Stark Reflections on Writing and Publishing

EP 343 - Self-Publishing Lesbian Fiction (or Something Equally Non-Threatening) with Elizabeth Andre

Jan 19, 2024

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Mark interviews Elizabeth Andre (AKA Karen and Victoria) about her/their journey through writing, collaboration, and the new book SELF-PUBLISHING LESBIAN FICTION.

Prior to the interview, Mark reads comments from recent episodes and shares a word about this episode's sponsor.

This episode is sponsored by ScribeCount (affiliate link). Spend less time logging in to multiple platforms and crunching numbers, and more time writing and marketing your books thanks to ScribeCount's handy all-in-one interface.

In their conversation, Karen, Victoria, and Mark talk about:

The background of how Karen and Victoria got started as writers, and then about how they met and why they started writing together
Karen's earliest memories coming up with playtime stories with her younger brother that took on a "soap opera" and "serialized" format
The concept of how to earn money that came down to one of two things: Sell drugs, or write porn
Researching the writing of gay male porn by getting magazines and reading through them
Coming up with numerous ephamisms for the male sex organ appendage
How Victoria comes from a long list of writers, including her father and how she wanted to be anything BUT a writer
The two of them each discovering the joy and the magical allure that is journalism
Being one of the many writers who was "Sherry Lovelace" for the UK edition of Penthouse Magazine
Meeting at a Gay Journalist Convention and clicking, but not really having that much in common
Discovering that, despite the "common wisdom" from traditional publishing, money could be made from writing lesbian fiction. That shift, of course, came from the rise of self-publishing
Who the readers of gay male fiction and lesbian fiction are
The origin of the pen name Elizabeth Andre
Some of the logistics of how the two write together
Who the book Self-Publishing Lesbian Fiction is for, with an analogy of an off-the-rack suit and a tailored suit
The tally of the $35 and $45 dollars owed from various publishers and platforms
The term and use of "Sapphic Fiction" and how it is more inclusive of lesbian, bi-sexual, trans, and non-binary
Some of the barriers that arise when writing lesbian fiction
How self-publishing can overcome so many of the barriers within traditional publishing
And more...

After the interview, Mark reflects on a couple of topics brought up, specifically "serialized playtime stories" and the "tailored" work of writers.

Links of Interest:

Elizabeth Andre has been self-publishing lesbian fiction since 2014. She writes cozy paranormal mystery, lesbian romance, science fiction, and young adult stories. Before turning her hand to fiction, she was a newspaper reporter for many years, and she has the paper cuts to prove it. She has won many writing awards including a Goldie from the Golden Crown Literary Society for fiction and a Peter Lisagor Award from the Chicago Headline Club for journalism. Elizabeth Andre is actually two people, a married interracial same-sex couple (Karen and Victoria) living in the Midwest.

The introductory, end, and bumper music for this podcast (“Laser Groove”) was composed and produced by Kevin MacLeod of www.incompetech.com and is Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0