This year has been profoundly challenging on a personal level, but I am over the moon to have achieved a professional goal cherished since the age of 4. As of today, I’m a published novelist! 🥳📖💘 Strap In is available from all good booksellers: www.waterstones.com/book/strap-i...

New literary pet peeve: when a book has a Scottish protagonist and the audiobook features an English voice actor who butchers Scottish dialect, and can’t do the accent to save their life. 🤦🏾‍♀️🤦🏾‍♀️🤦🏾‍♀️🤦🏾‍♀️ Gonnae just hire someone fae Scotland?

My Audible wrap up for 2024 is in, and they couldn’t have done a better job summarising my taste in books.

This year I’m trying to cut back on book buying and focus on my unending TBR pile, but @jaeauthor.bsky.social’s Bachelorette Number Twelve is currently 99p in the UK Kindle store. A bargain too good to miss! 🏳️‍🌈📖

www.amazon.co.uk/Bachelorette...

So real. At times it feels like my characters are fiddling with each other while Rome burns, but 🤷🏾‍♀️

me tap-tap-taping away on my laptop

Just been through all the books I’ve read in 2024 to fill out two Sapphic Book Bingo cards, and — for the first time — a Hidden Gems card. 🥳📚 As always, thank you so much to @jaeauthor.bsky.social for her tireless work championing the sapphic books community. ❤️🧡💛💚🩵💙💜

I heard that she was leaving too, but am not 100% sure it is true.

With Schmitt and Yasuda leaving Grey’s Anatomy, Grey Sloan Memorial is perilously close to deyassification. I’m going to need Amelia Shepherd to get a girlfriend yesterday. And Millin. They could even date each other, in the problematic yet compelling style of early MerDer. 🤷🏾‍♀️

I bought a hoodie from menswear yesterday. It’s the thickest, fleeciest, most comfortable hoodie I have ever owned. Plus it doesn’t cling to my boobs AT ALL. And I get it now, why the straight girls are always stealing their man’s garments. Because I am never taking this off.

Influencers are wild. There’s a whole subgenre of videos on lesbian TikTok where women post about either sneaking their straps past security or having an agent examine their toy bags. 😳 You couldn’t waterboard that information out of me, nevermind compel me to share the footage.

Thank you! 🥰

I DID IT! 🥳There were moments when I thought #NaNoWriMo would get the better of me this time round. My blood, sweat, and (copious) tears have gone into this manuscript. But I fucking did it. 50,000 words of passionate lesbian romance.

Seasonal Depression: 0, Gay Agenda: 1.

Watching Season 8 of Game of Thrones right before NaNoWriMo turned out to be a brilliant decision, because no matter how many mistakes there are in this first draft — and believe me, I made plenty — there’s no earthly or cosmic way I can fuck up this story to the extent D&D did.

Started watching Rivals on Disney Plus. And are the people who complain there’s too much explicit sex in modern romance novels aware that Jilly Cooper A) exists? B) has been publishing scorching hot spice for forty years?

Once more we step into the breach. Good luck and godspeed to all my fellow drafters. 50,000 words, here I go!

The way I know @ylva-publishing.bsky.social is for the AO3 girlies: they list book length by word count on their website. 😌

Lou’s Review: Loser of the Year, by Carrie Byrd "Though she’s a debut novelist, I’ve never read an author who executes Slow Burn even half as well. Byrd's use of this trope is masterful, the build-up so good it aches."

I reviewed Loser of the Year, by @byrdwrites.bsky.social:

"Though she’s a debut novelist, I’ve never read an author who executes Slow Burn even half as well. Byrd's use of this trope is masterful, the build-up so good it aches."

#LousReview #BookReview #SapphicBooks #SapphFic

Lou’s Review: The Oleander Sword, by Tasha Suri "Priya and Malini are fierce with one another, holding nothing back. They’re capable of cruelty as well as tenderness. And only with Priya does Malini feel safe enough to trust completely."

I reviewed The Oleander Sword, by @tashasuri.bsky.social:

"Priya and Malini are fierce with one another, holding nothing back. They’re capable of cruelty as well as tenderness. And only with Priya does Malini feel safe enough to trust completely."

#LousReview #BookReview #SapphicBooks #SapphFic

Lou’s Review: I Kissed Shara Wheeler, by Casey McQuiston "The beauty of #OwnVoices Sapphic Romance is that no female character is ever defined by male fantasy. And this novel is one of a kind."

I reviewed I Kissed Shara Wheeler, by Casey McQuiston:

"The beauty of #OwnVoices Sapphic Romance is that no female character is ever defined by male fantasy. Shara Wheeler is nobody’s romanticised Manic Pixie Dream Girl."

#BookReview #Sapphic #SapphicBooks #SapphFic

I started Red, White & Royal Blue. And I get it. I completely and utterly get the hype. Also, Britain is never beating the beans on toast allegations. 🥲

Meryl Streep’s daughter, Louisa Jacobson, came out publicly and posted a picture with her girlfriend. Which is lovely. But there is no way that a 33 y/o Millennial lesbian can be 100% unaware of the spicy Mirandy fanfics her mother inspired. Moment of silence for the good sis.

Last night I dreamed that I was being Roman Roy’s Cyrano de Bergerac for Gerri Kellman. Absolutely gutted I woke up before finding out which one of us she was going to choose. 🥲

Lou’s Review: The Deathless Girls, by Kiran Millwood Hargrave "For all Dracula casts a long shadow over the story, these women find light and meaning in each other. And that is the power of a retelling – giving voice, agency, and significance to female character...

I reviewed The Deathless Girls, by @Kiran Millwood Hargrave:

"For all Dracula casts a long shadow, these women find light & meaning in each other. And that is the power of a retelling – giving voice, agency, and significance to female characters previously defined in relation to men."

#LousReview

Fab Fahthagawd GIF ALT: Fab Fahthagawd GIF

Was trying to work out which squares The Love Factor, by @quinnivins.bsky.social, would hit for @jaeauthor.bsky.social’s Sapphic Book Bingo. And had the harrowing realisation that a novel set in 1997 counts as historical fiction (“takes place at least 25 years in the past”). I feel sick.

Lou’s Review: Hotel Queens, by Lee Winter "Hotel Queens is one of the most electric Opposites Attract romances I’ve ever read, with our leading ladies’ contrast in temperaments creating a steamy hot sexual tension between them."

I reviewed Hotel Queens, by @leewinteroz.bsky.social:

"Hotel Queens smoulders as an Opposites Attract romance, with our leading ladies’ contrast in temperaments creating steamy hot sexual tension between them as ice and fire meet."

#LousReview #BookReview #SapphFic #SapphicBooks

Oooh, I haven’t read You Should See Me in a Crown! Will look it up. Thanks so much for the recommendation. 🥰

🌈Some of my personal favorites on this list:
⭐️The Lesbiana’s Guide to Catholic School by Sonora Reyes
⭐️Forget Me Not by Alyson Derrick (especially the audio version by Natalie Naudus)
⭐️Last Night at the Telegraph Club by Malinda Lo

One more addition💜:
⭐️You Should See Me in a Crown by Leah Johnson

10 Sapphic YA Books Feat. Women of Colour for #Pride "Pride should mean celebrating stories about all lesbian and bisexual women; not simply the skinny, white, feminine, young, and able-bodied."

#Pride should mean celebrating the full, glorious spectrum of our community. So, I've curated a list of 10 sapphic YA book recommendations, all centring young women of colour as protagonists. Happy reading! ❤️🧡💛💚💙💜 #TuesNews #PrideMonth

As we gear up for Pride Month, my lists of sapphic book recommendations are going to centre work written by and about women of colour — stories that don’t often make the Pride listicles, but are every bit as worthy of love and celebration as their white counterparts. Stay tuned!