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The Queering
A 70-year-old woman with long, thick hair, more brown than gray, named Taylor Baird MacKenzie writes award-winning romances from a town in Alaska. Although she had great talent, Taylor hides behind the name of another character because her books deal with issues related to lesbian liberation and her city, Clear, is made up of intolerant and prejudiced residents. During Taylor’s process of revealing herself to the world, through The Queering, we get to know her story and several characters that are capable of stirring all kinds of emotions in the reader.
Brooke Skipstone very wisely casts doubt on the veracity of the story in question. The author blends reality with fiction. One of the best examples of this is that she uses her own name as the alias of Taylor Baird. Another point is the poetic way in which Skipstone inserts another book during the narrative. It’s like reading two in one. This is a thought-provoking story that deals with some tough but necessary topics. However, it can be triggering to people who have suffered homophobic attacks. The book is intense and during some episodes I felt a great sadness for the inability to do something about it. But this is the world we live in, and Brooke Skipstone does a fantastic job of reflecting that reality in the story.
The Queering is a unique story that carries a powerful message. If LGBTQ+ literature truly has the power to generate acceptance and liberation, then readers need to ensure that it is increasingly widespread. Everyone can and should have the right to be who they naturally are. This is a must read for anyone who is willing to open their eyes and live in someone else’s shoes for a while. I would like to end this review by borrowing a few words used by Brooke Skipstone on one of the pages to make a genuine wish: that we can live our lives feeling embraced by love, buoyed by daily laughter, and fully engaged with life.
Pages: 344 | ASIN: B0BJJ4LNPD
History Was On My Side
Loving Artemis follows the lives of women who were trying to figure out who they were at a time when being LGBTQ+ was not accepted. What was the inspiration for the setup of your story?
When I wrote Loving Artemis, it was more than seven years ago. I didn’t know it at the time but now when I look back, I see that I spent a lot of time trying to make sense of the background that I fled from. My novel, Loving Artemis, an endearing tale of revolution, love and marriage (published in 2022 by Thorned Heart Press) was the culmination of that process.
What character did you enjoy writing for? Was there one that was more challenging to write for?
Loving Artemis is fiction, but the story is based on my own experience and that of other girls who were actual people. As I told a friend, I probably gave the girls better endings than they actually had. Because the characters were based on actual people, I don’t remember it being difficult to write any of the characters. The thing that was the most difficult was getting all the history straight, so to speak. Like most writers, I tend to be more right-brained. So I really had to make sure that all the dates and facts of history were accurate. I did live through that history. Like my main character Grace (who I identified most with even though the writing was fiction, and her character was a composite), I married my partner after we were together for more than two decades.
What were some themes that were important for you to explore in this book?
In a broad sense, I explored the idea of being yourself as a young person amid a sea of conformity and how to survive. In the process, I explored the theme of growing up as young lesbians in the era where it was still “the love that dare not speak its name,” meaning that being yourself was forbidden. Not everyone got out alive.
A historian friend commented to me that I documented an important piece of history leading up to marriage equality. That history is still with us. I was amazed in 2015 when same-sex marriage was ruled by the Supreme Court of the United States to be legal nationwide.
And I was amazed today when I learned that “The Respect For Marriage Act” (protecting the right to same-sex and interracial marriage nationwide in the U.S.) was passed by the House and is expected to be signed into law by U.S. President Joe Biden.
One of the themes that I didn’t think about until after the final edit of the book was empowerment. I had such a hard time growing up (like one of my main characters, Grace, I fled from my working-class conventional background) that I actually dreaded going back and editing the book. When I was through the editing process, I actually felt like I had been more empowered than I thought. Actually, I felt a little victorious. Like Grace, I had escaped into my life and history was on my side.
What is the next book that you are working on and when will it be available?
The novel I just finished writing and am still revising is a little different. It features a talking, pregnant whale telling her story—that of the beauty and importance of the sea which is her home and her process of working through her knowledge of history (especially, the history of humans hunting whales) and learning to trust some humans whose help she needs.
I tend to have a novel published every two years. Before Loving Artemis was published in 2022, my novel The Unicorn, The Mystery was published in 2020 by Adelaide Books. So I’m hoping my new novel will be published by 2024.
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Meanwhile, Grace, running from her past, starts a life with Thalia. At a pride parade, Grace spots someone who reminds her of Artemis, who she was briefly involved with in her youth. Old feelings are rekindled. A lifetime of rejection, abandonment, and fleeing rears its head. Now she must come to terms with her past, put her relationship with Artemis to rest–or risk losing everything.
Artemis and Grace embark on a journey of revolution, love, and marriage and discover that love finds us when we least expect it.
Get On With The Business Of Living
Maiden Voyage follows the twins as their guardian tries to keep them safe among Marcela’s gender affirming surgery and Amadeus’s future in Alaska’s fishing industry. What was the inspiration for the setup of your story?
Maiden Voyage, the third book in the COMFREY, WYOMING series, finds the twins standing on the cusp of adulthood. At last Marcela Crow has the body she has been seeking since early childhood. Amadeus has always been his sister’s protector and advocate, but after her surgery he feels the loss of the little boy he learned to walk with and talk with—the little boy who once looked so very much like him. Unsure of the role he now plays in Marcela’s life, disillusioned with college and struggling with the illness that claimed his mother, Amadeus leaves Wyoming and family and strikes out on his own.
For Marcela’s story, I relied heavily on a family friend, assigned female at birth, who advocated for his authentic self from a very young age. Like Marcela, he had the support of a loving family, but it couldn’t protect him from painful bullying in school. He is now a successful young man living in another part of the country, where he can maintain his privacy and get on with the business of living. His experience in school was why I deemed it crucial for Heidi, the twins’ guardian, to move the family to Comfrey, where no one would know the children were born identical, and where Marcela would be accepted as a girl.
I had rich sources of experience to call upon for Amadeus’s journey north and his immersion in Alaska’s fishing industry. A woman who travels the Alaskan Canadian highway annually with her dog shared pictures, diaries and anecdotes of her trips with me. Another person, who has worked on fishing boats in Bristol Bay and the Bering Sea for years, spent many hours sharing his experiences and answering my questions. I was so grateful I named my fishing captain after him.
I am also indebted to a college friend, who witnessed and described the gruesome accident that ended the life of one of my characters at sea. For much of his career, my friend worked as a marine scientist monitoring fishing vessels in Alaskan and Arctic waters. He often worked with Inuit observers and remains a passionate advocate for Indigenous fishing rights.
Marcela and Amadeus are intriguing and well-defined characters. What were some driving ideals behind your character’s development?
As babies, the twins’ physical appearance, personalities and precocity were derived from a very special little boy, who joined our family for a time. He is still at the edge of my consciousness when I write about the twins, but his influence has waned as the twins have matured and taken on lives of their own.
Despite being born physically identical, Amadeus and Marcela are essentially yin and yang, opposite but interconnected forces bound by a fierce loyalty. Where Marcela is academic, grounded and artistic, Amadeus is impulsive, competitive and intimately connected to the natural world.
What were some themes that were important for you to explore in this book?
People who can communicate with the dead have always intrigued me. Three very different characters in my series maintain strong ties with departed loved ones. Heidi, the twins’ guardian, continues to commune with her deceased child. Beppe, an Italian winemaker and one of the twins’ honorary uncles, hears his grandfather’s voice as he walks his vineyards at dusk. Amadeus is aware of his mother, Nara, in the wind and the sea.
Despite my dive into metaphysics, however, a scientific current thrums in the background of my books, the legacy of my years of teaching science. In Maiden Voyage, that current includes the genetics of Sphynx cats, the mating rituals of elk and the effect of climate change on the distribution of fish in Arctic waters.
Another theme in Maiden Voyage is the importance of representation—LBGTQ representation, and racial representation. I am blessed to be part of a racially and gender diverse family. I hope my complex and relatable characters capture readers who may be unfamiliar with the LBGTQ community. Heidi’s cousin, Karl, and his Italian husband, Beppe, have provided her with emotional support for years. They are the strong, loyal men she turned to when she lost her baby to genetic disease in Birds of a Feather, the first book of the series. In Maiden Voyage, Karl comes to San Francisco to support Heidi after Marcela’s surgery. Beppe is the person Amadeus seeks for comfort after he suffers trauma at sea.
My trans character was introduced in the series as a young child, to make her less threatening to those who believe they have never met a transgender person. I wanted readers to bond with Marcela. I wanted them to not merely tolerate her, but to truly appreciate her, her wit, her talent and her integrity.
To peel back a layer of white privilege, I included a young black man in Maiden Voyage to illustrate the danger and stress of driving while black. My sons are black, my nephews are black, and on my most recent trip to Wyoming for research, I drove with a black friend. The hyper-scrutiny is real, and the hyper-vigilance a person feels under that scrutiny is exhausting. My black character drives from San Francisco to Wyoming alone, always on edge, always with a feeling of dread that he’ll disappear into what he perceives as a wasteland, and never be heard of again.
What is the next book that you are working on and when will it be available?
Black Sheep, Black Sheep, Book Four of the COMFREY, WYOMING series, will be released in 2023. People from Pennsylvania, California and the Philippines join the citizens of Comfrey, and at long last, that endangered and highly venomous Midget Faded Rattlesnake alluded to in the first three books, has a significant part to play.
Author Links: GoodReads | Website
A richly diverse cast, including a Shakespeare-quoting street basketball player and a Chinese purveyor of pu-erh tea, joins characters already beloved by readers of the series in this transcendent tale of nontraditional family and steadfast friends.
Making Sense Of The Insanity Of Moralities
Re-birth tells the compelling story of Anessa’s reincarnation in the intriguing fantasy world of Anfang. What was the inspiration for the setup to your story?
I’ve been a fan of Mythology of almost every variety. As a child I was always intrigued by Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland and being pulled through to a new world.
Anessa is an intriguing and well-developed character. What were some driving ideals behind your character’s development?
Anessa is a logical view of what might happen to a western person should they be taken at the point of their death and placed on a new planet through divine intervention. She’s lost, confused, and must navigate a new world alone, forging new bonds, making sense of the insanity of moralities that are different from what knew she on Earth.
What were some themes that were important for you to explore in this book?
Our world is on the precipice of some vital changes to personal rights. Anfang represents an exploration of an ideal, and in future volumes I may tinker with how easily it can crumble.
The exception to this question is nobles using marriages to form bonds between families as chess pieces, but that is a component of medieval societies, not of a theme I wanted to explore.
When and where will your book be available?
Re-Birth will be available November 24, 2022, on Amazon in eBook, Paperback (black and white) and Hardback (full color). The eBook is on sale for $4.99 until 1/1/2023. The sale pricing for the paperback and hardback are beyond my control as I’ve already found out.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BHVG5ZB6 – eBook
https://www.amazon.com/dp/1959098004 – Hardback
https://www.amazon.com/dp/1959098101 – Paperback
Author Links: GoodReads | Twitter | Website
For Anessa, death was just the beginning…
Originally from Earth, she finds herself transported to Anfang with one question:
“How did I die?”
Reborn into a family of wealth, privilege and magic, the expectations placed on her clash with her Earthen sensibilities.
As Anessa grows into her newfound place and power, she struggles with the notions of political marriages, inane rituals, and the awareness that her biggest threat may come from within.
Who do you trust when your first life was stolen by your best friend, and your latest sin is living?
Join Anessa on her debut journey in My Own Mythology — Re-Birth; get yours now!
Be Herself Without Fear
The Perfect Sister follows a young woman who joins a sorority in hopes of starting a new life, only to realize her secrets are not meant to remain hidden. What was the inspiration for the setup to your story?
I have always been inspired by Gossip Girl, and Pretty Little Liars. I wrote a trilogy called High School Queens. I took the girl Bethany from that story and originally put her in college. The story went completely different from her, so I made it its own trilogy.
Tinsley wants nothing more than to leave her past behind her, but her new sisters won’t allow that to be the case. What were some driving ideals behind your character’s development?
I think the biggest character development for her is being able to grow from her mistakes. She did all these things to fit in, and she was starting to do them with Kappa Zeta. She learned to have a backbone and be herself without fear. It was why at the end she stands up for Codi against the Kappa Zeta sisters.
What were some themes that were important for you to explore in this book?
I honestly wanted to explore the themes of forgiveness. People make mistakes all the time, but can you forgive them and yourself for said mistakes. You see both sides of letting go of people’s mistakes and using it for revenge.
What is the next book that you are working on and when will it be available?
My next novel Ride will be out in November. It’s a story of two sisters as they deal with trauma. One of them is a recovering alcoholic, while the other is trying to find her love for music again. It’s inspired by the music of Lana Del Rey.
Author Links: GoodReads | Twitter | Facebook
Tinsley came to Campbell to escape the problems and mistakes of her past. She thought she would have a fresh start, but at Kappa Zeta, there’s not such thing as a fresh start or hidden secrets.
Remember girls, you better keep your secrets close to your chest and make sure none of your sorority sisters have a knife they’re dying to dig into your back.
COMFREY, WYOMING
Maiden Voyage is the final part in the Comfrey, Wyoming saga. It gives readers a look into the lives of twins Amadeus and Marcela who are on the cusp of adulthood, much to the chagrin of their guardian Heidi Crow. Set amongst the backdrop of beautiful and rural Wyoming, we see the twins grow and try to find their place in the world. They are accompanied on this journey by old friends, and new ones they make along the way. With their help, Amadeus and Marcela might just be able to face their past and reach a bright future.
Author Daphne Birkmyer does an amazing job setting the scene with her uniquely observant writing and colorful descriptions. It all comes together beautifully to make the reader feel like they are in Wyoming. Against this exquisite backdrop the author has created a story that captures the difficulty that every family (no matter how typical or different they might be) face in life. Life isn’t a bed of roses for twins Amadeus, Marcela, and Heidi. They have a lot of struggles to overcome, which Birkmyer doesn’t shy away from. I really enjoyed the authenticity in their characters and how grounded their approach is to their problems. This is a story that is infused with emotions and uses its particular voice to tell a compelling story.
The LGBTQIA+ themes and the message of connecting with one’s culture is strong in this final part of the trilogy. Birkmyer thoughtfully tackles the contemporary issues that transgender teens face and perfectly captures how scary it can be for a trans person to enter a romantic relationship.
Maiden Voyage’s is an epic family saga with a large cast of characters. The story is constantly switching points of view. It can become overwhelming and confusing at times if you’re a quick reader, but this serves to give you a holistic view of the story. Comfrey, Wyoming Book Three: Maiden Voyage by Daphne Birkmyer is a fascinating story with compelling characters that explores trans youth, family relationships, and the variety of issues we face growing up.
Pages: 368 | ASIN: B0BC2L5JTT
No Limitations
Gender explores gender roles through two compelling stories that are told in an engaging mix of free verse, form, and rhyme. What inspired you to write these stories?
Who knows where ideas come from when there are no limitations to what you can do with them? A poem, or a plot, seeps into my consciousness unbidden. But there it is. For “Martin/Martina” I pictured a woman of the 11th century dressed in finery and lying in a glass coffin, remembering her past and acutely aware of 21st-century life surrounding her in the chapel where she lies. I place her resting place somewhere in a Mediterranean area, perhaps something like Orta San Giulio, a beautiful lakeside town in the north of Italy. When my husband and I were there, we visited the island out in the lake where in the basilica the remains of San Giulio lie in a glass casket. I extrapolated from that and invented Mother Martina’s glass coffin, gave her a voice, and let her speak, as her past played itself out.
I used to live in Athens, Greece, where I heard about St. Marina, who gave me the idea of Martin/Martina. Marina dressed as a young man and entered a monastery. S/he was accused of fathering a child. That was the inspiration for me to create a story about Martina’s life as a man and father. Near the church of St. Marina in Athens, there is a cliff where pregnant women or women who wanted to be pregnant or did not want to be pregnant or wished for a safe delivery, used to slide down in hopes their prayers would be answered. As Martina lies in her coffin, women pray in a similar manner to her.
At the time we were in Orta, sainthood was being sought for Padre Pio, and his face appeared on the blank exterior wall of a building. That may easily have been considered a miracle. That gave me the idea to have Martin/Martina’s face appear on a wall.
As for the inspiration behind “Aftermath,” I started out with a poem that compared an apocalyptic band of survivors to a beehive. But things changed quickly in my mind, and I invented my own society. I didn’t want a “queen,” though the weavers, or females, as in a real beehive, seemed like the most important of the tripartite group. Builders were asexual beings, and the Fennel Men were the sexual ones, but where the fennel part of it came from, I really don’t know. It just seemed rightly erotic to have a fennel bulb dangling down from the waist of these men.
In today’s world many of us think about the destruction of our planet or at least our way of life. Climate change is going in that direction, as we witness tremendous flooding, wildfires, rising oceans, to name a few of the causes that might be behind a future apocalypse.
What were some challenges you set for yourself as a poet with these stories?
The challenges were the craft of poetry. I knew “Martin/Martina” would be free verse, with Father Ralph providing the occasional contrast with his rhymes. I wanted to make him likable, albeit eccentric.
In “Aftermath,” after writing the introductory poem in terza rima, I just couldn’t stop myself from wanting to rhyme. The story just kept begging me to rhyme. I used all kinds of rhyme schemes in order not to get tied down to anything predictable, and I hope it works.
As for challenges for both stories, I wanted to make them “almost” believable to readers. I want readers to believe that Mother Martina in her glass coffin really is a sentient being whose experience spans a thousand years. I want her story to be moving. I want Martin as father to Dino and friend to Bronwyn to be true. I want metaphor to occur to a reader. When Bronwyn says to Dino, “A father who has nothing of the mother in him is not a real father,” I hope the reader sees how gender should combine in all lives. One could easily say, “Gender Does Not Matter.”
What are some poets or poetry that you feel inspired this collection and you as a writer?
Well, in a small and in no way comparative sense, Dante inspires me a lot, which is why I began “Aftermath” with terza rima. I majored in Italian in college, took lots of Latin in high school and college, and have read quite a few stories in verse, not to mention the books we all grow up with as children.
Cormac McCarthy’s book The Road was not a favorite of mine, and I have to confess I enjoyed parodying it in a sort of book review I wrote some time ago, “The Book Reviewer’s Diary.” But the idea of apocalypse that McCarthy explored is of great interest to me.
Two fiction pieces of verse that drew my attention were Brad Leithauser’s Darlington’s Fall and Vikram Seth’s The Golden Gate. These books prompted me to write my first novella in verse in 2008, Spare Parts.
My favorite poets are, though this is not by any stretch a complete list, nor is it in any order, and who knows if their work has influenced me?: Emily Dickinson, T.S. Eliot, Walt Whitman, Lucille Clifton, Ilya Kaminsky, Hayden Carruth, Ada Limon, Langston Hughes, Carl Sandburg, Ellen Bass, Edward Hirsch, et al.
What is the next book that you are working on and when will it be available?
I am working on a New and Selected. After eight books of poetry and four chapbooks, I would very much like to bring a few poems from each together in the same volume and add some of those I’ve been working on lately.
I just finished a chapbook-length manuscript in verse, The Spare Parts Saga, which is based partly on the U.S. Postal Service, as we know it today. The main character of the chapbook, which is a novella in its own right, is my novella in verse from 2008, Spare Parts.
Author Links: Goodreads | Facebook | Twitter | Website
Anne Harding Woodworth has brought together two novellas in verse that share a look at the role of male and female. In Martin/Martina a young woman dresses as a man, is accused of fathering a child, and as the boy’s father, raises him. In Aftermath, a member of an asexual group-among three survivor groups that have formed after cataclysm has destroyed most of civilization-becomes pregnant.
Two not dissimilar landscapes set the stage for these stories, somewhere in (perhaps) a Mediterranean place of the eleventh century, as well as one of today and of the future. Regardless of time frame, the atmosphere in both novellas lures us into lives of sex, parenting, labor, confusion, and friendship, all in a mixture of free verse, form, and rhyme.
Demon’s Land
Sixteen year old Jude is just trying to get through life while using photography as an outlet. He faces many hardships that a teenager shouldn’t have to face, from his mother leaving to a father who doesn’t understand him. Along with his only friends CeCe and Abel, they are just trying to make it and find their way through life. Jude struggles with telling CeCe how he really feels about her while CeCe tries to help Abel and Jude keep it together. On top of it all Abel has to deal with school bullies because he is gay and considered not normal. How will the three friends overcome the obstacles that life has given them?
Demon’s Land by Sarah Ferguson is an emotionally-charged coming-of-age story that utilizes sharp writing to elevate a contemporary literature story into something that is sentimental but powerful. Jude’s character is dark and brooding. He just wants someone to love him. I found his character to be well-crafted, relatable and endearing. His character gives hope to those who are going through hard times as he channels the same worries that we all have, but the author conveys those emotions in a way that feels sophisticated. I appreciated that CeCe’s character is the voice of reason and she genuinely cared for Abel and Jude. I enjoyed Abel’s character because he is not ashamed of being gay and Jude accepts him for who he is. This makes the novel a fantastically uplifting LGBT novel that feels authentic.
Fergusons is a fantastic storyteller with impactful writing. Her way with writing tells so much in such a short read that I didn’t have questions even though the ending leaves the reader hanging. There are serious topics that are explored throughout the story, but the author handles it beautifully. I felt the isolation and hopelessness that the characters felt and I was rooting for them the entire time.
Demon’s Land is a heart-felt and inspiring coming-of-age novel. I recommend this book to readers who are looking for a profound young adult story that deals with trauma in a way that feels grounded and poetic.
Pages: 120 | ASIN: 0645355992
