Thank you Mystic Thompson for inviting me to join this exciting blog tour! I’ve enjoyed getting inside the heads of other authors! Please be sure to visit Mystic’s blog at mysticthompson.weebly.com
What are you currently working on?
I have just begun edits for my first book, a Lesbian Romance called Her Name, which is scheduled to be released this July. As a new author, I’m not sure there’s anything more exciting than the release of your first book. It’s all starting to get real! 🙂
I also just finished my second Lesbian Romance book, tentatively called Loving Again. I have a long list of old, abandoned stories that I have promised to rescue. So once the edits of Her Name are complete and I find a home for Loving Again, I may toss the life preserver out to sea because my characters have been in the water way too long.
How does your work differ from others of its genre?
My writing is simple in style and usually has a nostalgic feeling to it. My last two romance stories revolve around the notion of time and how we are all connected to each other in some way, even if our paths cross only briefly. My novel, Loving Again, shows the journey of two strangers who discover that one moment in their past had brought them together in a way neither could ever imagine.
Why do you write what you do?
I write lesbian fiction. I came out in 1996 when I was twenty and I remember going to Borders to buy my first lesbian book. It was a huge moment. I was so nervous I walked past the Lesbian Fiction aisle seventeen times before I finally entered.
You see, the aisle was clearly labelled “Lesbian Fiction” and that meant anyone who saw me standing in front of those shelves would know I was looking for a lesbian book. The horror! But I braved it and stood there long enough to pick out a book that appealed to me (of course they all appealed to me because they were about women who loved other women). But I was so grateful to have that outlet and those stories helped me to feel normal in a world that didn’t seem so welcoming.
I know today there are a heck of a lot more outlets for young gay people and a trip to a bookstore (for those who still go to bookstores) is no longer a life-changing event, but it would mean so much to think I could give a confused, questioning, lonely person the comfort of knowing there are others like them out there. And here’s just a couple of their stories.
On a side note, to prove how far we (I) have come, six years ago I had a horribly loud and obnoxious fight on my cellphone, in that same Borders, with one of my ex-girlfriends while fully aware that there were others around me but not caring (yes, for ten minutes I was one of those people) – In the same place where, twelve years earlier, I had stood as a timid, self-conscious, twenty-year old, sweatin’ out the purchase of her first lesbian book. Progress!!!!
How does my writing process work?
New ideas usually come when I ask myself, “What if?”
I wrote a blog about the power of that one question. It’s an important question and one every writer needs to ask her or himself because there are no limitations. That question pulls me away from the notion that I should only write what I know.
If I want to write about something I know nothing about – It’s called Google, Baby!!!!!
aliciajoseph 