Lise is laid up this week and can’t get the latest episode edited and uploaded. While she recovers, please enjoy this conversation with Karin Kallmaker.
Rerun Episode 52: Interview with Kameron Hurley
Back next week, promise!
Episode 126: Writing WLW Spec-Fic: A Conversation with Author Cathy Pegau
Andi and Lise chatted with award-winning author Cathy Pegau about her writing and publishing trajectory and about writing F/F spec fic, including her latest work, The Demon Equilibrium, a historical paranormal saga in which two women have to save the world from a demonic horde.
Cathy’s website HERE
Find out more about The Demon Equilibrium HERE
Shout-outs: Lise is working on figuring out how to build caterpillar cages to help protect caterpillars in her backyard ecosystem. Cathy is stoked that her son is graduating from college very soon and Andi is once again planting things.
Episode 124: A Conversation with Karin Kallmaker
Andi and Lise are super-stoked to have the Queen of Lesbian Romance, Karin Kallmaker, on the show to talk about the evolution and history of F/F fiction, how it’s crossing over into “mainstream” publishing and what that means for representation, for publishing, and the F/F publishing industry that’s been here all along. Karin is a multiple award-winning author who published her first novel in 1989 and has been going strong ever since. She has also worked as an editor in the lesfic publishing industry, so she’s been on both sides of the publishing fence.
Find Karin on Twitter: @kallmaker
And at her website: kallmaker.com
Shout-outs: Lise started watching Our Flag Means Death on HBO Max and says it’s a fab rom-com in pirate days with all kinds of rep and go watch it right away. Karin just got Sara Paretsky’s latest release in the detective V.I. Warchawski novels, Dead Land, and she’s looking forward to reading that. She also recommends the movie The Lost City, lots of belly laughs. Andi has started the gardening thing and has some tomato seedlings. Plus, she’s making candles.
Episode 118: Looking forward to 2022
Andi and Lise were joined by book reviewer and fellow podcaster Tara Scott (she/they) to chat about things they’re all looking forward to in 2022 despite the continuing pooshow that is the world.
Find Tara at The Lesbian Review, Smart Bitches, Trashy Books, and Queerly Recommended. Also on Twitter, @taramdscott
On the TV:
Lise: animated series Legend of Vox Machina, Amazon Prime, based on “Critical Role,” a group of voice actors who have been playing D&D together for years.
Tara: RuPaul’s Drag Race: UK Vs. the World (BBCThree) – a global spinoff. She’s also looking forward to RuPaul’s Drag Race in general (various platforms) and the show We’re Here (HBO), which follows 3 drag queens bringing luv to small-town America.
Andi: Mandalorian season 3 (Disney Plus) and Only Murders in the Building (Hulu), season 2.
Books:
Tara: Count Your Lucky Stars (steamy F/F rom-com) by Alexandria Bellefleur and I Kissed Shara Wheeler (F/F) by Casey McQuiston.
Lise: Rebecca Roanhorse, Fevered Sun (Book 2 in the Between Earth and Sky series); Naomi Novik’s third in the Scholomance series, The Golden Enclaves
Andi: John Scalzi, Kaiju Preservation Society and Tochi Onyebuchi, Goliath; also Janelle Monáe’s The Memory Librarian, short speculative fiction featuring Black women writers and Black nonbinary writers and creators
Games:
Tara: Rune Factory 5 (Nintendo Switch) and Sea of Stars (Switch; other platforms)
Lise: Starfield (Xbox)
Andi: still learning Switch, plays puzzle/mystery games but looking for a FPS for noobs on the Switch
Movies/TV:
Tara: not feeling movies, but recommends Mythic Quest on AppleTV, a comedy show about a fictional video game studio working on the fictional game Mythic Quest
Andi: Everything Everywhere All at Once, starring Michelle Yeoh as a woman who just wants to get her taxes paid but keeps getting sucked into the multiverse to save it.
Episode 100: Celebrating Queer Culture with Dana Piccoli
Andi and Lise are SO EXCITED to be celebrating their 100th episode with author, entertainment writer, speaker, pop culture critic, podcaster, social media maven and awesome-sauce person Dana Piccoli. In this episode, Dana breaks down some of the potential trends in queer media (yay! Queer filmfests online!), what she’s been watching/engaging in (SPOILERS), how COVID has affected media and how it might affect it going forward. Andi, Lise, and Dana also discuss the lesbian fiction industry and what it means that mainstream publishing has started publishing more F/F (and other LGBTQ fiction) stories.
Shout-outs: Dana has been listening to a lot of singer/songwriter Katie Pruitt. Lise has been watching lots of Adventure Time, which has a queer storyline that she didn’t realize was there. Andi shouted out Masterpiece Theater’s new-ish mystery series, Miss Scarlet and the Duke.
Find Dana:
Episode 67: Interview with Christin Baker about Season of Love
Andi Marquette flies solo this week (safe travels, Lise!) and chats with Christin Baker, CEO/president of tello Films, about the tello holiGAY romcom movie, Season of Love, officially releasing for download off the tello website December 1 (though you can preorder!). The movie has several screenings in the U.S. and another in the UK (London). Andi find out how the project came about, a bit about who’s involved, and what might be next for holiGAY rom-coms from tello.
From the movie’s website:
“Season of Love is a lighthearted rom-com featuring a large ensemble cast of diverse women and their connected love lives during the hectic holiday period just before Christmas through the New Year who discover love truly is the best gift of all. Follow IRIS, MARDOU, LOU, KENNA, JANEY, and SUE as they navigate the busy holiday season of love.”
Find out more:
Season of Love movie
tello Films
SoL trailer and behind the scenes vids
Backstory, from the indigogo campaign
Episode 64: Talking F/F Fic with Tara Scott
This week, Andi and Lise chat with F/F fic reviewer extraordinaire Tara Scott, whose reviews you can find at The Lesbian Review, Lambda Literary and Smart Bitches, Trashy Books. She also hosts the podcast Les Do Books at the Lesbian Talk Show. We talk a bit of history of F/F fiction, found out what she’s reading and way into these days, and also what she sees as emerging trends in F/F fiction.
Books that came up in our convo!
Aurora Rey, Recipe for Love (audio and written); Anna Burke, Thorn; Courtney Milan, Mrs. Martin’s Incomparable Adventure; Ann Bannon’s Beebo Brinker series (HERSTORY!!!! And Tara chatted with Ann about lesbian pulp fiction on her podcast HERE); Lee Winter, Breaking Character; Elle Spencer, Casting Lacey; Rachel Spangler, In Development; Alyssa Cole, Once Ghosted, Twice Shy.
Authors who write butch characters well: KD Williamson, Jenny Frame, Nell Stark, Rachel Spangler, Brenda Murphy
Other authors who came up: Radclyffe, Rebekah Weatherspoon, Kat Sebastian, Meghan O’Brien
The LGO crew and Tara also recommend Heather Rose Jones’ podcast, The Lesbian Historic Motif, so if you’re looking to write some F/F historical fiction, check it out.
Lise’s shout-out this week was to Hugo-winning N.K. Jemisn’s collection of short stories, How Long ‘til Black Future Month? Tara’s is for looking forward to reading Tara Muir’s Gideon the 9th, which Andi and Lise love, and Andi’s shout-out is to the fact that she’s currently creating a character for a little DnD!
Episode 60: Our Writing Processes
Andi and Lise get a little personal and talk shop about their respective writing processes. Both write spec fic, though Andi also writes romance and mysteries, and those genres take a different approach. They discuss how they approach different projects, what kind of preparation they do, multitasking different projects or not, outlines or not, and tools of the trade. They also talk about how writing influences how they watch, read, and analyze other creators’ work.
Writing platforms they talked a bit about:
Word
Scrivener
Notebooks (as in actual paper!) both use for project notes/character sketches/plots/timelines:
Moleskine
Link to a bunch of different notebooks (Andi uses several different kinds, usually plain-covered or something with a skull on the cover…lol)
Andi and Lise both recommend doing NaNoWriMo—National Novel Writing Month, which is every November. 50,000 words in a month is what NNWM is about. Try it! Great community, great fun!
NaNoWriMo
Find them at their websites:
Lise MacTague
Andi Marquette
And finally, Andi geeked out about the start of the final (sob) season of Killjoys. Lise got raved about the excitement of She-Ra’s third season.
Episode 52: Interview with Kameron Hurley
Andi and Lise lost their sh*t when award-winning sci fi/fantasy writer Kameron Hurley agreed to chat with them about writing and her very latest release, which just dropped March 19, The Light Brigade.
Hurley’s website bio states she’s a writer “specializing in war and resistance movements,” but she’s also known as one of the most important voices in the field engaging in intense world-building and explorations of gender, sexuality, and politics. You may know her for her essay collection Geek Feminist Revolution, which included the Hugo-winning essay “We Have Always Fought: Challenging the ‘Women, Cattle, and Slaves’ Narrative.” She is the author of the fantasy series the Worldbreaker Saga; the Bel Dame Apocrypha (God’s War Trilogy), and the space opera The Stars Are Legion (which Andi and Lise raved about in episode 19).
On this episode of LGO, Hurley dished about writing, her own process (upshot: writing is hard!!!!), her work, and specifically about The Light Brigade, which has been described by a reviewer as a cross between Starship Troopers and Edge of Tomorrow. Another reviewer described it as a “time-twisting, genre-redefining military science fiction novel.”
Thank you, Kameron, for joining us!
Find Kameron:
Website
Patreon
Twitter (@KameronHurley)
Podcast
Etsy
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