Katherine Blakeman's Blog, page 6

J. J. Hale: A Sapphic Fiction February Interview

Jess and I had our paths cross briefly last year, when she and I both wrote articles for Ami Spencer’s ,World Mental Health Day event back in October. Jess wrote about her experiences ,being diagnosed with ADHD as an adult – something she builds on in her novel ,Truly Enough – and her words stuck with me, so since then I’ve been a big fan of hers. And most excitingly, her next book ( ,Truly Home , pictured) is coming in just over a month! I was very excited when she signed up for Sapphic Fiction F...

Elle Ire: A Sapphic Fiction February Interview

I’ve been aware of Elle for quite some time due to our mutual friend ,Kristen Zimmer , so I was delighted when she said she wanted to be involved with Sapphic Fiction February. Reading through her answers to my interview questions, I was struck by just how dedicated Elle is to her book research. I think she wins the award for Most Extremely Dedicated Researcher Ever, if there is such a thing! Read on to find out how, and make sure to check out Elle’s books!

Elle - tell us a little more about you...

Erica Lee: A Sapphic Fiction February Interview

Hello everyone – welcome to Sapphic Fiction February 2024! Make sure to keep checking back here (or on my social media accounts) to read a daily interview with a Sapphic Fiction author, every day in February. Kicking off our month of daily author interviews is the wonderful Erica Lee, author of ,Every Slow Song , ,The Truth and ,11:59 , among others!

Hey Erica. Let's begin with you telling us a little bit about you. Who are you and what do you do?

My name is Erica Lee! I am a writer and also an e...

Angst As An Act Of Self-Love? by Merlina Garance

I've been wondering recently, why it is that I love writing angst so much.

Because it's never pleasant to put myself in the shoes of someone having a breakdown or a panic attack, so... why do I do it so much?

And the good news is, I've come to a few conclusions.

I think I write angst for the same reason I write characters who are not perfect. The two go hand in hand, really. Someone imperfect will mess up, and sometimes there will be bad consequences.

I write imperfect characters because I a...

The (Unofficial) List of Sapphic Fiction Books with a Mental Health Theme: 2023

Given that my latest book ,The Summer We’ve Had has a strong mental health theme, with the two main characters having depression and Dissociative Identity Disorder, I knew I had to mark World Mental Health Day somehow. Ami Spencer is currently hosting an event on their own blog, where a selection of authors and readers of Sapphic fiction are sharing what mental health means to them. I’ve contributed to that – my post is out today, in fact, so head to ,Ami’s website to find it. And I’ve also put ...

Becoming A Writer In Your Fifties Is Crazy, Right? by Barbara Lynn Murphy

You’d think I would have heeded the voice that repeatedly echoed those words in my head. But I’m writing this blog post, so I’m sure you’ve already guessed that I did not. Instead, I sat down one day during the Covid months in 2020 and just started to write.

This wasn’t the first time I’d put hypothetical pen to paper. I’ve tinkered with it in the past,

always getting stuck somewhere around twenty or thirty pages. The creative well would run dry because I wasn’t able to see the end of the story...

How Being Ghosted After My PTSD Diagnosis Influenced My Ghosthunting YA Book... by Chloe Spencer

Content Warning: discussions of PTSD, brief mentions of suicide ideation

When I was first diagnosed with PTSD and started treatment for it last year, I thought

about how grateful I was to have a support system. I envisioned throngs of friends showing up for me the way you would someone mourning a loss: answering the phone when I called, offering to help me with minor tasks, or spending more time with me. As I fought through wave after wave of flashbacks, panic attacks, and bouts of suicide idea...

Laury A. Egan: A Guest Interview!

When I put an appeal out on Twitter for guest posters and interviewees earlier this month, author and poet (among other things) Laury A. Egan was one of the first to respond. I thought 'this person seems like a wonderful human being, let's get to know her'. Imagine our mutual shock, when we realised that we'd written about the same topic: Dissociative Identity Disorder (sometimes known as Multiple Personality Disorder). I wrote about it in my sunny Sapphic romance, The Summer We've Had, and Laur...

Is Revenge What You Want, What You Really, Really Want? by Emma Brand

As a red-head, I couldn’t pass up a Ginger Spice reference!

Now that I’ve had my 90’s kid moment, I would like to tell you a story. A story of a girl in her teens and twenties who went through some stuff, like we all did and do. Who was figuring herself out, who hurt and got hurt along the way to her path of self-discovery. Who people pleased herself into oblivion. Who bottled up and swallowed her pain and hurt into neat, tidy boxes with shiny ribbons that took years to unravel.

You guessed it...

Not The Same Twenty-Four Hours: A Brief Rant by Katherine Blakeman

I am writing this as an allusion to a recent controversy on Book Twitter, which has started a discourse on whether writers should write every day. One comment I read, by someone who purports the answer ‘yes’ to that dilemma, said ‘We all have the same twenty-four hours in a day, after all!’

No. No, we do not. That sentence – however well-meant – encapsulates privileged ableism in just a handful of words. And this brief rant will explain why. (DISCLAIMER: This is entirely raw and unedited. If I ...