My writing buddy Niamh Murphy is here today! I’m wiggling in my seat as I type this introduction. Niamh is super cool. She penned a lesfic novel about pirates. You can’t get much cooler than that, can you? Her novel Escape to Pirate Island is one of the novels discounted for the Fall in Love sale.

I absolutely love the cover and could stare at it all day…

Oh, sorry. I’m back.

Not only do I love the cover, but I enjoyed the novel. Don’t just take my word for it, though. The Lesbian Review recently posted their thoughts.

Before you jump to the sale page to grab Niamh’s book for only 99 cents, please read her heartfelt guest post.

Why I write LesFic

Inspired by a few other blogs (K’Anne Meinel and Layce Gardner) I have read recently, I wanted to talk about my own reasons for writing lesbian fiction.

When I was fourteen, I started to write a novel.

It was a fantasy novel in which two young women were pulled through a veil into another world and had to work together to find a way home and rescue the young son of one of them. Think Labyrinth but with two protagonists.

I never finished that book.

I thought perhaps it was because studies got in the way, I didn’t know how to write a novel (I still don’t!), or because of a chronic illness that has followed me around since early childhood and forces me to down tools more often than I would like.

But the truth is that I was writing a lesbian romance before I knew what a lesbian romance was. I was writing something I had never seen or read. It was something alien, something out of bounds, and so taboo that it scared me into hiding the book away. I believe I went so far as to burn it.

When I did finally pick up the pen again I wrote a short story with a straight, white, male protagonist. It took four stories before I wrote a female protagonist, and even then, she was still straight.

I was nervous and scared, I wanted people to read my stories and to like them, so I wrote stories that were just like the popular stories I was surrounded by; the stories in books lining the shelves of the library and filling up the schedule of the cinema. I thought the male lead was as fundamental to storytelling as the three-act structure.

It took me far too long to go back and find that simple honesty of a fourteen-year-old writing the book that she wanted. Years later, I am still angry with myself for ever believing that I would be ‘better writer’ if I wrote about a straight male, but I am angrier with the culture that led me to believe it.

I know people talk a lot about ‘marketing strategies’ and appealing to ‘the mainstream’ and these are so important to a working writer. But the ‘mainstream’ won’t widen unless we widen it.

So, I have made a promise to that fourteen-year-old girl, hiding away the pages of her manuscript in fear and shame, that I will only ever write stories that have a lesbian main character.

I will only ever write for her.

MEET THE AUTHOR

Niamh Murphy is a historian and novelist specialising in romantic lesbian fiction. She is passionate about experimenting with different genres and has a fondness for romantic action and adventure.

She has written stories with vampires, werewolves, elves, magic, knights, sorceresses, and witches as well as contemporary and humorous stories, but always with a lesbian protagonist and a romantic element to the tale.

Website / Twitter / Instagram/ Amazon 

Don’t forget, Niamh’s novel Escape to Pirate Island is currently on sale for 99 cents.

Also, did you know you could get one of her books for free by signing up for her newsletter? Click on the image for details.

Thanks so much Niamh for stopping by today!

I hope everyone has a wonderful weekend.

Happy reading.