alex_beecroft

girluknow has a new historical gay romance novel up on Lulu, the proceeds of which are to go to leukemia research. More news once my copy has arrived and I've read it, but it looks gorgeous!

Buy it, here.

New York, 1919. His career as a concert pianist ended by a war injury, Sutton Albright returns to college, only to be expelled after an affair with a teacher. Unable to face his family, he heads to New York with no plans and little money—only a desire to call his life his own. Jack Bailey’s life has changed as well. After losing his parents in the influenza epidemic, he hopes to save their beloved novelty shop—now his—by advertising on the radio, barely more than a novelty, itself. Sutton lands work in Jack’s corner of the city and the two conclude they couldn’t be less suited for friendship. But when Sutton loses his job, Jack gives him a place to stay. Sutton returns to the piano to play for Jack and finds the intervening months have healed him. The program promises to rescue Jack’s business and Sutton’s career...but success brings its own risks for two men falling in love.

Every so often I hear writers saying how difficult it is to write from the male POV because they don't know what it's like being male. And I know that lots of m/m writers get the 'well how can you know what you're writing about, since you're a woman?' It seems the problem isn't recent. I was just reading an essay by Dorothy L Sayers, author of the Lord Peter Wimsey novels and came across this:

"A man once asked me - it is true that it was at the end of a very good dinner, and the compliment conveyed may have been due to that circumstance - how I managed in my books to write such natural conversation between men when they were by themselves. Was I, by any chance, a member of a large, mixed family with a lot of male friends? I replied that, on the contrary, I was an only child and had practically never seen or spoken to any men of my own age till I was about twenty five. "Well," said the man, "I shouldn't have expected a woman [meaning me] to have been able to make it so convincing. I replied that I had coped with this difficult problem by making my men talk, as far as possible, like ordinary human beings. This aspect of the matter seemed to surprise the other speaker; he said no more but took it away to chew it over. One of these days it may quite likely occur to him that women, as well as men, when left to themselves, talk very much like human beings also."

The essay is called 'Are Women Human?' and talks such sense that it's rather depressing to think that it's made no difference whatsoever.

WoS