Author Spotlight - Rien Gray

Rien Gray, author of Her Wolf in the Wild, brings a fascinating guest post about the history of lesbian mystery novels! Her Wolf in the Wild is a paranormal romance that our members are current reading.

Like a lot of F/F readers, I struggled finding books with sapphic protagonists when I was younger, and held onto every book I could find like it was worth its weight in gold. So when I found out about the history of lesbian mystery novels, I was shocked to find out that hundreds of them had been published since the 1970s, often distributed through mailing services, magazines, and independent feminist presses like Naiad.

Also known as lesbian detective fiction, these books follow, you guessed it, lesbian detectives. Despite the name, plenty of characters in these novels are also bisexual or unlabeled but clearly attracted to women, and the gamut of the queer community tends to appear as the mysteries in question progress. 

The genre appears to have started with A Reason to Kill by Eve Zaremba in 1978 with her middle-aged lesbian private investigator Helen Keremos. Mary Wings joined soon after with a butch protagonist named Emma Victor, a private eye. Nikki Baker became the first Black writer of lesbian mysteries with In the Game, a series that follows financial analyst and burgeoning sleuth Virginia Kelly. And there are dozens and dozens more.

Most of these authors wrote substantial series, following the same protagonists for years, taking their detectives through new jobs, heartbreaks, and self-discovery with each case. It’s worth noting that a lot of these characters are cops, but what I found interesting about that in the novels I read was how deeply the authors engaged with what that means when a protagonist is both queer and a member of law enforcement, and how often that clashed, especially in decades-old books where gay bars being raided was in recent memory.

If you want to know more about the genre, Megan Casey wrote The Lesbian Detective Novel, which features a database of every fitting writer and title the author could find, as well as several essays on the books in question.

Happy Itch Creator Day!

Get Jill O Lantern Chapters 1 & 2 for just 2.99! Pick up this queer, time bending, murder mystery now! https://itch.io/s/110238/jill-o-lantern-bundle

a lesbian, moments before disaster

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Lachesis or Atropos is a horror-mystery yuri visual novel with 4 major endings and lots of bad ends. Kiss girls! And find all the ways you can die...!

@ Steam || itch io

Spectacle

By Ro Salarian (FKA Megan Rose Gedris)

--BOOK ONE--

Pragmatic engineer Anna works as a psychic in the Samson Brothers Circus, but she doesn't believe in anything supernatural—until her twin sister Kat is murdered and comes back as a very demanding ghost. Sharing a room with her sister was hard, but now they're sharing a body while trying to identify the killer. With few leads, a troupe full of secretive folk, and strange paranormal occurrences popping up around the circus, solving the case seems near impossible. But the murderer in their midst may be the least of their problems...

--BOOK TWO--

A murder is tough thing to solve, even without temperamental performers, supernatural occurrences, and the ghost of the victim giving commentary. But as Kat's only link to the living world, it's up to scientifically-minded Anna to figure out who killed her sister—before any more murders rock the small traveling community. Yet as she gets closer to finding a lead, even more unbelievable events obscure the truth: roustabouts start sprouting horns, performers grow forked tongues, and a demon visits Anna's sleep at night. Does Kat know more than she's letting on? And can Anna keep the circus—let alone herself—safe?

--BOOK THREE--

From fake psychic to true believer, circus performer Anna finds herself dealing with the supernatural more and more, and is determined to use her growing powers to confront her sister's murderer. Has she finally figured out whodunit, and can she prove it before a demon does her in? 

--BOOK FOUR--

Anna's supernatural powers are increasing, but so is her worry that they come from a terrifying source. Everyone in the circus has developed mutations, and they're dropping like flies. Anna thinks she's found a cure, but a smooth talking faith healer insists he can save everyone... for a fee. Can she fix things before anyone else dies?

--BOOK FIVE--

At long last, sideshow performer Anna comes face-to-face with her sister's killer, and she is not in a forgiving mood. But there's a far more sinister enemy behind everything; one Anna and her friends might not be able to beat, one they might not even be able to reach. Only Anna is determined and ready for a confrontation, while everyone else is eager to put it all behind them.

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A supernatural murder-mystery with a canon Aro-Ace protagonist in Anna. The cast is full of a wide variety of misfits with their many quirks and talents. The setting of a circus troupe / freak show it really interesting. I don’t wanna go into details because it’s fun to read an experience the details as they come.

The Novel I Have Just About Finished:

Common Tongue

- WLW

- A sort of cosy high fantasy with a dash of horror

- Black cat nerd x golden retriever jock

- An isolated character dragged kicking and screaming into a found family

- Mysterious monsters

- Protag is a wizard accountant who DOES NOT wish to go on an adventure, and yet

- Primarily female and enby cast

- Somewhat DND style adventure (a wizard, two barbarians, and a cleric walk into a haunted forest... Protag is fairly certain she IS the punchline somehow)

- Awkward but fluffy romance

- Protag is a bit cringefail, but we love her for it

- A bit of a discworld/Terry Pratchett influence

- A bit of a TJ Klune influence

- ~45,000+ words right now, I think this one will be on the shorter side

- Currently working on the sequel as well, because I have no self control and I got excited

oooh you wanna read misericorde sooo bad you wanna read a murder mystery set in an abbey in 1482 and there might be ghosts oooOOOO

The Dawn of Eternal Winter is out!

Get my novel via the link in my bio

Saint Petersburg, 1905. Amid civil unrest, Margarita boards the train to Paris, escaping the claws of the Russian Empire's ruthless regime. At war with its neighbours, her homeland collapses, leaving millions of broken lives in its wake. Recounting her past to the woman who saved her, Rita takes the readers to the icy gates of Siberia, the colonnade of St. Isaac's Cathedral, and the stage of the Mariinsky Theatre. The Dawn of Eternal Winter is the debut novel by a Russian-Canadian writer, Veronika Sizova. A daring psychological thriller with romance, fantasy, and suspense, this text synthesizes past and present, beauty and terror, insurgence and war. Set in a fictionalized version of pre-revolutionary Saint Petersburg, this tale of loss, grief, and betrayal becomes a window into the cold authoritarian world where love and freedom are against the law, but the fire of hope burns.

P.S. If you love lesbian historical fiction, you won't be disappointed!

BALLYHOO.

A new queer-noir graphic novel by Teddie Bernard.

Out now.

Tysm for the tag @creatrackers ! :) sorry this is so late! I feel like everyone has done this by now…… open tag?

Nano Day 3

I'm not quite sure if this is 100% the way I want to go with everything, but I've elected to just drabble on this until I'm satisfied! The general plot major strokes are already decided so it's just about filling out everything in writing!

It had been a few weeks since then; Nadya’s condition had gotten bad again, and Blanche knew what was coming – she was going to sneak out. As such, she decided to spy on her to figure out where she was going. Was it just another ploy to gather evidence? Or was she just making up an excuse to spy on her out of a sense of unbound curiosity? No one could know, and Blanche refused to admit it to herself. The result was quite shocking. She had elected to hide in the shadows, using the vampire’s sneaky nature, to see where Nadya was going; she knew that the girl couldn’t possibly be strutting out the front door, so it had to be the window. The person who came out from the window was nothing like the Nadya that Blanche would lay her eyes on daily, but her long hair, her slender fingers, it was obvious – that was her. She wore her hair down, and donned men’s clothes from head to toe. It looked like a stage costume – of a dastardly thief, or perhaps similarly rogue-ish character, skulking about the night in a dark coat. She was fast on her feet, soon disappearing into the darkness. Blanche decided she had seen enough for the night – perhaps some other time, she could follow along to see where she went, but at the moment, it simply wasn’t necessary. Overcome with curiosity, she snuck into Nadya’s room to look, but nothing jumped out at her; she must’ve been hiding the costume somewhere in here, but aside from that, nothing else caught her attention. She left the room behind, opting to spend the rest of the evening in her own bedroom. Blanche stared listlessly out of her window, sitting in complete darkness; she waited. And waited. Hours passed, the night getting ever deeper; she had a great view of the front of the garden near Nadya’s window. And without fault, just as she had left, Nadya returned in the dead of night, clear spring in her step, effortlessly moving past the garden walls and into the mansion. A drop of blood running down her chin; the sight filled Blanche with a sense of unfulfillment; how nice wouldn’t it have been if it had been her at the receiving end of Nadya’s desires? She made her way to the bed, laying down to observe the ceiling; this was going to be troublesome.

so next up is the book that my housemate lent me (victorian lesbian murder mystery) :)

Frank Peterson is dead. Maybe. His sister Laura certainly thinks so and hires over-the-hill former cop Ro Peszke to investigate. Ro is used to cases involving infidelity, not missing persons and potential murder, but can't turn down a damsel in distress. 

The closer Ro gets to the truth, however, the more she realizes just how out of her depth she really is. In both the mystery of what happened to Frank Peterson and the mystery of how a middle-aged trans lesbian living in New Hampshire is supposed to have a successful love life.

My newest novel, Ladykillers, a cozy mystery with dashes of humor and romance, is now available to read for free on Inkitt! I'm participating in Inkitt's LOVE OUT LOUD writing contest, which runs through September 18th, so if you decide to read, please leave a review if you have the chance. Once the contest is over, the book will be released as a paperback and ebook available for purchase.

Lachesis or Atropos is coming to Steam! Please wishlist our horror-mystery yuri visual novel

This world is woven of strings, of fate and of hate. What do you see, detective? 

A private investigator visits a small town after recovering from a coma. She searches for her mentor's lost beloved, but the very eyes she was born with, those that can see the black strings of hate, drag her down into the darkness of conspiracy.

A cult, two priestesses, and the threads that puppet the world.

Features

~45k words

4 major endings and plenty of dead ends

8 CGs + 2 new CGs

6 original tracks + 6 new original tracks

Accessibility options

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Lachesis or Atropos is coming to Steam with updates—new art, new music, and more!

The updated version of the game will also be available on itch at the same time as the Steam release. Please help us out by wishlisting the game on Steam!

Steam || itch.io

Dusty Plays: Ladykiller in a Bind - The Hacker Ending

i think that perhaps fanfic and booktok culture have had a negative impact on the way people interact with books