Ivy is reeling from the events of the comic crossover event Fear State. To save her life, Harley Quinn split Ivy from The Green, the elemental force that connected her to all plant life on Earth. This has had the unfortunate side effect of greatly depowering Ivy, making her weaker than she has been in a very long time. Angry and seeking revenge against all of humanity, Ivy consumes parasitic spores and starts driving across the country. Her goal: infect a critical mass of people around the world in order to wipe out all of humanity, including herself. Along the way, she meets people who show her that maybe there are some parts of humanity that are worth saving after all. When her former professor, the man who tormented her and turned her into what she is today, catches up with her, she’ll have to decide what kind of villain she wants to be.

At its core, The Virtuous Cycle is all about feminine rage and what we do with it. Ivy’s story is like that of so many women. She’s been manipulated and abused by those she looked up to and thought she could trust. She’s had her power stolen from her by those closest to her (even if they did have the best of intentions). She has plenty of reasons to lash out and turn her pain onto others. At the open and throughout the majority of the volume, she intends to do just that. She has looked upon the world and the people within it and has decided that no one is worth redeeming and that everyone should pay.

On the one hand, G. Willow Wilson does not shy away from how good channeling our rage can feel. The volume opens with Ivy telling us this isn’t a revenge tale, it’s a tale about love. Rage can feel like that, like we’re lashing out because we love. Four pages later, we get an awesome moment in which Ivy tells two men, one of whom has his gun trained on her, that “nature isn’t cruel. It’s just efficient.” Her little smile as she says it tells us everything: that she is enjoying it. And frankly, I would too. Rage is intoxicating.

At the same time, though, G. Willow Wilson does a great job confronting Ivy and, consequently, the reader with the idea that blind destructive rage is not a way forward. Throughout her journey, Ivy meets people that make her question her belief that the world and the people that inhabit it are not worth saving. She sees that there might be a way to use her rage to help others rather than burn it all down. Like any well-paced story, though, it takes Ivy the majority of the narrative to finally accept this idea.

I also loved how Wilson uses Ivy’s spores as a fantastic metaphor for her rage. They inhabit Ivy’s body and are the main instrument of her murderous plan. But they aren’t just tools; they are also slowly killing her. It’s only when she comes to terms with her anger and decides to abort her plan that she is able to survive them. Similarly, rage can lead to self-destruction. It might feel good for a while, but the further we indulge the worse we end up. It’s only when we come to terms with who we are, what we’ve been through, and chart a way forward can we live a life worth living.

Another theme that is handled expertly in this volume is the idea of hope. Specifically, the ability to hold on to hope even when all seems lost. This theme comes out mostly in Part Three where Ivy finds herself helping a hotel owner plant a new garden. In the grand scheme of things, she knows it won’t do much to stem the rising tide of climate change, but she stays and helps anyway. It leads to a monologue that has been ringing in my head since I re-read it last week.

I’m suspicious of people who try to sell you hope. Hope, when the desired outcome fails to occur, becomes despair. You know you can’t save all the trees, so you don’t plant any. But what if it’s still worth it to plant that one tree? Just that one. Even if it doesn’t fix the problem, you know you did your part. It’s not hope, because you know you’re still going to fail. It’s…something else. Maybe it’s faith. Faith is what persists when hope is gone. Which is why, even here at the edge of the apocalypse, it feels better to nurture life than to destroy it.

I love this. Hope may not spring eternal, but a belief that doing something good is better than doing nothing at all will see us through anything. In a world in which fascism, hate, and cruelty are on the rise and all hope seems lost, it’s a message that feels so incredibly necessary.

As a Harley/Ivy fan, I also loved the role that their relationship takes in the narrative. Ivy’s monologue is written in the form of letters she is sending to Harley, not only elevating that aspect of the book, but letting us see how the relationship affects Ivy on her journey. Given the fact that Ivy starts the book still angry at Harley for the events that led to her de-powering, it also shows us the power love has even when we’re not ready to accept it. It’s such great relationship work in a book that is solely focused on a single character. It’s why I think this volume is a must include in any Harley Quinn and Poison Ivy reading list.

Not only is G. Willow Wilson’s writing phenomenal, but so is the art. Marcio Takara (art) and Arif Prianto (colors) images are vibrant, colorful, and expressive. Character emotions, especially Ivy’s, come through perfectly in the illustrations. The panel work is effective at setting just the right pace. The art is also simultaneously beautiful and disgusting, especially when the spores get involved. There were so many moments when my brain went “oh, that’s so gross,” but my eyes stayed locked on to catch every detail I could. The highlight for me, though, were the large panels, many of them taking at least half the page, showing Ivy in her full plant form. Each one imbues the moment with an amazing sense of awe for Ivy and what she is capable of. I love seeing women embrace their powers, even if they intend to use them for not so good means.

Upon re-read, The Virtuous Cycle is even better than I remembered. It has become one of my favorite collected volumes of all time. I also feel like it stands alone as its own story, making it incredibly accessible even if you plan on reading it by itself and not touching the rest of the series.

IMPORTANT: My response is only my response. I do not speak for the other people who signed the initial open letter.

Hi Rose,

I am under the assumption you will share this with the other signatories. If that is incorrect, I will figure out their emails and send them a copy.

Before I start- I’d like to invite anyone on this letter who has experience with board work or who has interest in giving a minimum of 5 hrs/mo to the organization to reach out to me. I can put you in touch with our Nominating Committee who vets all potential board candidates when we have an opening. My invitation is in no way a guarantee of being on the board, but I want to make you all aware of the opportunity. It is clear you are passionate about GCLS and sapphic literature in general.

I absolutely understand the hurt feelings. And the exec and DoE understand that how this was approached and decided was poorly handled. Our communication plan was misinformed. The intention was to avoid rumors and whispers by announcing everything at once. It was not an attempt to make anyone feel “less than” or unappreciated. We know GCLS is a tight community and took some bad advice about how to communicate. We own the decision. It seemed right at the time. We have learned.

Over the past four years the WA has lost over $50,000. The GCLS general fund has been able to and happy to support this over the short term, but it is getting harder and harder. We do not have a robust enough fundraising system and most of the grants Cindy assiduously applied for, donating hours of her time and expertise - and there were many- were denied. We also hired a grant writer to help Cindy with these grants, most of which were aimed at the WA. It’s a very difficult economic field out there - as I’m sure you all understand. Probably too well.

We are running a multi-layered organization with volunteers. There is no executive director. The only employee of the organization works for the WA. All but one of the regularly contracted people work with the WA. The only other regular contractor is the bookkeeper.

The organization as a whole struggles with marketing. There is no marketing person. When Kim requested money for a marketing program we immediately okayed the request and the program was purchased. $1,600 was spent on this program. That’s almost the cost of one month of one track of the WA.

We lack an Executive Director due to lack of funds to allot to that position. Currently Betsy does the job of the ED as well as the board president. It’s highly unfair of us as an organization to ask that of her, but free is what we can afford and she generously gives 40+ hours every week to keep GCLS running. In all of that, mistakes will be made. And she has to walk the tightrope of being the board president and performing the duties of the ED.

We would love to have an ED. That would certainly help issues like the one we face now happen in a better way. For that we need donors (and huge thank you to everyone who signed this letter who is also a donor- you are greatly appreciated).

The WA is not gone. It’s coming back. For those of you who started in WA1 thinking you would get to take WA2 this coming year, we invite discussion about what would help you the most in the absence of WA2 in 2026/27. Is there a way we can help support your writing careers during the break? We are monumentally sorry that your education was interrupted mid-stride. And it is not fair that it happened to you. It also is not fair to future students to run GCLS completely into the ground financially.

I see your offer for a public mediated discussion. At this time that is not likely a course we want to take. Several years ago there were a group of women who were very upset about the switch to using sapphic when describing our literature. We held a public discussion on that via Zoom and several people in attendance were bullied and harmed. We don’t want to risk that- for us or for you. However, we are happy to discuss other possibilities or ways to protect everyone in attendance from a few bad actors who might decide to attend and take advantage of the audience.

My apologies for taking so long to respond. The response is difficult partly because I (and likely others) needed a little time to calm down. I take extreme umbrage at being labeled “unethical” and at the implication I was not doing my job as treasurer. I am a CPA. We are held to extremely high ethical standards and I take great pride in my work. I absolutely met with Kim several times about the budget over the past several years. Last October we had a long conversation about WA and the finances around it. Additionally, we had discussed the WA budget at board meetings with Kim present, as a participating board member. Kim was the liaison to the WA from the board and was responsible for ensuring that WA needs were heard. She was on exec until last summer. So to say that WA was not informed is incorrect. What Kim did with the information was up to her. My job was to make sure that she was aware. Her job was to work with the WA staff and managers to ensure the budget was met.

I invite you all to continue the dialogue with us. I hope we can do it without casting aspersions. I’m very curious about some of your assertions and where that information came from, as it does not match at all what I understand to be true.

Thank you for caring and for speaking up.

***********

Here is my response:

Hello Ann,

Before I get into my response, I want to thank you for replying. I know there are hurt feelings on both sides and I appreciate you taking the time to write back. I have shared your response with everyone who signed the open letter. I will also be posting your letter and this response to it on my Substack for the entire community to see.

Let me also say that I love GCLS and believe in its mission. The criticisms leveled here and in the previous letter are not meant to insult individuals, tear down GCLS, or splinter the community. But for GCLS to thrive, it needs to be held to the highest standards.

While I appreciate your response, it fails to fully address my concerns and the concerns of the community. It also falls short of doing what needs to be done to repair the trust in GCLS as it is currently run.

You claim to have received some bad advice (from some unnamed person) about how to communicate the “strategic pause” in the Writing Academy. Despite this, you say that the Executive Board (EB) and the new Director of Education (DoE) own the decision and that you understand the hurt feelings. While I appreciate you saying this, the fact that this is coming in a letter from you and not in an official GCLS statement is disappointing. The EB and DoE need to publicly stand up, own the mistake, and apologize.

You go on to claim that the financial situation of the Writing Academy necessitated a “strategic pause”. You also point out how GCLS is a volunteer-run organization and that you lack personnel in key areas. You seem to use these as reasons for the Writing Academy closure and the poor manner in which its announcement was handled. As someone who is herself involved in a volunteer-run non-profit organization (albeit at a much smaller scale), I can understand the difficulties in getting every decision right. However, there are still some issues that I see with the line of reasoning you present.

The first issue is that these reasons do not excuse the EB from allowing the Writing Academy, one of GCLS’ largest and most important programs, to get into this supposedly untenable financial situation. If there were multiple years of declining enrollment and financial losses, why was more not done sooner? If enrollments for the 2026-2027 WA classes were too low, where was the big push to get more students signed up? Why were multiple requests for marketing and fundraising assistance ignored or not followed up on? When it comes to personnel issues, if the EB and the DoE were stretched too thin to do what was necessary to support the Writing Academy, where were the open calls for volunteers? Where were the volunteer drives intended to get more people involved in the running of GCLS?

The fact is that there was so much more the EB could have done over the years to help raise funds and enrollment in the Writing Academy. There was so much more they could have done to help the Writing Academy managers, all of whom work just as hard as members of the EB. Silk Jazmyne, the new DoE, could have also done so much more. They have had over 10 months to engage with and promote the Writing Academy. They have so far failed to do so. The Writing Academy is one of the flagship programs that GCLS runs. It has fostered the talents of so many sapphic authors over the years. For some, it is more important than the annual conference. It deserves sustained support by the EB and DoE. Relying solely on a single marketing campaign, a single program purchase (what was the program?), and grants is not enough.

For example, the EB could have called on the community for help rather than remain silent. The Writing Academy is a much beloved aspect of GCLS. There are multiple award-winning alumni and mentors who have substantial social media followings. Had the EB and Silk been honest and solicited help from the community before deciding to pause the WA, I have no doubt the community would have stepped up and helped.

Furthermore, the lack of personnel and Executive Director does not excuse the poor manner in which the pause was handled and communicated. How do these issues explain why WA managers were shut out of the decision making process regarding WA’s future? How do they explain the entire board not being brought in to discuss the pause? How do they explain the fact that WA managers were only notified about the pause mere minutes before the official announcement was made? How do they explain the sudden announcement being made on Mother’s Day? How do they excuse the shifting rationales given for the pause?

The second issue I see with your explanation is that if the financial situation was truly the main reason for the “strategic pause”, that would have been the first justification the EB would have made when pausing the program. However, that was not the case. In the original announcement and in the original FAQ about the decision, programmatic changes were cited as the main reason for the pause. Since then, the EB and DoE have continued to claim that the Writing Academy needs programmatic changes. If the EB and DoE were concerned about the curriculum of the WA, why did they never sit in on a class? Why did they never talk to WA managers about the program? Why did they never look at course materials? Why did they never talk to teachers, mentors, and most importantly, students about the WA and whether or not it was meeting their needs? The lack of such actions make this claim of needed programmatic changes hard to believe. How would the EB and DoE know what the WA needed when they haven’t done any of the necessary work to learn about the WA and its offerings? At best, this claim about needed programmatic changes appears to be a lie created to cover for the fact that the EB let the Writing Academy get into such a precarious financial position. At worst, it appears to be a lie designed to cover up for the fact that EB and DoE wanted to pause the WA regardless of financial situation.

You point out that the Writing Academy “lost over $50,000 in four years”. If this figure can be taken at face value, it appears from the 990 forms for GCLS since 2022 that the majority of those losses came in the 2024-2025 fiscal year. That year, the Writing Academy posted a loss of $37,854. However, this loss mostly seems to be down to an increase in expenses. Specifically, the Writing Academy somehow seemed to increase in cost from $52,335 to $80,697. According to Writing Academy managers, this 54% increase appeared to happen without any major changes to course offerings or in manager, teacher, or mentor compensation. So, why was there such a marked increase in costs? This and the lack of revenue listed for the Writing Academy in the publicly available 990 forms from 2022-2024 make it hard to take claims regarding the Writing Academy’s prolonged dire financial situation fully at face value.

Later in your letter, you also claim that the EB and DoE want to help students impacted by the pause. You ask if there is a way GCLS can continue to support the affected authors. If this concern for impacted students truly is sincere, then the answer is clear. At a minimum, GCLS should run Writing Academy 2 for 2026-2027. WA2 was already fully enrolled. Writing Academy managers have communicated to me that they are willing to run it. There is no reason why it should be cancelled outright.

In regards to your claim that the facts presented in our open letter do not align with what you know to be true, this information comes from multiple Writing Academy managers and former members of the GCLS board. These people have direct, first-hand knowledge of what has transpired. All of them describe an EB that has neglected the Writing Academy and the hard work of its managers for years. Every single one of them describe a new DoE who has shown no interest in the Writing Academy since taking over the position. Each fact presented in our letter was rigorously checked for accuracy with all sources involved. I stand by them.

It is disappointing that the EB and DoE are not willing to meet publicly with Writing Academy students and alumni. I assure you that no bullying or harassment would come from our side. We are also willing to create safeguards to ensure that no bullying takes place in the meeting. We simply want answers. Current Writing Academy students want the people responsible for this decision to meet with us, explain their reasons, and assure us that we will not be abandoned by an organization that claims to want to support us. We want this to be public so that the entire community can see that the EB and DoE are taking our concerns seriously.

I had hoped that our letter would be a first step in rebuilding trust. I had hoped that from here we could come together and move forward in a way that honors the legacy of the Writing Academy and strengthens the educational offerings GCLS provides. Unfortunately, the questionable excuses and shifting of blame to others (such as the former DoE and an unnamed person) in your response makes that first step difficult to take.

I truly love GCLS and believe in its mission. I want it to be an organization that thrives and helps sapphic authors for years to come. I also believe that our community is better when it is united. But that does not absolve GCLS leadership from criticism when said criticism is warranted.

I hope that GCLS can learn from this experience and move forward into a better future that serves all sapphic writers and readers equally.

Sincerely,

Jamie Rose/Rose Goodwin

Dear GCLS Executive Board and Director of Education,

We are some of the current students and alumni of GCLS Writing Academy. Many of us chose to enroll in the Writing Academy because we believed in GCLS. We believed that GCLS was an organization that was committed to fostering the next generation of sapphic literary talent. We believed we could trust in GCLS.

Many of us no longer believe that.

We know about hard decisions. Many of us have had to make them many times in our lives. We know they never feel good. So, believe us when we say that we can understand when a tough decision needs to be made. However, difficult decisions should always be approached ethically, thoughtfully, and with an intention to be honest and transparent with all people involved.

The decision to put the Writing Academy on a “strategic pause”, how it was reached, and how this decision has been communicated is the antithesis of all of the standards that are required. We believe that the GCLS Executive Board and the GCLS Director of Education have conducted themselves in a way that is highly unethical and incredibly disrespectful to the Writing Academy managers, staff, students, and alumni.

While some may believe that only a tiny fraction of people have been hurt by this decision, we beg to differ. We also ask: does that “tiny fraction” hold no value in GCLS? Do the thoughts and feelings of this small part of the larger sapphic literature community no longer matter?

Having spoken with multiple sources who have direct knowledge of the events preceding the announcement on May 10, the following information has come to light:

1. The current GCLS Executive Board has behaved as if the WA didn’t exist for years. They have very rarely if ever initiated communication with the Writing Academy team and have shown no curiosity in the operations or curriculum. When other board members met with WA managers to create a plan, they reportedly were “pulled back to other things” and nothing ever transpired.

2. For multiple years, the managers of the Writing Academy have been asking for more support from the GCLS Board in terms of marketing and outreach. Those requests always fell upon deaf ears. The GCLS Board continued to show no interest in helping the academy in its outreach and marketing efforts.

3. The Director of Education, Silk Jazmyne Hindus, met twice with WA managers at the manager’s request. One to meet with the previous DOE and once to meet the WA managers. In both meetings, Silk Jazmyne was told that the number one priority was marketing for the WA.

4. Silk Jazmyne has also shown no interest in marketing the Writing Academy for 2026-2027. This is despite knowing enrollment was low.

5. For multiple years, the managers of the Writing Academy have asked to see financial statements and documents showing how much the Writing Academy had available in donations and was earning or losing each year. All of these requests were rebuffed.

6. When the WA managers met with the Executive Board to discuss how to move the academy forward, they were told Silk Jazmyne had been reviewing and planning, but nothing was shared with the WA managers. Comments were made in subsequent emails and meetings that indicated it was the WA managers who didn’t want to meet and weren’t sustaining the program.

7. On April 27th, the WA managers met with GCLS Board President Betsy Carswell and Director of Operations and Secretary, Karen Richard, to request marketing for the WA. The meeting ended with one action item, which was that the Exec board would assess the situation and follow up with the managers. Following that, the WA managers received no communication until they were told that the WA would not run the next year, with disingenuous justifications about finances, structural problems, and outdated curriculum. None of these issues had been discussed with WA managers before this. Moreover, all of these issues could have been addressed without cancelling the 2026-2027 academic year. There was still no mention of marketing.

8. Neither Silk Jazmyne, nor any of the Executive Board have ever sat in on a class. As the Director of Education, Silk Jazmyne had been invited into the Writing Academy Canvas in September 2025 to familiarize themselves with the student roster, schedule, and curriculum. Their status remained “pending” until Canvas went down on May 7, 2026.

9. Despite all communications to the public saying the “strategic pause” was because of a need to reevaluate the program due to “the changing environment in publishing and author development,” the Executive Board informed the Writing Academy managers that it was mainly a “financial issue.” In one meeting, Silk Jazmyne stated they were going to let the Writing Academy 2 run, but because of the amount of money, they were rethinking this.

10. It is also difficult to believe that the Writing Academy needs a “strategic pause” to reevaluate its programming because the board has no direct knowledge of Writing Academy programming. No Members of the Executive Board have ever sat in on a class, seen the curriculum, or expressed any curiosity regarding such.

11. The Executive Board has since claimed that the Writing Academy was underenrolled for the next year. However, Writing Academy 2 was full. While Writing Academy 1 was not, this class typically fills up at the convention. In the months leading up to the GCLS Convention, Silk Jazmyne also had no plans for marketing the Writing Academy in Orlando.

12. The Executive Board and Director of Education made the decision to “pause” the Writing Academy without:

    • Consulting the entire board or soliciting feedback from donors and the people they serve.

    • Talking to current Writing Academy students, mentors, or alumni.

This is despite having ample time to make a decision. While this does not go against the GCLS bylaws, it is atypical for executive boards to make such massive decisions without consulting the entire board, especially when there is adequate leadup time to the decision needing to be made.

All of these facts lead to one conclusion: that the GCLS Executive Board and Director of Education have acted unethically in their decision to put the Writing Academy on a “strategic pause”. It also shows a callous indifference towards the thoughts and feelings of the managers, staff, students, teachers, mentors, and alumni of the Writing Academy.

You have an opportunity to change this. In your letter to the GCLS community, you say that, “we recognize that moments of change require transparency, listening, and care.” Transparency demands that you tell the community in detail how this decision was reached. This includes sharing minutes from meetings in which the pausing of the Writing Academy was discussed and decided. It means producing facts that show that the Writing Academy needed to go on a pause for legitimate programmatic, financial, and enrollment reasons.

Listening demands that you actually hear the concerns of current Writing Academy students and reassure them that they will not be abandoned. It also requires that you do not dismiss criticism under the guise of maintaining unity. Silencing uncomfortable criticism for the sake of maintaining a false sense of solidarity is the first step down a very dark path.

Lastly, care demands that you offer a genuine apology to those you have harmed. It requires that you see how this decision, how it was reached, and how it was communicated have hurt the very people you claim to serve and that you make amends.

We hope that you are honest about wanting to move forward in a way that best serves the entire community and honors the legacy of the Writing Academy. We hope that you are willing to work to re-earn the trust and respect of the Writing Academy community and community at large. We hope that we can come together in Orlando as a community to celebrate the accomplishments of the Writing Academy and its current class of graduates on Goldies Awards Night.

If the board is amenable, we would be willing to have a mediated discussion regarding our concerns and the future of Writing Academy. For the sake of transparency, we would request that this meeting be made public.

Together we can accomplish great things.

Sincerely,

Jamie Rose/Rose Goodwin

Jax Meyer

JD Locke

Chelsey Lynford

Heather Young

Vicki Day

Evren D.

Jannice Torres (JT) (WA1 class of 2021 and WA2 class of 2026)

K.L. Gallagher

Joy Conley

Dana Holmes

Sue Still

Jayne Hellier

Vivian del Castillo is a former Hollywood sex symbol who has turned into a reclusive narrator thanks to the years of sexist treatment and abuse she received as an actor. She now spends her days locked away in her Miami mansion recording sapphic romance audiobooks and avoiding anyone but her friend and housekeeper. When the author rejects Vivian’s recording of her audiobook, destined to be the sapphic romance of the summer, she is forced to re-record it in person with a complete newcomer of an actress, Bryn Garbo. Bryn has been struggling to make it as a narrator, working three jobs in addition to recording erotic audio stories on the side. Still, she has big dreams and aspirations. At first, Vivian and Bryn clash as they try to figure each other out. Lines begin to blur and tension begins to rise, however, as they continue recording. Even when their recording sessions end, they can’t help but stay in each other’s orbit and see how far things between them can go. The only question becomes will they find a way to make the spark that became an inferno one to last or will it fade as quickly as it erupted.

Vivian and Bryn are one of the healthiest ice queen-cinammon roll couples I have ever read. Part of this might be down to the fact that while Vivian does exhibit several characteristics of an ice queen, she does not exemplify a textbook case of one. She’s icy, closed-off, and prickly, but she is never cruel or mean to Bryn. Even early on, though, we can see her soft spot for her new co-star. She pities her and her naive exuberance. On the other side, Bryn is the stereotypical cinnamon roll in all the best ways and I adore her. She’s cheerful, optimistic, and caring. When it comes to handling Vivian’s prickliness, she does it with disarming wit and charm. Together, they make for such an engaging couple whose chemistry is obvious even during their early rough interactions. That chemistry becomes more and more apparent as they move closer and closer to each other throughout the story.

While I love Bryn, I feel like the most compelling part of the narrative is what happens with Vivian. This is fairly typical with the age gap and ice queen stories I’ve read, but this is also one of the most compelling I’ve read. Vivian’s backstory is one filled with exploitation and trauma. Her journey in Keep Talking is about overcoming that trauma and learning to love herself again, to see that she is not permanently broken and undeserving of being loved. J.J. does an outstanding job making you feel Vivian’s pain and feelings of inadequacy over and over again. She also doesn’t allow overcoming that pain to be quick and easy, something that rings very true to real life and makes the story all the more heartbreaking. Seeing Vivian deny herself and her feelings for Bryn multiple times because she feels like she is too broken to have good things violently yanked at my heart strings and made for an immensely impactful ending.

In addition to crafting an almost perfect age gap, ice queen romance, J.J. included a couple additional elements that elevated the story beyond what it would be otherwise. For starters, having the characters be audiobook narrators created plenty of room for delicious tension and spice. Having Bryn and Vivian play opposite each other in a romance in an enclosed recording booth led to some great moments in which lines between character and actor blurred. Bryn’s job as an erotic narrator also added additional fuel to the fire, especially when it became part of their flirting. It was a steamy sight to behold.

The other element that elevates the story was the third act breakup but not breakup. One feature of an Arias romance is that she very rarely, if ever, has her characters break up in the third act. Instead, she often has them resolving some external conflict with each other’s help. In Keep Talking, though, she kept the focus internal. In place of a breakup, she has them tackle the issue of how to turn the spice of the second act into something more meaningful and more lasting. Not only does it make perfect sense given who the characters are and their wounds, but also made me swoon so very hard. It was the sweet dessert to the spice of what came before.

Lastly, I love how J.J. includes the idea of the importance of queer community in her narrative. In those moments, it feels like she is reaching out through her writing to remind us all that now, more than ever, we need queer stories and queer community.

Keep Talking is J.J. Arias at her absolute best. It’s a compelling story filled with tension, spice, well-crafted characters, a narrative that will keep you glued to the page, and gorgeous prose. It doesn’t matter if you’re already a fan or J.J.’s work or a newcomer. You will love this book.

Not much is going right in Jay Baker’s life at the moment. After dropping out of college, she’s working a dead-end job at a comic book shop. Her ex-girlfriend who she is still pining over is dating someone new. The only thing that is going well is her obsession with one of the stars of Undead of Alive, Josh Owen. When she stumbles upon the fanfiction account of a “MrsJoshOwens” and discovers her beautiful writing, everything changes. Meanwhile, “MrsJoshOwens” is really Amber Martin, a high school senior in Oregon. From the outside, it seems like she has everything she wants: a dedicated boyfriend, supportive parents, and admission to a prestigious medical school. Through her budding relationship with Jay, however, she realizes that she wants something else for her life. As these two grow closer and closer despite the physical distance between them, both girls have to figure out if they have the strength to truly go for what they want in life together.

Dear Unrequited Love Girl is a unique love story in both its setup and the journey it takes you on. For the most part, it works. While fangirling over a man is not a thing that my lesbian self could ever do, Amber and Jay doing it is very cute. Their online interactions, both in long-form messages and text messages, are so adorable. They are both really great characters in their own right, but as a couple they are adorable with fantastic chemistry.

The journeys our main characters go on feel very personal and unique to them. Amber’s story, like so many other sapphic YA/NA romances, is about her realizing who she is (including her bisexuality) and finding the strength to say it, but the fact that it comes through her fanfiction writing and her relationship with Jay makes it feel fresh and unique. The same goes for Jay’s arc of getting over her ex-girlfriend and coming to terms with her depression. Both stories work to really pull at the heartstrings, even if it does take a while to get to the emotional gut punches.

The ending also felt very unique. I don’t want to spoil anything, so all I will say is that it ends in a way that is different yet satisfying. The final chapter is incredibly bittersweet and makes sense, but doesn’t completely wrap things up. Luckily, the epilogue is there to bring it all together and leave readers happy.

That being said, there was one element of the long distance set up that did not work for me. It struck me as odd that Amber and Jay decide to call each other their girlfriends without ever exchanging images or video chatting. Call me superficial, but that seems like a pretty big thing to skip over.

The supporting cast supports the overall narrative really well. The standouts to me were Amber’s creative writing club and Jay’s co-worker Gabe. Also, Audrey does a great job giving us side characters to hate. I couldn’t stand Cassie, Jay’s ex-girlfriend.

As much as I liked Unrequited Love Girl, there were some elements of it that stopped me from loving it. While the dialogue was overall really good, especially between Jay and Amber, some of the main characters’ interactions with other characters fell flat. I saw this the most with Amber and her mom. I just feel like there was more potential there that was left unfulfilled.

Overall, Dear Unrequited Love Girl is a sweet and fun YA/NA romance that most fans of the genre will enjoy. If the thought of finding love in the most nerdy spaces of the Internet is your thing, then make sure to grab your copy when it comes out May 19.

Many thanks to Audrey Wilson for allowing me an Advance Reader Copy for this review.

In this article, I asked the immensely talented Anna Burke to geek out. Anna is a multiple Goldie winning author of sapphic speculative fiction and romance. She is also one of the coolest people you’ll ever meet in the community. I am so thankful that she decided to geek out with me for this.

So, without any further ado, it’s time for Anna Burke to geek out!

About Anna

Anna Burke lives in Massachusetts with her wife and their assorted animal friends. She is the award-winning author of the Compass Rose series, the Seal Cove Romance series, and several fairy tale retellings. Her most recent work is Windlass. When she isn’t writing, she can usually be found walking in the woods, teaching creative writing, or drinking too much tea, which she prefers hot and strong—just like her protagonists.

What was that initial spark for you to start writing and publishing sapphic lit?

I’ve always been a writer, by which I mean I’ve always written, whether it was decent is beside the point. I was an English major and after graduation I had this idea in my head that I was going to write literary fiction because that’s what I’d been reading and studying. It wasn’t that I didn’t think that could be gay but I just kept trying and it just wasn’t working.

Finally one day, two things happened. One, I got really lonely and I was like, “I need a story that entertains me at this point.” I started writing this retelling of Robin Hood in 2014, which I did end up eventually publishing totally rewritten. The second thing was that I received this letter I wrote with my eighth grade class for this time capsule through the DARE program. Obviously the DARE program is a bunch of bullshit. Thank you, Nancy Reagan.

Thank you, Reagans in general.

Thank you, Reagans in general for so much. [ugh]. If I could be a time traveler.

Anyways, I didn’t do the prompt. The prompt was to warn your future self against the dangers of drugs and alcohol. I was like, “That’s dumb. We’re not going to do that.” So instead I wrote a bunch of bullshit. But one line was, “You should write stories for people like us.” I got that letter after college. So, it missed the mark in terms of preventing me from doing drugs and alcohol. But I got that at around the same time that I was really struggling with my writing. Finally, I was like, “You know what, I’m gonna write the stories that I like, the stories I used to like to read.” And that was all it took.

That’s awesome. We’re so grateful that your eighth grade self saw through the DARE bullshit and was like, “Write Gay Stories.”

Exactly. You know, who knew?

What draws you to a new idea? What is that spark that takes it from an interesting one to one that sustains an entire book writing journey?

I will say I do have ADHD, so the spark of a shiny new idea is very appealing to me. Over time, I have started to learn how to sort out the ideas that are fun to think about for a little bit but maybe don’t have legs to become a full story and those that do. I call it the percolation process. So I’ll get these ideas and then I’ll jot them down. If I feel like it has real potential, I will make a Scrivener document because that makes me feel good.

I’ll sit with these ideas for a while, and then if I find them really interesting, really shiny, I will give myself a couple days to just kind of start jotting things down. Sometimes I’ll write for a little bit. For me, I know a story has legs if I get to about 30,000 words and I’m still excited about it and I still see things that are happening. Sometimes I get to 15,000 or 30,000 words and I realize that that is where the idea is going to die. I really enjoyed writing what I wrote but this is where it ends. There’s just not enough substance or I don’t have enough to say about this.

That doesn’t mean that I won’t down the line. My hard drive is full of stories that died around that marker. They stay there and gather dust. Sometimes I cannibalize them and take characters from them and put them elsewhere. I definitely believe that there’s no such thing as wasted writing. Everything I’ve written has some use even if that use was just entertaining me for a little bit.

What book or piece of sapphic media has had the biggest impact on you, whether as a writer, a person, or both?

I’m going to choose a more recent one. Obviously, when I was younger, reading sapphic work was life changing, right? You find out that there are other people like you out there. But the one that really impacted me was This Is How You Lose The Time War. It came out in 2019 and it was the first book I’d read in a long time that really made me emotional and made me feel all of the feelings.

At the time, I’d been in a big reading slump. I was in my MFA program, so I was also a graduate student. Everything was bleak and dark and I was teaching composition and not getting enough sleep. That book just really made me think about writing differently. It ended up inspiring the epistolary portion of my novel The Roses of Pieria, which is my favorite thing I’ve ever written. But I loved just the genre blending in This Is How You Lose the Time War. It really made me rethink what you can do with science fiction.

It also accomplishes so much in so little. It’s a very effective novella. The novella is a very difficult form. I am releasing one in March. A lot of respect for people who can write novellas that awesome.

Since you mentioned science fiction, I wanted to ask you: Do you consider yourself more of a sapphic fantasy author or more of a sapphic romance? Or do you just not care about the distinction?

I think I don’t necessarily care about the distinction. When I’m in my story worlds, I think I get more excited about the fantasy worlds. I think at this point I’ve written maybe almost an exactly equal number of contemporary romance and speculative fiction. But yeah, both.

What keeps you going when things get tough in the writing/drafting process?

Well, what isn’t tough right now, my friend?

Amen.

The past year has been difficult for me. Obviously, on a political level there’s been a lot going on. I will spare you details, but there’s also been a lot going on in my personal life. Writing has been difficult.

Normally, I can push through. Normally, I’ve been able to kind of use writing as an escape, use writing as a way to process. And that is still definitely the case, but I saw for the first time recently the toll the things that were going on took on my work. I’m hoping that no one else can see that, right? Obviously, that’s the goal, to fool everyone.

But when things get really tough for me, what I usually do first is just flail and decide that I probably will never write anything decent again. You know, “This is the end! Words are really difficult! Why am I a worse writer than I was when I was eight?” These are the thoughts that initially happen. But then I take a chill pill. I usually talk to my editor who’s like, “Hey, remember when you wrote books?” And I’m like, “Yeah, I do remember that. But that was someone else. That was a different Anna. I don’t know who that was.”

After that, I’ll pause and be like, “You know what I need to do? I need to read.” So I will read for a little bit. I’ll still poke away at revisions if I am working on something in a revision process because I can usually revise through chaos. With drafting, though, I think that if you’re really not feeling creative, it’s hard to do. But reading, especially if it’s something really good, gets me excited about writing again. It’s kind of my little mental escape. A couple of writers use this analogy, but V.E. Schwab calls it “Refilling the Creative Well”.

That’s usually where I start. And then if I don’t write for a week or so, I just start to twitch and start writing again regardless.

So yeah, either refill the creative well or twitch.

What was the book recently that did that for you?

I recently read Mac Crane’s I Keep My Exoskeletons To Myself and that was really powerful. I could see, not in a project I’m working on right now, but a project I have elsewhere how you can rip yourself open and put yourself on a page.

Then I read Metal From Heaven by August Clark. It’s a bizarre, lovely book. It’s this crazy sci-fi Marxist romp with language that is just so lush that you could just devour it. The world building was phenomenal. I recommended it to a bunch of students.

I also finished C.L. Clark’s epic fantasy trilogy and I thought she did a really nice job with that.

I need to get back into that. I read the first one, and I had to sit for like a weekend and just go, holy shit.

That’s exactly how I read it. I won’t spoil anything for you, but I feel like I did not know how she was going to end that series. I was like, “Okay, how are you going to resolve this? And the answer can’t be monarchy, right?”

Yeah, it can’t be.

I won’t tell you what happens. And there were just so many sword lesbians. You know that makes me happy.

Yeah, I’m right there with you.

Sword lesbians, they’re so beautiful to me.

Exactly. Also, I recently read Mac Crane’s A Sharp Endless Need and that was so good.

That’s queued up next.

I won’t spoil anything but it is intense in a very emotionally driven way like. And Mac is just so unnecessarily talented, right? Like, how dare?

How dare? The audacity.

The audacity. Well, I mean, we want the she’s and they’s to have the audacity.

We really do. I mean, I’m just so thrilled that we have such incredible writers in our community.

Right? It’s insane. So, what is currently exciting you about your own writing?

I just switched projects. I was working on something that I’ve been releasing on Patreon. It’s a Regency novel, which I really love. And the ending has just been giving me problems. I’ve written it several different times and it’s really been not working. Something’s just not working. So, I know that I need to give it a little bit of space to breathe and think about itself and its choices so that when I come back it will maybe have resolved.

I’m switching to this project that I haven’t figured out how to pitch yet. There are elephants involved and it’s like a sci-fi fantasy. I won’t say too much about it because I have no idea where I’m going to home it yet. But I’ve been working on this since before the pandemic kind of off and on. It’s one of those projects that I’m obsessed with, but I haven’t quite figured out where it’s going yet.

The romance aspect of the Regency was just not happening, so I finally decided that I need to make use of the headspace that I’m actually in. If I’m not in a headspace where I’m feeling romantic and I’m feeling a little angstier and I’m feeling a little more, you know, all the things, I should be putting that in a place where it’s going to do some use for me.

So, I’ve switched to this project and I’m feeling excited about that. What I love about being a writer is that sometimes in the middle of just the worst moments there’s this little voice in me that pauses and says, “Huh, well, this is a deep feeling. How would we describe this?” I love that, so I’ve been trying to channel what I’ve been feeling in a way that will hopefully not just be productive, right? Because we are not the sum of our productivity, but will feel cathartic.

That’s really cool. Can’t wait to read about elephants.

Yes, it is not any of the projects that I should be working on, obviously, because the most fun projects are the ones you really don’t need to do right now. There’s no contract on this new project. I have outstanding contracts with my publisher that I am working on too.

Don’t worry. I’m not in charge. You don’t have to justify yourself.

Thank you.

We listen and we don’t judge. So, you mentioned it earlier but we’re at that question now: What is your favorite thing that you have ever written?

I really loved writing In The Roses of Pieria. The research was so much fun. It made me want to do more historical fiction, which is what I ended up doing. Suddenly I have a series. I loved the letter writing. I loved being able to work on a project that had two just really extremely different voices. I loved the narrator character. She was very relatable to me. I feel like there’s a piece of me in all of my characters, but Clara’s predicament as an adjunct professor was a lot of fun for me to write. I had a friend read it and he said, “The real horror of the story is the life of the adjunct.”

I think I did that too. I think I wrote in my review that the horror is academia.

I love academia. I feel so lucky to have a professor position, but also ideally we all get to make a living. That’s very much at the heart of the story, how academia has become bloated with middle management to the point that they don’t pay. It’s incredibly expensive for the students and they’re not paying their faculty or most of their staff. They’re paying them but not a living wage.

I think letter writing is such a different medium and we should bring it back. There’s something about writing a letter that’s different from writing an email. It’s different from writing a text. It’s different from a phone call. I can’t quite describe it. If you gave me enough time and I was writing versus speaking, I might have a chance.

I absolutely get it. Cause I have a letter writing kit. I bought almost this time last year because I was going to get into letter writing. And then ADHD was like, “Ooh, new shiny thing,” and I just completely forgot it. I still have it. One of these days, I’m actually going to start doing letter writing.

You will. That’s the beautiful thing about ADHD. We gather these things around us and then we might lose interest for a little bit but eventually, the time will come when we want to do the thing. Then the thing will actually, it won’t be there. It will have been put somewhere you can’t find. And it’ll just frustrate you.

I even have a letter writing TTRPG that I bought. I’m going have to play it at some point.

I was playing one with some friends. My editor wrote one and we did the beta testing for it and it was phenomenal. The fact that my friends couldn’t end up fitting it into their schedule long-term remains a source of extreme sadness and bitterness.

I get that. Well, Roses is fantastic. It’s awesome that it’s your favorite thing because it was a fantastic book.

Well, thank you.

I got about a couple of chapters in before I was like, “Oh shit, I have to read the footnotes.” Normally when I read like textbooks or journal articles, I ignore them.

I also skip footnotes. I’m like, “Why do I have to read this tiny text that hurts my eyes? This is so dumb. If you have something to say, put it in the main text.” I feel like footnotes can be so pedantic and they’re so often written by men, so I really wanted to have that space occupied by this, by queerness and reclaim it a little bit. That’s what I told myself when I needed an excuse to write footnotes, I think.

I love that. So, what are some of your favorite tropes in sapphic lit?

I love enemies to lovers. Even if it’s antagonists or mildly irritated with each other, there’s built-in chemistry, there’s built-in tension, which is easier to write than people who just kind of fall in love instantly, right? Like that’s more challenging from a plot perspective because part of writing romance is you have to keep them apart. They can’t just get together and be happy. And when you’re writing enemies to lovers, it’s easy.

I shouldn’t say it’s easy. It just gives you this built-in structure. And I love reading it for that same reason. It creates really nice tension. I also love stories that explore queer, female and trans anger. I think we as a community have a lot of anger, thank you patriarchy. Enemies to lovers kind of eases that for me a little bit. They’re exploring the ways we can be cruel and violent and compassionate and all of the things. I feel like I see those more in those stories.

I also love a bodyguard trope. I’m not gonna lie, that’s a good one. It’s again that built-in tension of “you are my job”. I guess that I like romances that explore ethics and people who break them. Morally great characters

What’s your favorite enemies to lovers?

I have to say This Is How You Lose The Time War. Enemy spies, right? That is my favorite book so if i can answer that novel I usually do.

Is there anything you’re currently working on that you’re really excited about?

I am excited about this Regency novel. I am really excited about this weird thing that I don’t know how to describe yet.

In terms of the projects I should be working on, I’ve really been enjoying exploring the second and last book in The Blood Files series. That’s the sequel to In the Roses of Pieria. At least for now, part of it is going to be kind of from the perspective of the villain Bezna. We get her backstory. I’ve been writing her backstory out just so I know what it is. Let’s just say I’ve been channeling a lot of my political rage into this character. She’s not a good person, but she thinks she’s doing the right thing. That’s what I find interesting about villains. Most of us don’t consider ourselves the villain, even when other people might disagree. So, exploring her character has been a lot of fun.

I’m writing it from the main perspective of Thea because Clara is, no spoilers, absent. She’s there but occupied. So I’ve been enjoying Thea’s perspective. I’ve had a lot of false starts on it, which is why I’m not currently working on it. I’ve had to kind of put it aside while I think about why it’s not following the outline I carefully planned. It’s a silly story not doing what it’s supposed to do. That usually means that I’m not telling the story the way that it wants to be told. And so I need to listen to that, which is very rude and disrespectful.

How dare.

Exactly. How dare.

Well, again, that’s all the questions. Thank you very much for joining me.

It’s been great. Thank you for having me.

Mack Morris is about to start their senior season as the star point guard for their high school basketball team when twin tragedies strike. First, their closest friend breaks up with them. Then, their dad, the only person in their life almost as obsessed with basketball as they are, suddenly passes away. Mack is left adrift with no one who even remotely gets them, just teammates who look to her for leadership and a mom who demands they commit to a college already. It’s at her dad’s funeral when everything changes: they meet Liv Cooper, a new player who is transferring to their team. Liv is a star shooting guard with a talent and obsession for the game that matches Mack’s. On the court, their electrifying chemistry has the potential to lead them to historic levels of success and college scholarship offers galore. Off the court, their friendship becomes something much deeper and more intoxicating that is allowed in their small Pennsylvania town. As Mack’s desire for Liv grows and adulthood looms larger on the horizon, Mack has to confront the true cost of ambition and decide what they truly want in life.

A Sharp Endless Need wastes no time gripping you by the jersey and making you sit with its themes. The opening prologue is powerful as it introduces both the tone and themes of the entire novel. Immediately, you want to know more about Mack and Liv, their relationship, and their obsession with basketball greatness.

Even after the prologue ends and the story proper begins, the intensity is still there. Mac Crane does a fantastic job portraying Mack’s need for glory and her need for Liv. Through both prose and the narrowed focus of limited first-person POV, we see over and over again both the joys and pains that Mack endures thanks to her obsessions and why they can’t give them up. It’s a story that rings true for anyone who has ever had those queer teenage crushes or all-encompassing hobbies.

When it comes to Mack as a character, there is so much to them that helps us come to understand them and sympathize with them even as they make self-destructive choices. We get to see how their obsession with the game of basketball is in part tied up with their queerness. They’ve never been truly understood by anyone, even their parents. Basketball has become the only place in which people praise them and see them as someone worth knowing, even if they truly don’t see them for who they are. It’s revealed later that basketball is also a place in which Mack can love themself as well, something that broke my heart reading. I remember so vividly how hard it was to love myself before I came out. School was my refuge. For Mack, basketball is theirs. Unfortunately, basketball cannot love Mack back. Neither can Liv. Both can only demand more of Mack until there is nothing left, something that becomes clearer and clearer as the novel progresses.

While A Sharp Endless Need is a story about the self-destructive potential of obsession, there is so much more to the story that really makes it stand out. Mack isn’t the only one that is struggling with her queerness. There’s Liv, who lives under an overbearing mother deadset on making sure her daughter doesn’t turn out gay. In fact, the entire narrative hinges on the fact that while Mack is obsessed with Liv and ready to commit to her, Liv continually waffles and wavers. She gets close only to pull away again, unable to take the final step she is clearly so desperate to take. While part of me wanted to hate Liv for how she treated Mack, I simply couldn’t do anything but sympathize with another scared queer teenager. The same goes for Katrina, another teammate struggles with her queerness.

In short, A Sharp Endless Need is an intimate and emotional novel that will hit you hard with its tone and themes. It’s a story about the struggles with growing up queer in a place that won’t accept you and the self-destructive nature of obsession. It’s a book that any fan of queer sports novels should read. Don’t expect a happy ending, though, but rather an ambiguous one that will leave you contemplating the balance between unrelenting need and self-preservation.

Since 2025, though, that productivity has slipped. It’s slipped so much that this essay that you’re currently reading is the first thing I have written for Jamie Geeks Out in over three months.

The reasons for this prolonged absence are multifaceted. Of course, we have to start with the fact that an orange fascist and his fascist gang of fascists took over the White House and decided to crank their cruelty to 11. I, like so many others, found it hard to stay productive in those first few months as I watched the United States government attack me and people like me simply because of who we are. Tried as I might to stay strong and write articles saying as much, it was still emotionally taxing. It took me a while to adjust and figure out how to live in a world like this. I currently feel like I’m getting better at managing it all while also not feeling like the frog being slowly boiled alive. How, you ask? Well, as a certain Parks and Rec character said,

If I keep my body moving and my mind occupied at all times, I will avoid falling into a bottomless pit of despair

To put it another, less depressing, way: I’ve started taking on new hobbies and projects (on top of everything else I already had going on) that bring me joy so that I don’t fall into bad habits like constantly scrolling the news or social media. I’ve always been someone who is prone to “poking the bruise”, so I decided to give myself things to do to help me to not ignore the bruise, but rather stop poking it incessantly. I’m also someone who likes keeping busy (yay ADHD), so this seemed to be a natural thing to do.

Of course, I didn’t know that was what I was doing at the time. It was only after I went to my therapist and said, “I’m so overworked and overextended” that we put it together. I still love these new things I am doing, but we had to have a long, hard discussion about time management and self-care.

In August, I started playing roller derby. I enrolled in a local leagues New Skater class and, despite many bruises and a twisted knee, it’s been an amazing experience. I’ll have more to say about this later in another post I’m working on, but for now trust me when I say I am officially hooked on the sport. Because of it, I’ve also re-discovered my love of the gym, so I am spending more time there now as well (#JamieBecomesaMuscleMommy2026).

Around that time, I also started another project that I am so excited to talk about: I’m writing my first novel! My first short story came out under my pen name in last year’s By Her Sword romantasy anthology and I loved the experience so much that I wanted to continue and start writing more. I’m currently enrolled in Writing Academy 1 and hope to have a first draft of the entire book done by this summer. I’ll have more to say later, but for now I can tell you that it’s a sapphic one night to forever, roommates-to-lovers contemporary romance set in Atlanta. I can’t wait to tell you more later!

Another thing that has slowed down my productivity is, unfortunately, burn out. Specifically, reviewing burn out. Last autumn, I got to the point where I felt like my reviews were getting worse and more formulaic. It felt like I was just repeating myself every time I liked a book. I lost all confidence in reviewing and started to wonder who if anyone was getting anything out of my reviews. It made sitting down to write them feel so arduous and like a waste of time. So I just didn’t do it. Then I felt guilty for not reviewing books, which made it even harder to come back to this site. And the spiral continued.

But here I am. I feel excited and better able to maintain this Substack. It won’t be what it once was, but I still hope to make it something people will want to see.

What brought me back? ReadOUT.

For those of you who don’t know, ReadOUT is a three day LGBTQ+ books festival hosted in Gulfport, Florida every February. For the past two years, I’ve been on the planning committee for it along with two of my very best friends in the sapphic lit community, Macon Leigh and Kelsey Dye.

This year, ReadOUT really hit the spot for me. Spending three days in queer community and talking about queer books with people who love me and I love was like a magic elixir to my soul. I was given a powerful reminder of how important our literature is and that contributing to its visibility, whether it be through writing or reviewing, is so very needed. It left me feeling much more energized and motivated to give time to this space and the subscribers who keep coming back.

That being said, I will not be posting as frequently as I once was. It’s just not sustainable with everything going on in my life. I’ve pulled the Two of Pentacles too often. Balance is something I need to work on.

I still plan to post twice a month here. That’s the goal. Sometimes it will be two reviews. Sometimes it will be a review and an essay. Sometimes it will be a review and an author interview (that’s right, Authors Geek Out will be returning).

For now, I also plan to keep reviewing at the Lesbrary. I have a review coming out tomorrow. To read my reviews over there, click the link here and support The Lesbrary. Danika and the other Lesbrarians are great people who deserve your support.

There is one last change I want to mention. While I will continue to keep this site free to access for now, I am going to start accepting pledges for the work I do here. When people have tried to pledge in the past, I’ve turned them down because I didn’t feel like I deserved it. That’s not to say that I’m fully in the “Give me your money! I deserve it!” camp, but I do know that I should accept people’s help if they are willing to give it. I also believe that while reviewers like me shouldn’t be paid to give authors good reviews (something I will never accept), our time and effort in spreading the good word of sapphic literature deserves some financial support.

All that is to say: if you want to support Jamie Geeks Out with your pledge dollars, by all means do so. Thank you so much for doing so. If you don’t want to or financially can’t but still want to support by reading and sharing with others, that’s fine too. Thank you for doing that. Regardless of how you support me, it means the world to me.

That’s all I got for now. Hope to see you more regularly around here.

Until next time!

On the first day of school, mother of four Imogen Dawson runs into her new neighbor, single mom Alex Koenig. Alex has moved back to her parent’s house after their passing and is still grieving their loss as well as a recent breakup. Despite Alex’s more queer and cosmopolitan life being an initial shock to Imogen, these two strike up a friendship that ends up changing their lives for the better. For Imogen, Alex’s friendship shows her that there is more to her than being a mom. For Alex, Imogen may be just what she needs to move on and find happiness again. Their friendship, though, turns into love as both women realize that the other is exactly what they need.

In addition to being a romance, Motherlover tackles heavy topics such as identity and loss. The theme of identity is handled so well in Imogen’s arc. At the beginning, she sees herself as being solely a wife and mother. Time and again she describes herself as just a “boring mom”. Her arc becomes one of realizing that while motherhood is a large part of her identity, that isn’t all she is. The story does a great job of ushering Imogen through this hard process all while never demeaning what it is to be a mother. It treats motherhood and the choice to be a stay-at-home mom as something to be respected. It also shows that moms can be cool too, something that I enjoyed seeing.

Of course, part of Imogen’s arc is tied to her realizing that she is a lesbian. I liked how the book didn’t delve too much into the pathos here. There’s not entire chapters devoted to her struggle of coming to terms with this identity. Instead, we’re just given a few panels and that’s it. I like this because for all the stories that dive deep into the coming out journey, I enjoy seeing one that’s much cleaner sometimes.

While Imogen’s arc is all about her identity, Alex’s is about coming to terms with grief and loss. As she mourns the loss of her parents, she also begins to unpack the effects that their overbearing nature had on her. There’s her broken relationship with her brother who managed to get out from under their expectations as well as her inability to commit to relationships. Similar to Imogen’s story, this is all handled with such care and attention to detail that it really connected with me.

I’m not usually a fan of friends to lovers romances or slow burns, but this one really worked for me. I think part of the reason it worked is that it showcased the value of adult female friendships so well. Seeing the instant connection between the two women and just how much they support each other through their struggles was so sweet. Another reason it worked is that the novel does such a great job of showing how messy adult relationships in your 30s can be. Nothing about how they end up falling in love is straightforward or easy. Lastly, I loved that when the characters realize their attraction to one another, we are treated to some gorgeous artwork. For example, the sequence in which Alex dreams of her and Imogen together is stunning.

One more thing I want to mention about the art is Linday Ishihiro’s depiction of female bodies. Imogen is plus sized and not once does Lindsay shy away from showing her in more revealing clothing. We see her fully dressed to the nines to mom casual to frumpy pajamas to just her underwear. No matter the outfit, she is illustrated beautifully and as an object of clear desire. Alex, on the other hand, is skinny, yet Lindsay also illustrates her in a realistic way. For example, in one panel she is shown bent forward and you can see small belly rolls, something that is very true to life.

Motherlover is a beautiful, funny, sweet, and heartwarming graphic novel about finding love while navigating the messiness of motherhood. If you’re a fan of cute slow burn romances featuring realistic women going through realistic life challenges, then this is a book for you.

Jude Thacker is working another slow shift at The Next Chapter, the bookstore founded by her late mother, when the most beautiful woman she has ever seen comes in and starts asking for queer book recommendations. Jude and the mysterious woman instantly hit it off, but when memories of her last devastating breakup come roaring back, she lets the woman walk away without getting her number. Unbeknownst to Jude, that mysterious woman is former child star Katrina “Kat” Kelly. Kat is desperate to restart her acting career and her manager has a plan: leverage Kat’s coming out for publicity. When the plan requires getting a fake girlfriend, Kat asks Jude out. The plan is only to date Jude for a couple of months, but when real sparks fly between these women, Kat begins to wonder if being a good girl and following everyone else’s plans for her life is truly what she wants anymore. For Jude, dating Kat offers her a chance to step out of the safe confines of her life, but only if she can learn to trust that dating Kat won’t lead to another heartbreak.

When it comes to story structure, The Next Chapter could be considered a bit formulaic. It includes many of the beats and tropes you will find in many other rom-coms and especially those in the fake dating romance subgenre. If you’re someone who isn’t a fan of tropey romances and some of the tropes that appear in this story (looking at you haters of the 3rd act breakup), then this one may not be for you. If, however, you’re one of those people that likes tropes in your romances, then you will enjoy how it nails each trope and beat it includes. The meet-cute is super sweet and filled my stomach with butterflies for Jude and Kat. Watching the relationship between these two women develop is heartwarming. The third act breakup is as devastating as that moment should be and the multiple grand gestures and professions of love are over-the-top in the most heartwarming ways.

Additionally, each and every one of the beats in the story is so well set up that when they happen, they feel completely justified and natural to the progression of the romance between our two heroines. Camille also does a great job of making sure every idea, every aspect about the characters, and every potential issue they face plays an important role in the overall narrative. To go back to the third act breakup, one reason it works so well is because Camille lays the groundwork for its causes over and over again throughout the entire narrative. It makes for a break up that is equal parts predictable and heartbreaking, which also makes for grand gestures and a final resolution that mends the heart and left me so happy.

Another thing that helps The Next Chapter shine is the two main characters of Jude and Kat. Both characters are well-developed and grounded in real-life issues that so many of us face. Jude has gone through so much loss and finds herself stuck and unable to move on, something those of us who have faced such loss have struggled with. Kat has had her whole life dictated to her to the point where she can’t make her own decisions without collapsing into an anxiety nightmare. The story does a great job showing how all-encompassing these issues are for both women and how hard it is for them to completely break free of the patterns of behavior that have dominated their lives. Because of this, I still found myself empathizing with them and rooting for them to figure it out even when they made truly awful, terrible decisions.

All in all, I found The Next Chapter to be a very well-executed fake dating rom-com that took all the tropes and beats of the subgenre and played them near perfection. It’s a story filled with great characters you want to root for and scenes that will put you through the gamut of emotions. Yes, it can be over-the-top and cheesy at times (especially near the conclusion), but it all felt so incredibly earned that I didn’t care one bit. When you’ve got characters and writing this good, give me all of that glorious romance cheesiness!

Tegan Cooper is ready for the next stage of her life. Recently graduated, she’s moved to Buffalo to start a new job as a therapist. Brooke Metcalf, on the other hand, is in a rut. She’s an accomplished therapist, but can’t seem to shake the personal and professional malaise she has recently found herself in. Spurred on by their best friends to get out, these two women randomly run into each other at a bar and hit it off. Their instant connection and electric chemistry propels the women into an uncharacteristic one-night stand that rocks both of their worlds. Their realities are further rocked when the following Monday Tegan enters Brooke’s practice as the new junior therapist and supervisee. These women now have to navigate building a professional relationship and friendship all while holding fast to the boundaries they set to protect their jobs and, more importantly, their hearts. As they attempt to build those relationships, though, they soon learn that some boundaries simply aren’t meant to last.

In Brooke and Tegan, Rachel gives us a romantic pairing that is at times too smart and too empathetic for their own good. Both women find themselves instantly and insanely attracted to the other, but spend the majority of the narrative after their first night together talking themselves out of acting on this attraction in spite of how strong it is. As a reader, I loved seeing them respect each other’s boundaries by not acting on their attraction, yet kept thinking to myself, “y’all are too perfect, just bang already!”. It was so adorable and yet so frustrating, but also just goes to show how sexy emotional intelligence and empathy can be when it is done right.

Another thing I really liked about Brooke and Tegan’s dynamic is how much they both help each other grow. In a lot of age gap romances, it often feels like the older character in the couple is the one that gets the majority of character development. These stories often feel, to me at least, less like a couple helping each other grow and more like the younger character is there to help the older character through their arc. This isn’t the case with Informed Consent. As much as Tegan helps Brooke grow and see new things about herself, Brooke does the same for Tegan. It’s something that the best romances do: show how accepting and embracing love helps us all grow into the best versions of ourselves.

Informed Consent is an incredibly sweet story that simultaneously feels cozy and filled with romantic tension. From the outset, so many scenes between the pair are just them talking, supporting one another, and helping each other see the beauty that they don’t recognize in themself. It’s what every relationship should really strive to achieve. And yet, because both Brooke and Tegan keep tight to their boundaries and refuse to entertain their temptations, the story is also filled with palpable and deep romantic tension. It’s a tension that Rachel does a phenomenal job of building slowly until it bursts under its own weight and that I loved reading. The third act is this perfect blend of steamy and emotionally devastating that ties all of the themes of the story up in a beautiful bow that will stick with you even days after you put the book down.

Alongside Brooke and Tegan on their “we’re perfect for each other but can’t date” adventure are some of the best side characters I have read in a long time. We have Gillian, Brooke’s best friend and Tegan’s boss, Naomi, Tegan’s best friend, and Rachel, the fun loving, “always say yes” co-worker. Each of these three ladies feel like fully developed three dimensional characters in their own right and bring so much to the story. All three help Brooke and Tegan along their journey by offering different perspectives to their conundrum and help them grow through it all. Not only do they enhance the story in so many ways, they also make me excited to read the next book in the series, Relationship Material.

Informed Consent is a perfect blend of cozy and angsty that shows just how sexy a romance between two highly emotionally intelligent women can be. If you’re a fan of sweet stories, intelligent women, and even more intelligent and clever writing, then you cannot go wrong with this book.

In this article, I asked the supremely awesome Bryce Oakley to geek out. Bryce is a multiple Goldie winning author of sapphic romantic comedy and just an all-around sweet and fun person. I am so thankful that she decided to geek out with me for this.

So, without any further ado, it’s time for Bryce Oakley to geek out!

Thank you, Bryce, very much for joining me.

Thank you for having me!

Why don’t you introduce yourself to the readers?

Yeah, my name is Bryce Oakley. I write sapphic romantic comedy with a lot of fun and silliness and hijinks and chaos.

That pretty much describes the last two of your books very well. Perfect chaos.

So, what was that initial spark for you to start writing and publishing sapphic lit? What got you in the game?

My wife actually dared me. She knows me better than I know myself. I’ve always wanted to be a writer. I have my MFA, I went to a very serious MFA program, but I always had this mental block about writing sapphic romance even though I really enjoy it. I really enjoy romance in general.

When I started writing romance, I started writing hetero romance, especially fantasy romances. My wife was like, “Hey, this is great, but where are all the queer people?” At first, I was thinking that sapphic literature doesn’t really sell. She was like, “Just prove me wrong. Write a sapphic romance, publish it, and prove me wrong.”

So, I wrote a sapphic romance, published it, and proved her right! The sapphics were out there and they were hungry for representation, which is when I realized that I am too. That was August 2019. Six years ago!

How does it feel six years in?

Every time I start writing a new book, I’m still like, “I have no idea what I’m doing.” So, good, still exciting. I’m still in love with this community and I’m grateful that I get to call this my career.

The Goldies and how many people rave about your book would speak to how good you are. So you do know what you’re doing.

Thank you. It’s just the imposter syndrome that women have.

What draws you to a new idea? What is that spark that takes it from an interesting idea to one that sustains an entire book writing journey?

I usually start with a question that I want to investigate the answer to. Typically, it’s about a character or a specific type of experience. I’m a very naturally curious person and an incredibly empathetic person. So, I want to figure out what makes people tick specifically.

I also write a ton of my real life experiences into books, usually in pretty minor ways. I was just on vacation and I thought, “Oh, I’ve never written this situation into a book. I have an idea for where I can put that in my latest book.” So, it’s kind of about me wanting to explore things and process things.

As far as sustaining the idea, that’s the hard part of writing a book or any kind of longform anything. I tend to think of my own stories in terms of temperature. When a story is warm or hot, I feel really drawn to it and I draft really quickly. I try to keep the story warm for myself because the moment it goes cold and I start losing interest and other things start looking shiny, that’s when drafts tend to go into the “to be written” pile, which very rarely happens for me. I very rarely can revisit a draft. I can’t get back into the voice and the story. So, I try to draft as quickly as I can honestly.

Could you give me an example of a question you wanted to explore from one of your more recent works?

The question that led to One Last Run was a question about Peter Pan Syndrome. That sounds very far off from what it turned into, but it was still basically, “what happens when someone who is emotionally immature grows up and they don’t emotionally mature at the same rate as other people? What does that look like for them? Can they still be successful in life? What happens to the people that outpaced them?” So, I wanted to explore the timeline from when we first meet this character and how we are seeing them current day.

What book or piece of sapphic media has had the biggest impact on you as a writer? As a person? Or both?

As a person, I narrowed it down to three. If you cracked my personality open and looked inside, you’d see these three things stuffed in there. Alison Bechdel’s Fun Home, Andrea Gibson’s poetry and their entire worldview, and Virginia Woolf’s Orlando. I feel like those three things in particular have kind of shaped how I view storytelling, how I view queerness, how I view what I want to put into the world.

What books have you recently read that you love and want others to read right now?

So much! I feel like every time I finish a book everyone I’ve ever met needs to hear about it. The last book that I read was Emma Denny All the Painted Stars. It is a historical fantasy romance, so knights and princesses and all that. It has one of my favorite tropes, which is a woman dressed up as a man. It’s done really interestingly. I just love that book.

One that’s more long-lasting in that I’ve read them in the past year and have been shouting about them from the rooftops is Ruby Landers’ Grace Notes series. Just perfection. Her storytelling, the way she weaves that series together, is just masterful.

I’m a massive JJ Arias fan.

Me too!

Right?! The world does not deserve her. No one does chemistry like JJ Arias. Her books are just on fire. I’m obsessed.

I just started T.J O’Sheas’ Sweet Home Alabarden Park and I am infuriated by how funny she is. I’m so jealous of how funny she is. I’m not that far into it and I can just tell that I’m going to be telling everyone about that.

L.M. Bennett just came out with a book today and the name is totally escaping me (Jamie’s Note: it’s You Were Almost Home), but I am so so so excited. I’m obsessed with L.M. Bennet. I feel like people are sleeping on her and I wish more people read her.

You rave about JJ and JJ raved about you in her interview.

We’re in love. It’s fine.

What draws you to the trope of “woman disguised as a man”?

I think it’s such an interesting way to explore gender expression, especially in historical settings. In the time when All the Painted Stars takes place, women had a very specific role and the book talks about that. It talks about how this woman dressing as a knight and entering this tournament opens these doors for her. She’s able to explore these other facets of her personality. Luc Dreamer also did that trope in his Heart’s Home series. I think it’s so interesting to see the psychology between an outward appearance and how that can shape confidence. I think it’s so interesting.

What other sapphic media have you been loving recently?

Unfortunately, I consume a lot of media right now that is strictly for toddlers. But you can’t tell me Moana and Elsa aren’t at least a little queer coded, am I right?

Oh absolutely! Elsa is so queer coded, it’s obvious.

Seriously. So, I enjoy reading into that shit. In terms of canonically or culturally gay things, when I tell you the hold KPop Demon Hunters has on me. Everyone says it’s not specifically sapphic, but are you kidding me? No, it is. That’s for the girls. I love it. I can’t stop talking about it or listening to it.

It’s taken over our house right now too. Our 7-year old is obsessed.

My tastes often align with pre-teens.

The great thing about having a toddler now is that as they grow they’ll get into things like She-Ra.

Oh, I am obsessed with She-Ra. I’ve been obsessed with Nate Stevenson’s since the Nimona webtoon. I am friends with Grace Ellis, who wrote Lumberjanes with him. I’m also re-reading Moonstruck by Grace Ellis. That is so adorable. Would highly recommend. I love everything that she touches.

Really, I love graphic novels. I’ve also recently been reading Rat Queens. So fun, so ridiculous. I just love over the top women being chaotic.

My wife is re-playing Horizon Zero Dawn and I’m the kind of person who just sits and watches others play video games. I was the youngest of six, so I never got to play the videos games, just watch. I still am that way. So, yeah, been really into Horizon Zero Dawn. Aloy is a confirmed sapphic. I love her.

As far as music is concerned, I’m on a huge Zolita kick right now. Her music is fun pop. Her music videos are elite, they’re works of art. I think she’s so underrated. I like her better than Chappell Roan.

What is your favorite thing that you have ever written?

This is so hard.

That’s why I have it as a question.

I know. I’m one of those writers who is like, “that’s the best thing I’ve ever written!” the moment I finish a book. I do feel like I am improving in my craft with every book I write. I feel like I am a better writer today. In terms of my favorite story, I have a soft spot for The Adventurers. That is the book that really changed my career. It brought a bunch of people to my work. It was also a story where I plotted almost nothing and just went off joy and fun and vibes. It was the beginning of COVID and for me it was such a release. I love that book and am forever grateful for it.

If chaos, hijinks, and ridiculousness are you thing, that’s the book for you.

So a Bryce Oakley book. I get it.

[laughs]

You said you’ve seen improvement in your craft. Where do you think you’ve seen it the most?

This is going to sound silly, but my descriptions have improved the most. Physical descriptions are always something that I have struggled with. Describing the room characters are in, describing what a person looks like, even describing the physical sensation of emotions, has never been a strong point for me, so I’ve focused on improving that. Writing a fantasy novel has helped me improve that. I’ve carried that back over to my contemporary romances. I’m such a visual person that I think I just overlook it. Trying to identify those little holes where I can get better has really helped.

If you had to choose one book to introduce sapphic literature to a newcomer, what would you pick to sell them on sapphic lit?

Okay, I’m going to pick three. It depends on what they like, but there are three books that could make any person fall in love with sapphic lit. Stephanie Shea’s Chef’s Kiss. I think that Stephanie Shea is a masterful lyricist. Her prose is just out of this world good. I also think Ruby Lander’s Falls From Grace is also just a perfect book. Love love love that book. That book has a perfect third act breakup. People hate them, but that book is so good at it. If I had to choose a top 1, it would be JJ Arias’ Guava Flavored Lies. Everyone talked about Destination You but Guava-Flavored Lies really captures a Cuban American experience, the Miami culture, and JJ Arias’ comedic voice so well. I was laughing out loud reading that book. The tension in that book is really good. The sex is really steamy. Everything is peak JJ Arias in that book.

I love both [Destination You and Guava Flavored Lies] and part of me is like, “yeah, you’re right.” Guava Flavored Lies is so good in every single thing it does.

Seriously. I think it’s so underrated.

I get that because if you asked me to pick JJ Arias’ top three, I don’t know that I’d pick it unless you asked me about it specifically. Then I’d be, “oh of course!”

Absolutely. I also highly recommend it as an audiobook. Carrie Coello does it and her performance is so good.

Is there anything you’re currently working on that you’re really excited about?

I am currently finishing the main draft and starting revisions of the third book in the Longitude and Latitude series and I am super excited about it because it is a set up that I’ve never tried before. It’s an established couple and a marriage re-connection. I think that’s fascinating. I’ve taken my time with this one and it’s stayed warm for me. I’m really excited about that.

I also am trying to hurry up and finish it so that I can get back to revising my fantasy series. I wrote it last year and then set it down and let it breathe just because it was such a huge undertaking. I wanted to make sure that it was exactly the story I wanted to tell. Now that I have these ideas for how I want to adjust things and revise, I’m really excited to get back into it. It started out as a dark sapphic retelling of Jim Henson’s The Labyrinth. You wouldn’t think that those things could work, but it’s pretty far from the goofiness and all that from the actual movie. It definitely still has a woman going into the labyrinth and this time the very cool, androgynous keeper of the labyrinth is a woman. That’s what’s happening there.

I’m excited about the third book in the Longitude and Latitude series. That series has been so good.

Thank you. It’s been really fun. I’ve loved this cast of characters. I never planned on writing Maggie and Gwen. I was going to kill Gwen in Shift the Tide, but I didn’t.

Good!

Thank you, thank you. I’m excited that it’s opened this book for me to explore this interesting dynamic now.

What do you hope to see more of in sapphic lit in the future?

I bet everyone kind of says the same thing here, but diversity. Obviously. Specifically, I think that the sapphic lit world needs more trans women writing women characters. I live for that and I want more of that. I am also super desperate for diversity in terms of genre. Sapphic romance is obviously a huge seller so we’re getting a lot of it. But Virginia Black’s sci-fi, Erin Branch and Evelyn Shine’s romantasy, the romantasy panel at GCLS made me so excited that things are opening up there. I feel like that world is about to crack wide open. I want more genre diversity.

I would also love to see specifically more diversity in gender expression. I feel like we get a lot of femmes, a lot of slender white females. I want different types of characters. You go to GCLS and everyone is all shapes and sizes and expressions. Everyone is so different and cool in their own ways and then every book is about this slender white femme. Let’s fucking stop that. Let’s feature some new types of people and let them fall in love dammit.

Love it!

Well, thank you very much for joining me today.

Thank you! It’s been a pleasure! I’m so excited to geek out!

(Examples courtesy of @sterling_sapphic_reads. Follow her on Insta!)

But not all tropes are built the same. In fact, I think it’s important that when we talk about tropes we make a distinction between what I am going to call “small t” tropes and “big t” tropes. The former is things like forced proximity and miscommunication, elements that can appear in a wide range of stories and that fill specific roles within an overarching plot. For example, a writer can use the forced proximity trope regardless of other factors in the story to achieve a specific goal: force two characters to confront their feelings for one another. The same could be said for miscommunication: you need something to break the characters up or you need some tension between them, have them be bad at communicating what they are feeling or misconstrue what each other is saying.

For “Big t” tropes, I’m thinking of things like second chance, enemies-to-lovers, and one night to forever. The difference between these and the tropes I mentioned in the previous paragraph is that these have a greater and more overarching impact on the story. In fact, they set up the entire story. Just from picking one of these tropes, you’ve already decided so much, from the baseline plot structure to character types/dynamics to even character arcs. Tropes like these are, therefore, more like subgenres within the greater romance genre.

As an example, let’s first take a look at my favorite of these “big t” tropes, second chance romance. Romances of this type start with two people who knew each other before the events of the current story. Maybe they were once in a relationship but have since gone their separate ways or maybe they were friends before going their separate ways. In the latter case, at least one of the main characters had feelings for the other but those feelings were left unrequited. Either way, you’ve got two characters with already established romantic tension who have spent some time apart from one another. More often than not, there’s also some baggage that either one or both are carrying from their previous time together.

So, you’ve got two characters with history. Next step, you have an inciting incident that brings them back together and doesn’t let them run away. This could be a new job, a vacation that mutual friends put together, one of the characters returning home, or any other number of pure happenstance situations. Whatever the case may be, the facts remain: no matter how much our two main characters want to run away from each other, they are stuck together.

As the story progresses, our main characters eventually give in to the feelings that originally brought them together. For a while, things go well and the chemistry is as good as it was before they separated. Come the third act, though, our second chance lovers have to confront the issues that tore them apart the first time and decide if this time will be different. Have they been able to move past their resentment at what happened before? Have them grown enough as people to make better decisions this time around? What does all of that look like? How many tears will be shed? That’s where the fun, the pathos, and the spice comes in.

As you can see, this “big t” trope gives the author a basic plot structure to their story while also offering plenty of avenues to add their own unique spin through things like character archetypes, settings. The basic structure is there, but it’s up to the author to make the story their own.

This doesn’t apply to just second chance romance. Take any “big t” trope and you can achieve the same thing. Enemies to lovers will always have characters starting out as enemies and then get to know each other until their animosity is turned into attraction and then love. One night to forever starts with a hookup and is followed by multiple beats of varying degrees of resistance to the attraction that led them to hooking up in the first place. Each one of these achieves the same thing: gives the author a plot structure on which to build something magical.

Now, this doesn’t mean that these “big t” tropes cannot be combined. They can and to great effect. I’ve seen some incredible enemies to lovers, second chance romances where the characters are enemies because of their past romantic entanglements and become lovers once they work through the scars of those entanglements. A great romance can be more than just one trope executed really well; it can be multiple tropes combined into something unique.

To me, this way of viewing tropes could go a long way in helping us talk about the stories we love. By seeing “big t” tropes as subgenres, we can help new writers have a better sense of how the stories they want to tell can be structured, can help reviewers better analyze the stories they are reviewing, and can bring more nuance to the endless discussion of tropes in romance. Moreover, I think this approach brings romance more in line with other genres that have their own recognized subgenres based largely on differences in story structure and character types. We most often divide romance based on time period (e.g. historical, contemporary) while other genres have way more methods through which they can subdivide themselves and set reader expectations. For example, thrillers have political thrillers and psychological thrillers, both of which bring their own elements that determine large parts of the story. Why can’t romance, the highest selling literary genre right now, have the same? Why can’t romance have its own subgenres like second chance romances, enemies to lovers romances, or ice queen/cinnamon roll romances? These aren’t tropes; they are different types of stories.

But what do you think? Feel free to let me know your thoughts here or on my socials.

Until next time!

In this article, I asked the amazingly talented JJ Arias to geek out. JJ is one of the best sapphic lit writers out there as well as one of the kindest people in the entire community. I am so thankful that she decided to join me for this.

So, without any further ado, it’s time for JJ Arias to geek out!

About JJ Arias

JJ Arias is a best-selling sapphic author and proud Cuban-American from Miami. JJ incorporates her heritage into heartfelt, character-driven romances that blend emotional depth and witty banter. JJ and her wife live in South Florida with too many cats, a pair of unhinged maltipoos, and a melancholy pitbull.

The Interview

What was that initial spark for you to start writing and publishing sapphic lit?

It’s such a common catalyst for us, at least in sapphic romance, we start with fanfic. We see all the potential in so many different pieces of media that range anywhere from “these two actors have incredibly chemistry” to “fully we’re being queerbaited”. I started reading fanfic and then I was like, “could I maybe do this?” I kind of dipped my toe into it for a year or two, I can’t remember. It’s been a while. I was writing AU (alternative universe) fics and at that point I was really writing original stories because everything was different just set with familiar characters. I figured, “What’s the worst that could happen?”

Self-publishing was always my route. I was never interested in seeking trad. So, I was just like, “Well, you know, people are reading my fanfic, would people read my original stories.” That was 2018 and I’ve never looked back.

What was the first fanfic you read?

The original version of “Skins”, there was this pairing on there that wasn’t even the sapphic pairing. There was a sapphic pairing on the show but I was like, “boring!” The other pairing had a more enemies-to-lovers crackship, you know, a “these two characters are never getting together.” I got so into that. Then I got into “Glee” fanfic with Santana and Quinn. Enemies-to-lovers has always been baked into my DNA. The fandom I got into as a writer was “Once Upon a Time”. I was a big Swan Queen Girlie.

But it was randomly “Skins” that I started reading first. Before that, I had never heard of fanfic. I mean, I think I had heard of it when you think about Star Trek fan fic that people would print out and share. That was the only fan fic I had ever heard of. I remember someone was like, “Oh my God, I found this Skins fanfic.” And I was like, “What is this?! I can read all the gay I want! This is amazing! Everyone’s gay, I love it!”

What draws you to a new idea? What is that spark that takes it from an interesting idea to one that sustains an entire book writing journey?

I percolate ideas for a long time. I write from a conflict point. A super easy example is an age-gap teacher and former student set-up. That already has baked into it the conflict of the story. A lot of people start with a meet-cute but I don’t think about that. It’s just how my brain works. I think about what two people would want each other but shouldn’t. Or what sort of hurdles would they naturally face because of their dynamic. From there I spin out into what sort of characters, what sort of people would find themselves in this dynamic and what are some other things that might flow from that. Sometimes it’ll take years where I’ll be circling the plane but can’t really land it. But then something will unlock it and I’ll be like “oh, obviously!”

My wife had wanted me to write Guava Flavored Lies forever. She was like, “rival bakers!” And I was like, “What am I going to do with rival bakers?” But then I spun it and figured out it’s a family feud. Once that wrinkle unlocked the story started to take shape. Then I think about that for a while before I actually start writing or outlining it.

So the conflict, then who would be having that conflict, and then it flows that way?

Yeah. Sometimes I really just can’t. It’s not ready, something is missing. But then something will bring it all together.

What do you think is the longest you’ve percolated on an idea that eventually became something?

The new release (Like First Love, Again) I percolated on for YEARS. I think easily six or seven years of wanting to write this former friends to strangers to lovers, but I just couldn’t. Tori was easy, the baby gay in love with her best friend when they both perceive each other as straight. I knew her, but I didn’t know Mia. Every time I came to it, it felt forced. Then I was like, “Shit, I got it.” So yeah, that was probably seven or eight years.

I love that you said the baby gay was easy because it’s kind of like, “oh yeah, of course that’s going to be easy.”

Yeah! We know what it’s like to have those feelings at a time when your feelings are so big as a teenager. You’re discovering yourself, you’re afraid of what you’re discovering or just don’t know what to do with it. You’re getting all these messages that are telling you not to go that way. You’re figuring all of that out, we all have to. And on top of that you have all these huge feelings. It’s a perfect storm of angsty angst. I was a very angsty teenager.

Oh yeah, I think I was too!

We all are!

What book or piece of sapphic media has had the biggest impact on you as a writer, as a person, or both?

Obviously, without getting so into the characters of “Once Upon a Time”, I’ve always written, but I would never have done something with this [without it]. Because sharing it online for free and getting that feedback created that sense of confidence even though it was terrible because I didn’t know any better. That kind of feeling gave me the confidence that even if ten people read it, I’m happy.

The author, I was probably 20 and I read Achy Obejas. She is a Cuban lesbian. She writes a lot of literary fiction and some poetry. I just had never that in my life. She was born in Cuba and grew up in Chicago, so her background wasn’t super similar to my lived experience. There’s a lot of gay men in my family, but I’m the only out lesbian. And here’s this person who identifies as a lesbian, is Cuban, and experiences things so close to my lens. She’s a little older than me, so it’s a different generation, but it’s the closest that I had ever felt to seeing myself. You know what it’s like to not see yourself in 99.9% of what we read growing up. It’s a standard stock character that I don’t know is reflective of anyone. So I never realized before that characters can look like us, sound like us, have our interests, have our experiences, have that interplay between my Cuban heritage and American culture in funny ways, not bad, but specific and unique. I think that seed stayed with me for a long time well before I thought I’d ever write for anyone else to read. Without her, I don’t know that I would have thought about being able to write from my point of view authentically. My first book was not Cuban, not set in Miami, and not reflective of my culture because I thought that, since I writing romance, it’s two white ladies in New York. That’s what romance novels are! But then I was like, “what do I know from that? I can write whatever I want!” And people like it! I think people want a diversity of experiences. I want to read what your experience was like, not mine.

If I can geek out a little bit, I love that your stories are so Miami. They’re so Cuban, they’re so Miami. And I just love reading it every time. It’s such a different thing. I know I’m getting it every time and I love it every time.

I appreciate that because I think at first there was a bit of a hesitation. Is someone going to look at this and go, “Oh, this isn’t for me.” Everything is for you. Do you like romance? Romance is for you. You give something a chance and you realize that you read to escape into a familiar but new experience. That’s what we all seek when we pick up a book, especially romance. Or any subgenre. You are picking up a genre book. If I’m picking up a sci-fi book and it’s a space opera, I know what I want to feel but make it new. I think it’s like that with everything. Setting is the easiest way to give someone the same experience, but new.

Yeah. And as someone who’s addicted to coffee, every time I read your books, I’m like, “I want Cuban coffee now.”

I drink so much fucking coffee when I’m writing.

It shows!

[laughter ensues]

What keeps you going when things get tough in the writing/drafting process? Besides obviously coffee.

Coffee and deadlines. I have to write to a deadline or I will fill as much space as I have even if I don’t need it. Sometimes I’ll talk things out with my editor or with my wife if I feel stuck. I feel like if I don’t want to write the next scene, there’s usually a reason why. I’m pushing something. Whatever is inside of us that instinctively understands story because we’ve consumed so much story our whole lives, if it’s telling me something is off, I don’t force through it. I’ll sit with it and think, “Am I just overtired or is it something not the best it can be?” I think talking it out is the biggest key. Thinking it through, talking it out, taking some space away, and figuring out why it is hard. Am I just tired? Sometimes that’s it.

If I don’t have something set for a preorder or real deadline, I give myself an extension. You don’t want to burn out and put something out that later you wish you had sat with a little bit longer. Preorders are different because you don’t want to mess with the powers that be. They don’t like it when you change the preorder date. So for that I’ll really get serious with what’s happening.

So how do you balance between needing the deadline and sometimes needing to sit?

I don’t set everything for preorder. I only set it for preorder once I’m done and it’s off for editing. I know I’m good. That’s my balance between “the deadline to my editor is real” and there’s an issue where it’s like “now I can’t do your book. You took too long,” but it’s also not detrimental to my ability to publish. Worst case scenario, you got to skip me and come back around to a different slot. But once I’ve written the book, then I’ll set a preorder. So, it’s a real deadline, but it’s not the end of the world if I didn’t meet it.

What books have you recently read that you love and think others should read?

I have so many. I just finished Bryce Oakley’s One Last Run and I loved it. She’s so funny, like rude. I told her, “You’re disrespectful. I no longer want to write any funny dialogue because why should I even try. You’re incredible.”

And then Kat Jackson, who is my favorite prose author. She writes so beautifully. Golden Hour is my favorite of hers. I’ve read it twice actually. That’s more of a women’s fiction then it is a romance. The romance is a bit of a subplot. She writes so beautifully.

And I just started The Woman from the Waves. I have to read it with my eyeballs, so that’s going to take me a little bit longer. But it’s gorgeous. Every time I pick it up it’s so rich and beautifully written. I think it’s just fantastic.

I’m always reading at least two things. I’ve got so much in audio because I consume everything through audiobook. It’s like, your eyes get so tired, but we want to experience a story and get carried away.

What is one piece of non-sapphic media would you want to make a sapphic version of that you haven’t already? Since you did fanfic, I’m going to make you pick something else.

I would love to see a huge blockbuster-type Star Wars epic sapphic story written by Virginia Black. I would love to see something like that, a huge scale, visually stunning, with a really good story, absolute epic tale, and make it sapphic. Or Game of Thrones. Something really really huge where it’s absolutely integral to the story. I would love that. We can’t even get little things, but that would be amazing.

What is your favorite thing that you have ever written?

It’s so hard because you’re always in a different place when you’re writing a particular book. But I think my favorite was The Love Conspiracy. I really loved it, it was a super slow burn. It probably teetered on the edge of women’s fiction and romance. It was really such a deep exploration of one character. I think it’s some of my best writing and I think it’s some of my best storytelling even though it’s like Chapter 35 before they kiss. I was like, “Ain’t nobody going to read this. Nobody is going to follow me on this journey.” But people have. Everyone who has read it really liked it. I really loved it. I think it’s the best thing I’ve ever written.

What are some of your favorite tropes in sapphic lit? You mentioned enemies to lovers, any others?

Oh brother, enemies to lovers. I love an age gap so bad. The problem is now being a lady in my 40s, I’m still looking up in the age gap. I could never be interested in a 27 year old but I always imagine myself as that 27 year old. I just love age gaps. They are so popular in sapphic [lit] for so many reasons. We just love strong, confident women. I’m just always going to be a sucker for an age gap.

I love an ice queen, which often goes together with age gap.

It’s like cookies and cream. It just works.

The holy grail! So yeah, those are my favorite. And enemies to lovers. It’s just overflowing with conflict that it’s just really really really fun. Ice queens are exhausting, but I love them. They’re so much work.

You’re right. With enemies to lovers, there’s just so much baked in conflict. It’s like, “yes, please, give me that!”

And the banter that you can get is just amazing.

Is there anything you’re currently working on that you’re really excited about?

There’s a few things. I’m finishing the sequel to the paranormal throuple book (For Love and Blood and Fury). It’s really pushing my abilities in paranormal/fantasy writing of upping the stakes, those life and death stakes, and tapping into some real political conflict and fighting, fight scenes. So that’s been really exciting and challenging.

For the Patreon Quinn Riley and I are doing, I’m writing Office Hours. It’s audio-only and it is fun. I’m writing in a way I never have before. I am a control freak. If anyone’s read a single one of my books, they know that these type A control freak queens are out here and I love them because I am one. I have the rhythm of the story, like where it’s going, but I don’t have chapter by chapter outlines. So, I’m kind of discovering it as it goes. It’s a grad student/professor romance, so age gap and forbidden. This professor is intense. I’m not giving the professor’s point of view, I’m only doing it from the student’s point of view, which is hard because I always want to explain what this person is thinking. So, it’s hard for me to sit in that skin and not share it. I’m also exploring something I’ve never explored before, which is praise kink. I’ve done so much research on this because I am a nerd and need to understand how things work. The idea started because I had a “good girl” in this last book and I was like, “What the deal with that? I don’t mind it, but it also doesn’t light me up.” So, I’ve started researching praise kinks and I think a grad student who desperately wants her professor’s validation is the perfect vehicle to explore that. It’s going to be really fun. It’s going to be intense. I’m very excited about working on it.

A grad student wanting the attention of their professor is a very real thing.

Right? Everyone can relate if you’ve been in that higher education/academia setting.

It’s been fun because it’s been pushing me into something different, which is something I always try to do, challenge myself. It can be so easy to keep doing what works, what people want to read from me. I could keep doing that. There’s nothing wrong with that. But I never want to be complacent. I always want to try something else, pushing a little bit, and experimenting. What are we doing if not trying things that scare us in fiction?

What do you hope to see more of in sapphic lit in the future?

Everything. I want more stories coming from people’s lived experiences, especially intersectional stories coming from people’s lived experiences. We’ve grown so much as a subgenre and it’s incredible. I think there’s only room for more. I don’t mean more representation so that you can check your box off for trans visibility week or Hispanic heritage month or whatever. I want more of everything that is intersectional because it adds such richness and such vibrant realness to our sapphic space that’s not going to be your cookie cutter romance. Give me that flavor.

So many people think that their lived experience isn’t interesting, but it is. It really is. I don’t think it’s interesting to be from Miami. It’s what it looks like to me. It never occurred to me that anyone else would find that interesting except that it’s not everybody else’s lived experience. Did you ever see that show Somebody Somewhere on HBO?

No, I haven’t.

It’s about this small town in, I wanna say Kansas. It’s almost one of those shows where nothing happens but you’re riveted. It’s about this small group of friends in this little town and it’s fascinating to me because I don’t know what it’s like to live in a small town in Kansas. The characters are funny and rich and their interplay is amazing. It’s like, if that’s where you’re from, write that.

Whatever your experience is, I want it. I want more of it. Don’t write what you think people want to read. Write what you know, what you’ve lived, because the quality of your writing, of your storytelling, skyrockets because you’re writing from a real place. You’re going to give it a flavor and rhythm that no one else can.

So, in one word, more! More of everything!

Thank you so much for joining me.

Thank you so much for having me! It’s always a pleasure to talk with you!

One bright spot of 2025 for me has been the books that I have read. So far, I’ve read 36 books, with the majority of them being outstanding experiences that have enriched my life in a multitude of ways. In this post, I want to look back and celebrate the 5 that I loved the most. This is not an objective “Best Of” list by any means nor does it include only books released in 2025. I am also not including the book that I finished the night before I wrote this because I want to avoid a recency effect. Don’t worry, though, you’ll hear plenty about that one later.

Without any further ado, the list!

Honorable Mentions

Before I get to my top 5, I want to start off by mentioning the books that didn’t make the top 5 but are still deserving of a shout out. And yeah, the list of honorable mentions is double the length of the top 5 list, but this is my article and I can do what I want!

• The Relationship Mechanic by Karmen Lee

• Queen B by Juno Dawson

• Even Though I Knew the End by C.L. Polk

• Worth Waiting For by Kristin Keppler

• Late Bloomer by Mazie Eddings

• One Last Run by Bryce Oakley

• Only Hope by Ruby Landers

• Afterlove by Tanya Byrne

• Light From Uncommon Stars by Ryka Aoki

• Here We Go Again by Alison Cochrun

For Love and Blood and Fury by JJ Arias

Anyone who knows me knows how much I love JJ Arias. For my money, she is one of the best sapphic literature authors working today, pumping out hit after hit that satisfies every single time. She’s already put out two great romances this year, For Love and Blood and Fury and Like First Love, Again. While the former was phenomenal, I have to give a slight edge to the former. JJ’s tale of a vampire mob boss, her witch ex-girlfriend, and an angelic newcomer still figuring herself out is just on another level. It’s a story that manages to tell a satisfying paranormal romance while giving each character their own individual arcs. It perfectly blends gripping action and intrigue with electric chemistry between our leading ladies. Add to it JJ’s uncanny ability to write steamy sex scene after steamy sex scene and this is a book you won’t want to put down.

For my full review from January, click here.

The Stars Too Fondly by Emily Hamilton

Mix science fiction and romantic comedy and I am there! This book immediately pulls you into and keeps you entranced as a loveable queer found family of accidental intergalactic adventurers slowly but surely unravel mystery after mystery. The romance between Cleo and hologram Billie was so sweet as they moved from communicating solely through sarcastic and snide comments to something much more tender and loving. The themes of love, power, and trust shine through beautifully as the story reaches its exciting climax. From the outset, you can tell that Emily Hamiliton is a lover of science fiction who set out to write a book for other lovers of science fiction like myself.

For my full review from April, click here.

No Shelter But The Stars by Virginia Black

Virginia Black’s No Shelter But The Stars does a phenomenal job of setting up an epic space opera story of empire and rebelling and then bringing it down to a personal level. It’s a story of two women, born on opposite sides of a decades-long intergalactic conflict, forced to find a way to survive being marooned on a barren space rock together. The book never shies away from how difficult and brutal the task ahead of them is, nor does it hide any of the difficulty these women have getting over everything they were taught about the other side. It makes for a romance that feels immensely earned. I remember being genuinely worried that the women wouldn’t end up together because of everything they faced. Combine all of this with Virginia’s ability to control tension with every single sentence and you get a triumph of sapphic science fiction.

For my full review from March, click here.

Can’t Spell Treason Without Tea by Rebecca Thorne

A book that changed my opinion on an entire sub genre, Rebecca Thorne’s cozy fantasy story of girlfriends running away together to open a tea shop in a small mountain town was an absolute delight. Reyna and Kianthe were adorable and watching them figure out their life together away from old responsibilities felt very real. I loved the emotional maturity Rebecca gave these two, allowing them to solve squabbles in a way that showcases their love for each other and making me hungry for more time with them. There was also a real sense of danger and intrigue to the story. Between a callous and self-centered queen hell bent on getting revenge and dragons with a vendetta against Reyna and Kianthe’s new home town, there was plenty beyond the romance to keep me engaged.

For my full review from June, click here.

Some Girls Do by Jennifer Dugan

My favorite YA read of the year, Jennifer Dugan’s tale of a newly out track star and a beauty queen still trying to find herself is a wonderfully sweet and earnest story that hit my emotions in all the right places. Dugan’s great writing made both Ruby and Morgan very relatable and allowed me to see moments of my queer past in both of them. The story teetered between hope and strife very well, giving us sweet and tender moments between Ruby and Morgan but never letting us forget that they have major issues they need to deal with and grow through before their happily ever after. The overall message, that queerness is messy and that each person’s journey is unique, is an important one and it comes through really well in this story.

For my full review from April, click here.

Final Thoughts

There you have it, folx! My favorite five reading experiences of the first half of 2025 along with plenty of honorable mentions deserving their own praise. If the second half of the year in books is as good as this, I cannot wait to dive in!

Happy reading y’all!

As far as the historical elements of the book are concerned, I found them a fascinating and enlightening read. Again, my knowledge of lesbian history, especially British lesbian history, is fairly scant, so I really appreciated seeing this time capsule of what it was like to be a lesbian 1980s and 1990s England. I enjoyed getting a glimpse at the issues that affected day to day life as a lesbian during that time and the feminist and lesbian discussions that dominated the day. It helped me learn so much about what life was like during those times as well as how far we have and have not come since then.

I also enjoyed the autobiographical parts of the book. I really appreciated Elizabeth’s openness in sharing her own journey from discovering her lesbian identity to where she is now. Being so open with who you are and where you’ve come from, especially in a book like this, can be a daunting and intimidating challenge and I appreciate Elizabeth for rising to it with a genuine sense of humor. In doing so, she also expertly highlights the many ways in which all of our coming out journeys are unique yet eerily similar. There’s the uncertainty of questioning before feeling like you can call yourself a lesbian (or whatever label you want), the fear of coming out, the excitement at getting to explore a whole new queer world, and so much more. Elizabeth did a great job here infusing her story with such humor and heart that I couldn’t help but reflect on my own queer journey. It helped me see that my experiences are not too dissimilar from other lesbians, even if it was filled with its own unique challenges and triumphs.

The aspects of this book that will stick with me the longest are the parts where Elizabeth dips into social and political commentary. There were so many strong passages in which she holds nothing back in pointing out the ways in which lesbian communities can do a better job at inclusion. She shows the history of how the lesbian community has failed its BIPOC, trans, and disabled members and offers avenues for much needed improvement in those regards. Even when some of the information was not new to me, I found Elizabeth’s perspective powerful and felt like it added to what I already knew. For example, a lot of the issues mentioned in the chapter titled “Trans Lesbians Exist – Get Over It” (which is fucking great title in my opinion) are things that I am familiar with. I still appreciated seeing her perspective and loved all the new sources that she cited that I get to check out now. I also have so many new quotes now that are going to be taking up space in my brain for a long time. In the end, as much as this book shows a love for lesbian culture and what it means to be a lesbian, it also shows us the ways in which we must be better for current and future generations. That’s exactly what a book like this should do.

Reading Thanks For Calling The Lesbian Line was a wonderful experience for me. It provided me with information about an aspect and period of queer history that I was not familiar with. It gave me more proof that my experience coming to accept my lesbian identity is not that wholly different from other peoples. Lastly, it offered a mission statement and direction for how I and my fellow sapphics can move the community forward and leave it in a better place than we found it. It’s for all these reasons that I think it’s a must-read for anyone interested in queer history and queer community building.

For my first post in over a month, I decided to start with the next installment of my series, “Authors Geek Out”. In this series, I ask sapphic authors questions that get them to geek out about being an author as well as the sapphic media they love.

In this article, I asked my good friend Macon Leigh (Instagram) to geek out. Macon is the author of the double Goldie-winning book The Flight Risk. In addition, she is a fantastic Dungeon Master (for D&D, not the other kind) and an overall wonderful person. I am so thankful that she decided to join me for this.

So, without any further ado, it’s time for Macon Leigh to geek out!

Why don’t we start off with you introducing yourself to everyone.

My name is Macon Leigh. I am a person who really loves sapphic literature, sapphic books, telling stories, talking about stories, and sometimes, if I get my shit together, I can write them. So, that’s pretty much who I am.

Getting your shit together. That’s a tall order sometimes.

And I am bad at it.

What excites you, what gets you going when it comes to writing?

The moment in the story that most excites me or when I know that I have a story to tell is when I figure out what my big twist is going to be. For me, in writing a story, I’ve always looked at it as such a gift to get to tell stories. It’s a gift I’m giving the audience and it’s a gift that I’m giving myself. It’s so fun for me when I realize what the moment is that is going to make the audience go, “oh, what the fuck?” or “oh dude!” It’s the same thing I love when I’m playing an rpg or doing any of that. It’s when you’re putting the pieces together but you’re doing it in a way that makes people surprised and it gives them that joy. It feels so satisfying as a reader, that moment when you’re putting it together and you go, “Oh, I put the pieces together backwards!” That feeling is so exciting for me as a person who loves story. So, I love it when that moment comes together on the page for me.

With The Flight Risk, what was that moment for you when you knew you had it? (WARNING: BIG FUCKING SPOILERS. SKIP TO NEXT QUESTION IF YOU HAVEN’T READ THE FLIGHT RISK)

When I realized that Rivers had invented the bucket list, that she needed Bailey to help her, and that she came up with the idea of tricking her into thinking she’s helping her mom when really she’s just helping her solve my Mama Mia situation. Also, that whole reveal of it and then, obviously the end, which I won’t spoil, when we find out the big reveal and how all of that fits together. I knew that part really early in the process, but how I was going to get there, once I figured that out, I was like, “Okay, now I know how to tell the story.”

When you have a new idea for a story, what draws you to it? What is that spark that takes it from an interesting idea to one that sustains an entire book writing journey?

Honestly, it’s usually something I’m watching or seeing or a feeling I’m having. A thing I’m working on now that isn’t in my next story, might never be in a story, but I’m passionate about now is a fan edit of two basketball players I was just watching. It was set to a song and the particular combination of that edit and that song made me think that this is a story.

With The Flight Risk, I had been seeing a lot of media about soulmates and I had read somewhere the red thread of fate. I then just started thinking about that. So I had this spark and I always try to think of a twist on things, so I thought, “What if that made you mad?” Or what if you felt like the universe was conspiring for you to spite you?

So, what draws me to an idea is that cool new take. What if I took that but then did this? What if I did a hero’s journey but turns out to be a heroine’s journey, like I did with The Flight Risk? Or what if I take this story but then set it in a weird setting? Something like that.

What book or piece of sapphic media has had the biggest impact on you as a writer and/or as a person?

Okay, so I have two answers to this. The first is blanket Nina LaCour. There wasn’t a ton of queer women writing queer characters when I was in my early teens, early twenties. But Nina LaCour was. She writes these beautiful, slow in a good way, lyrical novels. My favorite novel of hers, We Are Okay, takes place in a dorm room over a weekend but it unveils this gorgeous story. She writes interior life well. Her adult debut, Yerba Buena, is this really beautiful piece of work that is stretched over time. It’s so uniquely queer but is also about just being a person in the world. Her stuff, in terms of particularly sapphic media, has maybe had more impact on me as a writer or a person than anything.

Stepping away from writing, I fell in love with Critical Role during the pandemic. In campaign 2, there is this romance between two of the characters, Beau and Yasha. The way that whole thing unveiled itself and the way they worked it out. I was obsessed with it and have spent so much time trying to untangle why it worked when it shouldn’t have worked. I’m obsessed with it to my bones. I don’t think it’s had that big of an impact on me as a writer, but as a thinking and as a person who tries to understand and unpack media, I have spent so much time going, “Why is this working? On paper this is wild, but it’s so emotionally resonant.”

As a person, that part has been harder for me because I feel like, broadly, the sapphic lit movement that came out of the pandemic has been most influential. All of these people, not just in the romance space, but in general are writing truly gorgeous queer and brave stories. I feel like people went into holes in the pandemic and were like, “It’s all burning down anyways, I’m going to tell my truth.” Just that has made me a braver story teller, to see all of these people telling brave queer stories. For example, with Model Home, River Solomon wrote something remarkable and weird with that book. What JJ Arias is doing in sapphic romance is unbelievable. All of these people telling brave, truly queer stories is so empowering to me.

Absolutely. People just deciding to go for it.

Yeah! Outside of the sapphic spaces, it would be a toss up between Pat Conroy’s The Prince of Tides or late 90s/early 2000s romance novels as a genre. Both of those are people taking big, gorgeous, truly weird swings. If I say some of the plotlines from some of those romances that I’ve loved out loud, people would be like, “What are you talking about?” It just shows the beauty of romance as a genre that I fell in love with. You can do weird, dark, horrible things because you know it’s going to be a happily ever after. You can tackle really big, dark things and I love that.

With Pat Conroy, it’s also a wild story. It’s about mental illness. It’s so dark and so beautiful.

All of that to me is why I’m so excited about the current sapphic writing boom because it’s a lot of people writing true things. Even if it’s a wild premise, it’s so deeply embedded in truth that it ends up being pulled off.

What is currently exciting you about sapphic lit in general?

There are a couple of things that are. Sapphic literary fiction has never been better and that is exciting. However, the boom and the excellence of independent and self-published sapphic romance that happened really in the last year. Again, shoutout to JJ Arias. Ruby Landers coming onto the scene. [Milena] McKay. Haley [Cass], Monica [McCallan], Bryce Oakley, all of these people. As they are writing deeper into their oeuvre, they’re just getting so good. It’s so fun to see.

It’s true of the queer experience. The best of queer writing is in the independent space, the small press space, the self-published space. And that’s exciting to me because it’s rewriting the narrative on gatekeepers. It’s another instance of queer people being like, “You don’t understand what we’re doing with our literature. We’re going to find a place to do it and now we have the tools and the resources and the background to do it at the highest level.” You just can’t deny it when you’re at queer bookish events and you’re seeing the lines at the tables for the indie authors and self-published authors being way longer than those for the trad published authors. It’s just beautiful. We’re creating our own world.

Yeah, it’s very much “we don’t need gatekeeping publishers to do it because we’re doing it ourselves.

That and small presses being run by queer people who get queer literature. It’s so huge. A lot of time trad published romance novels, respectfully, read like het romance novels that just happen to have two ladies involved. Or two men involved. And then they wonder why they’re not reaching a bigger queer audience or you get comments that it didn’t read authentically. A lot of times it’s not the author’s fault, it’s in the editing and the marketing.

What is currently exciting you about your own writing?

A couple of things. One, I had a pretty serious mental health episode and that plus all the medication for it really quieted my creativity for basically a little over a year. Now that I’m feeling myself, a little more healthy, more connected to my body, I feel like I’m making better art than I’ve ever made, more authentic art than I’ve ever made. So that’s really exciting. Also, I’m working on a few projects that I just think are so fun and weird in the best ways. The more fun and weird a concept is, the more psyched I am about it. So that’s really exciting.

Also, I’m getting to read so much great work that it makes me excited to go to the keyboard everyday. When you’re reading great stuff it makes you want to sit your ass down and write. Or watching great stuff.

What is one piece of non-sapphic media you would want to make a sapphic version of?

I have two answers to this. I’m not a TV person but if I could do a sapphic version of One Tree Hill, the way I would do sapphic One Tree Hill. Chef’s kiss.

If you’re talking about something that I’d love to write the book of, I really am into Authurian legend. I would love to do a sapphic take on Arthur. I wouldn’t want it to be a direct legendborne or Mists of Avon style, I’m not looking to do that. I would love to explore those exact themes and those exact relationship dynamics and some of that stuff from a sapphic point of view. I think that would be really rad. So, that’s the one I’ve been thinking about a lot lately.

If you had to choose one, and based on some of your responses I’ll give you two or three, books to introduce sapphic literature to a newcomer, what would you pick?

Perfect, because I can’t choose just one. Ever.

If they are a fanfic person, if they love fanfic, you have to go Those Who Wait (by Haley Cass). It’s a mega hit for a reason and I think it is a really beautiful introduction to the world of sapphic romance. Because it is adapted from a fanfic and because Haley Cass is a master and that specific feeling, it gives you what you’re looking for if you're a fanfiction person in a really cool way.

If you’re someone who loves romance to your bones like I am, I want you to read Destination You by JJ Arias. It’s so good. Chapter 18, you’re welcome. Both Destination You and Those Who Wait have incredible phone/video sex scenes that are widely good. They feel modern in a cool way. If you love romance, you’re going to love Destination You and it’s going to introduce you to a lot of what makes sapphic romance special.

If you’re a YA reader or you’re younger and you want to get into sapphic lit, Jennifer Dugan has some great books. My personal favorite is Some Girls Do. It’s one of my favorite sapphic stories of all time. I love it.

I just read that a couple months ago and was like, “Holy shit, this is good!”

It rules. And Jennifer Dugan has some adult romance and she’s got a bunch of YA titles that are great. Her latest, Playing for Keeps, was also really good and really sweet, but Some Girls Do is just special.

So, those would be my three. Bonus rec: A Sharp and Endless Need by Mac Crane is a literary fiction novel that’s set in an out girl’s senior year of high school. It’s real literary, it’s a love story, it’s about basketball and in some ways about transness in a cool way. So I do recommend that if you’re a big literary fan.

Is there anything you’re currently working on that you’re really excited about?

There’s a few things that I’m working on that I’m excited about. The thing right now that I’m most excited about is that I have the great honor of Bywater publishing my next novel next summer. I’m really, truly thrilled about it. I’m really excited about that book. It’s my first true romance novel! I did it! We’re all excited and thrilled!

Really what I’m exploring with that book that’s making me super excited is the idea of the ways in which we must be our authentic selves to be loved and how hard it can be to be authentically you. Also, some of it is the way that, as someone who’s gone through a mental health journey, sometimes people with mental health issues are infantilized, their needs for human connection or their needs for love that are just like anyone else’s are fetishized, are made smaller, made to seem not important, or that they can’t handle it. I also wanted to explore that a little bit, how all people need love and connection and having a diagnosis or an incident doesn’t change who you are.

I’m excited about it. Excited to work with Bywater. Really excited to not have to create a cover or find someone to create a cover. Cath Grace did amazing things with The Flight Risk but wow, self-publishing is just, it’s great if you’re detail-oriented but I am not.

What do you hope to see more of in sapphic lit in the future?

Deeply and authentically queer stories across the spectrum. I want to see people braver in writing trans characters. I want to see people braver in writing queer people. I want to see people braver in writing queer joy. Oftentimes you read these books and it’s like characters are almost apologetic for their happily ever after and I don’t want any more of that.

I’m also really excited to see this queer art as resistance. It’s this idea of, “you’re trying to ban our books, you’re trying to make us smaller, you’re trying to take away our rights, and all we’re going to do is get louder and more authentically us and write queerer stories.” All of those things.

That’s what I’m really excited about, this idea of doubling down on authenticity.

Alex Green is just a normal girl living in 1950s America with her mom and dad. She loves her family and her aunt Marla and cousin Beatrice. Everything in her life changes, though, when the Mass Dragoning happens. One day in 1955, hundreds of thousands of women, including her aunt Marla, turn into dragons and take to the skies. Now, Alex has a sister Beatrice, her aunt never existed, and all of society acts as if the entire event never happened and that dragons are not real. The government cracks down on scientists investigating the event, schools are barred from teaching students about it, and Alex’s own mother refuses to acknowledge it, going so far as to punish Alex and her cousin (sister) for any mention of the word dragon. As Alex grows up and the evidence of dragons continues to mount, she will have to confront the truth that she and the entire country have worked so hard to repress.

When Women Were Dragons is a deeply personal exploration of feminist themes that are just as important now as they were in the time in which the story takes place. By telling the story through Alex’s memoir, we get an up close perspective on the pain, anger, and trauma caused when society insists on ignoring the truth and keeping women small and in their place. There are so many moments in which you feel terrible for Alex and what she is having to go through. It’s painful to watch her independent spirit get crushed under the weight of denial and the way she is treated because she is a woman. It hurts to see her become her mother, the very thing she wanted to rebel against, because that role is thrust upon her. The book also does a good job exploring how hard it is to deprogram yourself when confronted with the truth that you’ve had to bury for so long. Because we get to see all of these things happen through Alex’s perspective and get to see her comment on them, these ideas shine through in a very real and resonant way. The line “there is freedom in forgetting”, something that Alex says to herself time and time again and eventually has to unpack, will stick with me for a while.

That being said, there are issues with the book that stopped me from truly loving it. The book leaves a lot of interesting questions surrounding dragoning completely unanswered. The reason that women change into dragons and why it happens at certain times is left mostly to vague speculation. It could be the case that for each woman the reason is different, but it’s still frustrating that the book doesn’t explore this notion further. Other questions like why Alex never turned and why the dragons left and then eventually came back are also left unanswered, leaving me frustrated. I just think so much more could have been done with the premise of “women turn into dragons” than what we were given here.

For all of its powerful messages and deeply resonant moments, the story does get bogged down at times by its slow pace. There are entire chapters that feel like they accomplish nothing or are simply repeating concepts that were already well covered. This ends up lessening the impact of some of the more emotionally gut-punchy moments near the end of the story. It also made the book feel like a padded out short story or novella rather than a fully-fleshed out novel.

All that being said, I still mostly enjoyed my time with When Women Were Dragons and think it does a decent job exploring timely and important themes that deserve attention. I still think that it's a good book and that there are readers out there who will love it. I also commend the author for being explicit in the inclusion of queer and transgender women. Alex and several supporting characters are sapphic and it is mentioned multiple times that AMAB transgender people also turn into dragons. In fact, it’s completely reasonable to read this as a queer story and that the women change into dragons because they are queer and want to live their lives as such (although this is undercut by the fact that Alex, an out lesbian, never feels the call to change). I just wish the story was either a little shorter or faster paced and delved deeper into the magic/science of its premise.

In the year 2041, the entire crew of the Providence I spacecraft, a state-of-the-art space ship fueled by dark matter, vanished without a trace right as the ship was supposed to launch them on their 7-year journey to Proxima Centauri B. 20 years later, Cleo McQueary and her three lifelong friends break into the empty ship in the hopes of figuring out what went wrong on that fateful day. They have no intention of stealing the ship, but that’s exactly what happens when Cleo touches the engine and the ship launches them into space. They are also joined on their one-way, 7 year journey to a new world by the ship’s holographic AI who looks and acts like the ship’s missing captain, Wilhelmina “Billie” Lucas. As days turn to weeks and the laws of physics get weird, Cleo, her friends, and Billie have to figure out what happened on that fateful day, what caused their current predicament, and what parts they may yet have to play in a cosmic battle for survival. For Cleo and Billie, they also have to learn to manage their growing and deepening feelings for one another, something neither woman is prepared for.

The Stars Too Fondly does a great job in giving its reader everything they could want in a science fiction story about people exploring the great unknown, even if those people happen to be doing so accidentally. From the outset, it pulls you in with two intriguing mysteries: what happened to the crew of Proxima I and why are Cleo and her friends stuck on the ship. As the story progresses, it slowly doles out answers that are mind-blowing while also opening up new mysteries to be solved. It all leads to a thrilling and climatic third act that had me on the edge of my seat as our intrepid cast reached their final destination and the answers to all their questions. The pacing of the story was also great and felt very cinematic. Emily Hamilton did such a good job making sure that crucial character moments had their space to breathe while also ensuring that more exciting moments were well set up and delivered on their pulse-pounding potential.

From the very first page, I couldn’t help but fall in love with Cleo and her little queer found family. Cleo, Kaleisha, Abe, and Ros are really fun characters that felt unique and important. Their reactions to their journey and what happens on it are all distinct and fit with who they are as characters. I also loved the dynamic between them all. These four queer people have known each other since they were kids and that fact really shines through in how they interact with one another. The way they poke fun at each other, the way they argue with each other, and the way they take care of each other really showcases how much they love each other and highlights the theme of found family love so very well. As a reader, you can’t help but care about this group, which of course heightens the tension when danger rears its ugly head.

The romance between Cleo and Billie was also really well done. Their playful and sarcastic banter at the beginning is so fun and watching it shift over the course of the book into something deeper and more caring was a treat. I also liked how Emily worked with the concept of Billie being a hologram and its implications. Cleo’s struggle with the concept of falling in love with a woman she can’t touch and Billie’s struggle with the possibility of Cleo leaving the ship adds some great romantic tension between the two that ends up getting resolved in such a sweet and touching way.

The themes of power of love and trust, both between friends and lovers, was one that came through really well and I loved it. I love science fiction stories that don’t rely on a character’s cleverness or strength to win the day, but rather human love, trust, and kindness. The Stars Too Fondly channels so many of these kinds of stories beautifully. The only way Cleo, the crew, and Billie survive their trip is through their love for each other and the trust that they have in one another. The only way they defeat the evil villain (yes, there is one and it will both not shock you and totally shock you) through loving one another, being there for one another, and trusting in one another.

The Stars Too Fondly is a funny and touching story about the cosmic power of love written by a lover of science fiction for lovers of science fiction. More than that, though, it’s a story that any romance fan or fan of found family stories will enjoy.

Newly out elite track star Morgan Matthews is hoping for a fresh start at a new school after her previous one kicked her out for being a lesbian. Sure, she is currently suing her former school and isn’t allowed to participate on the track team yet, but she’s hopeful that this new school will give her everything she needs. On her first day, though, she makes the mistake of putting her hands on Ruby Thompson’s beloved 1970 Ford Torino. When Ruby isn’t working on cars, she’s competing in local beauty pageants to make her overbearing mom happy. While the two girls are drawn to each other immediately and start developing feelings for one another, there’s one major issue: Morgan doesn’t want to hide their relationship, but Ruby isn’t ready to come out.

I really enjoyed Some Girls Do. For starters, I liked both Ruby and Morgan and felt like they were really well-developed characters. Both of them and their stories were grounded in their past experiences with their queerness. Morgan is so outspoken and so steadfast in wanting to be out and proud because she has spent the better part of a year fighting for her right to be so. The pressure to hide her queerness came from society, so society became the thing she fought against. For Ruby, her queerness has been hidden and her self-worth destroyed because of her demanding mother. Her entire life has been about being the person her mother wants. So, her struggle to accept that she is queer and her reluctance to be out makes absolute sense and makes her arc all the more impactful and important.

I also found both Ruby and Morgan very relatable, in part due to Dugan’s fantastic writing. Reading Morgan’s inner monologue, I could see my newly-out self having a lot of the same emotions and reactions to things. Her fierceness and her determination felt incredibly real. I also empathized with Ruby so much when reading her inner monologue. While my experience was not the same as hers, I remember having those same thoughts of worthlessness and self-doubt as I struggled to find myself pre-transition.

Some Girls Do succeeds in telling an earnest and heartfelt story that balances both hope and strife very well. I loved the way that Morgan and Ruby’s multiple meet-cutes were handled with a very obvious “they annoy each other, but they also are so attracted to each other” vibe. The good moments Ruby and Morgan have together, both before they start dating and after, are so sweet. I felt such a sense of hope for these two kids during those moments. I especially enjoyed their first date and how freaking cute Ruby was the entire time trying to make sure it was absolutely perfect.

At the same time, Dugan leaves little hints and reminders throughout those better times that there are still major issues between Ruby and Morgan. Morgan knows who she is and wants to be out about their relationship while Ruby struggles with her identity and is not at all ready for coming out. I like how this thread was handled and the ways in which both girls really struggled in helping each other see their perspective. Namely, I liked that this disagreement between Ruby and Morgan was not left for one massive confrontation, but instead lots of little ones that cropped up over and over again. Each time it did, it led to some painful conversations that were tough to read. It made their story feel much more realistic and highlighted the fact that big issues like these take time and cannot be solved overnight.

Lastly, I think the overall message of the story resonated with me and feels like an important one that any queer person could benefit from. Some Girls Do is a good reminder that queerness is messy and that each and every queer person’s journey is unique. Forcing other queer people to be just like us gets us nowhere; instead, what’s needed is empathy and assistance. Our community and our own selves are all the better when we try to understand one another and give each other the necessary space and time. I also loved the message in Ruby’s story that accepting your queerness may be frightening and that some people may not accept it, but there are plenty of people that will. And, at the end of the day, it is so worth it.

All in all, I really enjoyed my time with Some Girls Do. It’s a wonderfully sweet and earnest story of two girls falling in love in spite of what others may say. It’s a story that showcases the importance of understanding that every queer person’s journey is different and that, if you’re willing to listen and wait, we all end up right where we need to be.