Tag: books

Why We Need Stories about Older Lesbians.

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A number of readers said to me they loved Auntie Florrie from Encrypted Hearts. I’ll be honest; so did I. I would’ve loved her in my corner when I came out.

Some of you know I was struggling to write a contemporary romance. When I went on a Global Wordsmiths writing course in March, I discussed this with my editor, who encouraged me to write what I wanted to write. I said I had an idea for a short story, featuring Auntie Florrie. The idea… and the manuscript… kept growing, and now she has her own story, a dual timeline second chance romance, which throws us back into 1920s London and comes forward to 1950s Cambridge (UK) and France. One of the key things I wanted was to include Florrie as an older lesbian.

In the sapphic fiction world that’s slowly embracing diversity, older lesbians are still under-represented. I’m not sure if this is because younger readers don’t want to read about the middle-aged or the old, but certainly very few book covers will show older characters on the front. I put my hand up to doing this too. My latest book, On the Edge of Uncertainty, has a portrait of the young Diana in the 1920s, painted in the style of Tamara de Limpicka. Why? Because apparently no-one would pick up a book with a cover of a middle-aged woman.

The stories of younger sapphics are vital, but they’re not the whole picture. Queer women grow up and age. They love, lose, and love again, and drag along a whole truckload of baggage, in the form of family, children, exes and aging bodies. And yet, their stories are still so rarely told.

Post-menopausal Woman

Once a woman passes menopause, she’s often written out of romantic narratives, or there are “comic” references to hot flushes, but nothing else. Society ignores older women or writes them off as being crones. But love doesn’t disappear with age, nor wisdom. Desire doesn’t wither either. Older lesbian representation reminds us that connection, self-discovery, and passion are lifelong experiences. And there are advantages to growing older, the chief being not giving a damn what people think, or feeling you have to be seen somewhere, or do something. For me, for the first time in my life, I’m now actually doing exactly what I want to do: writing.

Older Women carry Queer History

Many older lesbians lived through times when queerness had to be hidden. In the UK, this was characterised by Section 28, when being out could cost you your job, your family, or your safety. Most of my contemporaries have stories of being closeted at work or not daring to come out until later in life. To this day, my father refuses to talk about my sexuality, and still refers to my ex as “that woman”, who he blames for corrupting his daughter. A lot of the freedom and acceptance we have today is because lesbians in the past refused to be silent and demanded to live authentically.

Older Representation

Representation in books shapes how we see ourselves and how society sees us. Without stories of older lesbians, we reinforce the idea that queer life stops being visible after a certain age. But when readers encounter women in their fifties, sixties, or beyond who are falling in love, living and thriving, it changes the narrative. It tells readers: You are still here. You still matter.

Connecting Generations

When I wrote Warm Pearls and Paper Cranes, which shows two women from their teens to their nineties, I wasn’t sure the older women would appeal to anyone, yet I’ve had a number of readers who’ve said how much they enjoyed seeing how it’s possible to live a full, authentic queer life, and how they can relate to some of the entrenched misogyny along the way. Others have said how they’ve loved being able to celebrate old queer women having a happy ever after.

Stories are how we make sense of who we are and who we can become. When older lesbians are missing from those stories, a vital part of our shared humanity is lost. We need more books that celebrate our heartbreaks, our complex lives, and our courage to love again.

Because representation isn’t just about being seen. It’s about being remembered. And it’s time older lesbians took our place in the stories we tell about love, life, and everything in between.

On the Ambivalence of Writing The End

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Ordinarily I celebrate writing the words The End on a manuscript and bundling it off to my editors for the ritual shredding. After months of work, to finally get a draft completed is a relief and comes with a sense of pride at the achievement. Yet, this time there is also a sense of unease, bordering on sadness.

This last year has been particularly tough from a writing point of view. Having paddled in the historical romance arena for a few years, I had planned to write a contemporary series – of three lesbian couples who all live together in a large house, which they rename Yew Hall. I think I was more inspired by the joke than the detail, for although I had planned all three novels and the detail of the characters, when I started to write, the character who was supposed to be funny and light kept appearing as angry and frankly, unlikeable.

Maybe it was because I was struggling with the fatigue of long covid, or because of the cataclysm of world events, but it was hard to put my fingers to the keyboard and produce anything at all, and even worse, on the page the words were rambling and banal.

In March I attended a Global Wordsmiths writing retreat and explained my problems, how I’d lost my mojo and joy in writing. It had taken me six months to drag out 30,000 words and I couldn’t say I was happy with any of them.

“Why don’t you write what you want to write?” my editor asked, giving me permission to set aside the contemporary romance. I’d had an idea of writing another historical romance around Auntie Florrie, a secondary character in Encrypted Hearts. In there it was intimated she had worked in the publishing world in London in the 1920s.  It would make a great short story – perhaps 5,000 words. Immediately I got down to it and within a week I’d smashed through the 5,000 and had twenty thousand words settled down. Okay, it can be a novella, I thought.  At the end of the first draft it’s now sitting around 75,000 so it’s definitely a novel, called On The Edge of Uncertainty. I’m sure my editor will shave off some of my filler words and redundant dialogue tags, but it will be of that region.

The 1920s must have been such an exciting time to be writing, as people pushed back the strictures of the Edwardian and Victorian eras and writers and artists challenged the straight-laced art and writing and sexual mores that had gone before. One of my heroes from being a teenager was Virginia Woolf.  When I was a sixteen-year-old my mother encouraged me to read the essay A Room of One’s Own. She was trying to impress on me the importance of being a feminist, financially independent, and engaging in critical thought. Honestly, I was just as thrilled when I discovered Virgina Woolf had a same sex affair with Vita Sackville West. For me it was an exciting time – I loved school and discussing everything with my mum, who was finally well after having had a mental breakdown. It was just about a year between her being well and her death and it was one of the happiest times of my life – to be treated like an adult and learning about the world and challenging assumptions. It was the same love of life and feeling alive because of the intellectual stimulation that I wanted to bring out in Florrie’s initiation into the 1920s literary London.

Since March I have been dreaming of my characters and plot, as I’ve watched the story unfold, interrupt my sleep and impinge on my social life and I’ve loved having Florrie and Diana in my head – and Cam and Gloria of course. So finally saying goodbye to them leaves me feeling lost and listless. Even though it won’t hit the common beats of a romance, I wrote it because I felt compelled to write it.

So now I face the fear of what’s next. I have an idea for something completely different – a cosy(?) fantasy and I’ll get down to it on Monday. We’ll have to see if my muse, which was alive and well writing Florrie’s story, will desert me when I embark on something new and meet different characters.

Typing The End is a misnomer. Inevitably there are revisions and marketing that needs to be done, and the next idea calls to be explored. So, I’ll pause, take a breath before letting go of some of my favourite characters and release them into the world.