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.
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.
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.
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.
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!
This week, Andi chats with the owners of Fangirl Shirts, Rebecca Barrick and Sally Heaven, who “make awesome shirts by, for and about women.” They launched the company four years ago as a way to celebrate fangirls and fan culture through T-shirts and other swag, doing cool things like spelling out the word “fangirl” in the font of a particular show title and immortalizing lines from shows or the fandoms on shirts and swag.
Fangirl Shirts is also committed to community works, and a portion of profits go to non-profits that support girls and/or women. They also do special edition shirts that benefit a specific cause or organization (try the Queer Thunder and Peacemaker swaggery, for example) and they’re the organizers of the ClexaCon fun-run, an event they just launched at the second ClexaCon (the largest queer women and allies in media con) held in April, 2018. They’re already planning for the next, and they have all kinds of projects they’re working on, which makes Andi an even bigger fangirl of them.
Andi and Lise totally fangirled over Amanda McLoughlin, but they still did manage to chat with her about one of her cool-ass projects, “Join the Party,” a collaborative storytelling and roleplaying podcast in which four friends create a story together, chapter by chapter. Everyone from seasoned players to total beginners can enjoy this Dungeons & Dragons gameplay, with adventure, intrigue, drama, magic, and the chance to follow diverse characters.
According to the Bello (podcasting) Collective, Join the Party has “gargoyles, robots, queerness, political intrigue, and a whole lot of sound design.” JTP also has introductory episodes to teach new listeners how to play D&D, and they also have interviews with innovators who are pushing the game forward.
Amanda McLoughlin is a producer, founder of the production collective Multitude, a business builder, and old-school internet creator from New York who some of you may know as one of the co-hosts of the fabulous mythology, folklore and legends podcast, “Spirits.”
Lise has gone off the rails without Andi this week, and brings in author Nita Round to geek out about one of her favorite subjects of late: D&D!!! For those not in the know, D&D stands for Dungeons & Dragons and is a fantasy-based role-playing game.
Nita and Lise talk about their experiences playing the game, the sorts of hi-jinks that happen when you get cranky wizards together with clueless clerics, and games devolve into one long attempt to barbecue their way across a fantasy landscape.
Nita Round (and her fabulous books) can be found at nitaround.com.
This week, Andi interviewed two of the creative forces behind L.A. Web Series, a currently 2-season web series available on YouTube that follows a chance meeting between two women one evening in L.A. and what kind of connection they forge in the night they spend wandering around the city before Landon has to fly back to the UK in the morning.
Emma Maddock plays Landon in the series. She is an actress originally from Manchester, England, who was also a producer on the series.
Alexandra Swarens plays Avery. She is a writer and actress originally from Sacramento, California who wrote the series and also directed it.
Here they dish on their backgrounds and on filming the series, and provide some advice on creating content. They also spill a bit about new projects they’re working on.
You can find both seasons of L.A. Web Series on YouTube.
Find Emma Maddock on Twitter (@Emmaddock) and Instagram (@maddock94) and the L.A. Web Series on Twitter (@LAWebSeries).
Andi and Lise are both on the ground at ClexaCon in Las Vegas, Nevada and so is Anna from The Lesbian Review, who also attended last year. Andi and Lise chat with Anna about ClexaCon then and now, fandoms, and how important queer representation is and the role ClexaCon plays in that.
Andi and Lise are both on the ground at ClexaCon in Las Vegas, Nevada and they chat with con-goer Ashley about her experiences at the event and what it means to her and to queer representation.
Andi and Lise are super-stoked this week because they managed to score an interview with three ClexaCon directors/organizers (Ashley had to step out to conduct official ClexaCon business during the interview, but we appreciate her dedication to the cause).
Joining us is Holly W., Danielle J., and Ashley A., all of whom not only direct and organize this event, but coordinate with other team members to do whatever needs to be done.
ClexaCon officially launched in March, 2017 as a response to the myriad deaths of queer women characters in media, particularly the death of the character of Commander Lexa of the CW show The 100 (pronounced “the hundred”). That character died in an egregious example of the “bury your gays” trope, and in the wake of her death, LGBTQ fans and allies rallied in opposition to this trope and sparked a revolution of organizing and community outreach that continues unabated.
Named for the iconic ship of Clarke Griffin and Commander Lexa (Clexa), ClexaCon is the first and largest multi-fandom event for LGBTQ women and allies. It brings together thousands of diverse LGBTQ fans and content creators from around the world to celebrate and encourage positive media representation of and for LGBTQ women.
The event is scheduled for 5-9 April in Las Vegas, Nevada.
Lez Geek Out!cast 