It’s time for the first coach on our LesFic Eclectic blog train—are you all ready? We’ve got four authors on the tracks for you today: the brand new voice of Ally McGuire, emerging authors, Helena Harte and Lee Haven, and your old favourite, Jeannie Levig. We’ll be releasing Volume Three on Thursday 23rd December, but you can still download Volume One and Volume Two right now.
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How excited are you to be involved in this project?
Ally: Fabulously excited. It’s a small taste of things to come from me, so hopefully you’ll see some fabulous romances hit real and virtual shelves next year.
Helena: I’m bouncy happy to have my story in this anthology. It’s so wonderful to be part of something so community-focused, and it’s a great opportunity to play around with my writing a little.
Jeannie: I’m very excited to be a part of this project. A couple of years ago when I was invited to take part in the first Lesfic Eclectic publication and learned that its focus was to bring new and established authors together for the purposes of promoting new voices in the lesfic community, I was thankful for the opportunity to be a part of such a wonderful idea. And now, as the third volume is being launched, I’m pleased to see the success of such a community building undertaking. I also love that these collections are offered at no charge to the readers of our community as a thank you for their constant support.
Lee: I’m super excited to be part of this again. If anything, I’m more thrilled this time than the years before. This is such a great anthology that gives space to new voices and as the eclectic in the title suggests, it gives me as an author the space to try new and different sides to my writing.
What’s your story about and what genre does it fall into?
Ally: The Black Suit is about a chance meeting and those incredibly memorable moments we all have when we’re attracted to someone and we take the chance to act on it, the chance to really live.
Helena: I wrote my first short story, But You, for last year’s LesFic Eclectic. It was from the perspective of a femme with self-esteem issues and described her meeting the woman of her dreams. This story, Before You, is the other side of the coin. It’s her butch’s attempt to write a love letter back to her, the love of her life.
Jeannie: My story is called The Touch of Reality, and it is a vanilla erotic romance that also, in a personal way, falls into the workplace trope. Its inspiration came from something someone once said to me about sex by braille, as I am legally blind, and the sharing of a blind character in an erotic story intrigued me. The Touch of Reality is the result. I hope you enjoy it.
Lee: My story is called Wings Apart and is a fantasy set against a thousand-year-old backdrop. When Avery finally manages to escape the Angle enclave her little adventure doesn’t go as planned when she comes face to face with Hildred a human woman. The story is very much about coming of age, responsibility, and of cause fledgling feelings.
What kind of fiction do you like to write and why?
Ally: I love romance. I love the interactions between people and the nuances of every relationship. We spend an inordinate amount of time searching for love, failing at love, and (hopefully) being in love – why not write about something you know?
Helena: Romance, romance, and more romance. I love the idea of instant attraction and building on that while exploring who two people really are, deep inside. Over the coming years, I hope to populate a small island with the wonderful people from my books where everyone is living their happy ever after!
Jeannie: I enjoy writing stories that explore emotional depth between the characters, whatever type of relationship they’re in. So far, most of my novels have been contemporary romances and most of my short stories fall under erotic romance as the characters in those stories tend to be involved with one another romantically already. I also have a romantic intrigue and a general fiction story, but those too have high relationship stakes as part of the stories and involve intense emotional subject matter.
Lee: Mostly I like to write romance with realistic characters that are slightly scared and have real live problems. I also recently started to dip my writing pen into something leaning more towards paranormal romance.
Tell us something about yourself that readers might not already know.
Ally: Social media terrifies me!
Helena: My pseudonym is my mama’s name. She died when I was young, and I hope that she’d be proud of me following my dream of writing. Using her name keeps me in touch with a person I grieve for losing too young.
Jeannie: I’ve been told I have an unnatural relationship with lemon juice in that I put it on weird things like broccoli and macaroni and cheese.
Lee: I like to write at night and preferably in the dark. I don’t know why but that’s when the words flow best. It’s just not really helpful if I have to work the next day.
What’s your favourite line from your story in LEV3?
Ally McGuire ~ The Black Suit:
“I think you might be gay,” I whispered.
“Don’t label me. Just enjoy me.”
Helena Harte ~ Before You:
The universe sure did its best to break you. But you’re still here, full of fortitude, stronger than platinum, a soul almost too good for this world and its noise. You think I’m the strong one, but I’ve got nothing on you.
Jeannie Levig ~ The Touch of Reality:
“What she wouldn’t have given, many a time, to be the Braille letters beneath Lena’s fingertips or the spoonful of ice cream that disappeared between her warm, supple lips.”
Lee Haven ~ Wings Apart:
“Are you going to help me or what?” A muffled voice came from the feather ball in the net. “Hello? I know you’re there.”
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