowing them through interlibrary loan (ILL)–look at all the libraries that have the first book, for example. This is the series. They are fabulous books, each one long and complete and thorough and full of women in love, and I’d really like to help spread the word about them because I know far more people are looking for magical lesbians (and lesbians with swords) than have found them–so reblogs are appreciated.

The Actor Who Played Barb On “Stranger Things” Opened Up About Her Bisexuality On Twitter

“I’m very very new to the LGBT community.”

Wow, Barb is bi?!?!

“I’m very very new to the LGBT community.”

WELCOME TO THE LGBTQIA+ COMMUNITY SHANNON PURSER!!!