Elora Bishop's Blog, page 3

BRAIDED's Release: Delayed a Day

I'm so sorry, guys…Due to slight technical difficulties (nothing major or to worry about~ Braided's release day must be pushed back by a day. Instead of releasing tomorrow, April 3rd, it will be released on Wednesday, April 4th!

(Braided is part of the Sappho's Fables series–lesbian fairy tales!)

The lesbian Rapunzel is coming VERY soon! Stay tuned for magic!

On the Story of Braided — a Lesbian Rapunzel

Straight "Rapunzel" is often a sad "Rapunzel."

So, my novella Braided, a lesbian Rapunzel (part of our Sappho's Fables series, lesbian fairy tales!) will be released April 3rd.

The original fairy tale is…I mean, let's be blunt here.  It's not empowering stuff.  Girl's mom has a hankering for a vegetable that grows in a very selfish please-to-not-be-touching-my-garden witch.  TERRIBLE things ensue, involving girl being taken by witch to live in tower.  Her hair grows super long (if your hair is going to be tower-length sized by the way, it's PROBABLY not going to look like most pictures depicting Rapunzel–all pretty and neat in a braid.  It's probably going to be EVERYWHERE), she falls in love with a prince, the witch FINDS OUT.

Cue threatening things-are-probably-not-going-to-go-well-for-our-fair-heroine music.

Witch casts Rapunzel to some handily-located desert to Think About What She's Done (here versions differ. Did she sleep with the prince?  Probably!  There's a lot of versions where she bears kids living in a cave in a desert.), and when the prince comes back, ready to Rescue The Princess, the witch–having cut off Rapunzel's hair–uses it to lure him up into the tower, and then PUSHES HIM OFF.  He falls into a patch of briars, suprisingly lives but is blinded by the thorns, goes off to wander in the desert and finds Rapunzel.  Versions differ:  her tears cure his blindness, or he's blind forever, and their lives are crap.

"Happily ever after" and "Rapunzel" don't really go hand in hand very well.

With our Sappho's Fables series, it was very important to us to keep the bones of the fairy tales in their essence, but to also make the retelling VERY unique on TOP of the idea of retelling it from a lesbian perspective.  There are eleventy million retellings of "Rapunzel."  If I just gender-switched the prince (or the witch) and did nothing to the story besides that…that wouldn't have been my cup of tea.  One of my favorite things, as a writer, is to look at the old bones of Story, see what could be and reinterpret them.  (I have done this before.)  So I wanted this story to be empowering and incredibly original, and there are so many things about the original fairy tale (AS MUCH AS I LOVE IT) that bother me as a feminist.

Please to not keep reading if you want to be totally surprised when you read Braided when it comes out!  I won't completely spoil you, but I'll be talking about some aspects of the world…

 Still here?  VENTURE ON, STALWART PERSON, PREFERABLY with a TEA-LIKE BEVERAGE in HAND!

~*~

One of my favorite aspects of "Rapunzel," is how it's kind of weird.  A desert?  We don't usually get deserts right next to our fairy-tale-esque forests, and it's such an original point.  That was always my (uh, I suppose this says something about me…) favorite part, when Rapunzel is–technically–free, has an entire land of opportunity before her.  I never really saw it as a terrible thing to be away from the witch who imprisoned her, and the dude who was kind of stalking her in the forest (may I just point out that I AM a lesbian, so I may have been hoping every single time I read it, that she might find some lovely desert-pirate-princess and live happily ever after ).

In my version of the story, the tower has been changed, and even the point of view is different.  We meet Gray, a witch's daughter, who was born with a cursed fate.  There was once a tree in the middle of the forest that people made pilgrimages to, secreting written prayers and wishes into its bark or tied to its branches.  A few hundred years ago, the tree died (though no one knows how), and the tree's spirit was put into a person.  So, this person had to live on a platform built in the dead tree, letting their hair grow long, so people could continue their ritual of giving it their prayers and wishes.  Unfortunately, as the years go by, even though the people are bound to the tree and can't leave it…the magic grows weak.  Fewer and fewer prayers and wishes come true.

When Gray is born, the witch–Momma Bone–despairs.  Gray has the tell-tale scar over her heart, blackened veins in the shape of the tree, that means she is meant for a life on the platform.  But, when Gray is very small, Momma Bone takes up her sheers and cuts out the fate from Gray's heart.  She keeps it in a jar (Gray tells us it looks not a little unlike a moth) until she's able to trick another child out of another mother's grasp…and sew the fate of the tree into that child's heart, instead of her own daughter's.

Gray grows up taking care of this girl, who must live on the platform:  Zelda.  And she falls deeply in love with her.  They can't run away together–though they so desperately wish to–because too many people depend on the tree, but one night, something strange happens.

The Luna Fair comes to town.  And a strange, hairless, ancient and slightly-scary-and-wrinkled feline tells Gray a secret.  There is a place, she visits each night, a place that she could travel to and bring back the tree.  And save it.  And save Zelda.

And the cat gives her a riddle that only she can answer:  Luna will find you.

Gray (and Zelda!) must travel to Luna (is it a real place?  Or is it only in their dreams?), triumph over an army of Despair, travel through the Forest of Hair and meet the witch and the tree before morning, figuring out the cat's riddle as they go.  The desert of Luna is vast and monstrous, and when they are separated, Gray must find the courage to outsmart a horde of strange creatures for the possibility of a happily ever after with the love of her life…and her sweetheart's freedom.

I have so, so, so immensely enjoyed retelling this story, and I can't wait to share it with you.  

~*~

Can't wait until April 3rd? I've posted two excerpts from Braided on my Tumblr! Here they are, in order:

First~

Second~

The Cover for SHIMMER — a Lesbian Rumpelstiltskin — Revealed!

Our novella series, Sapppho's Fables, takes the most well-known, beloved fairy tales and retells them from a lesbian perspective. Crumbs, a lesbian Hansel and Gretel is out now. Braided, a lesbian Rapunzel, is coming next week…

What comes after that? Shimmer, the lesbian Rumpelstiltskin~ And tonight, beautiful people, I reveal the cover~ Shimmer should be out within the next few weeks–I'll update when I have a definite date!

The cover for Shimmer, a lesbian Rumpelstiltskin, part of the Sappho's Fables series, lesbian fairy tales retold~

On BRAIDED — a Lesbian Rapunzel

Crumbs, the first novella in Sappho's Fables: Lesbian Fairy Tales series, the series I am co-authoring with my lovely wife (

The next release from the first volume will be my re-envisioning of the "Rapunzel" fairy tale: Braided.

Crumbs was the flagship of Sappho's Fables for a reason–it is the most unlike all of our other retellings. It's dystopian, post-apocalyptic, contains a could-totally-happen version of zombies. Most of our other retellings are not dystopian, are in fantastical worlds that contain more magic than machine, which is a concept you'd almost expect from a fairy tale retelling. But we wanted to be able to give the lesbian and totally-awesome-and-open-minded communities not just an original version of a fairy tale from a lesbian perspective–we wanted it to be completely original in all other ways. "Rapunzel" is a very usual, everyone-knows-it story, and there are thousands and thousands of retellings of "Rapunzel." I very much wanted to breathe life in a story you think you know, keep the bones that you love and make it completely unexpected and unfamiliar–no small task when dealing with a childhood legend!

Braided will be released either a week from today, or a little after that (I promise I'll update with a set date when we're finished polishing it up~

Thank you, again, from the bottom of my heart for supporting Sappho's Fables–there's no point to doing what we're doing unless these lesbian fairy tales reach people who will enjoy them–and they're doing just that.

All my love,

Elora (And Jenn!)

Release Day: Crumbs, a Lesbian Hansel and Gretel (The First Novella in the Sappho’s Fables Series!)

My novella Crumbs, the first novella of our Sappho’s Fables (Lesbian Fairy Tales!) series, is released today! Crumbs is a lesbian version of Hansel and Gretel~

Greta’s never ventured beyond the refuge of the Heap. Outside, the Ragers lurk, ever hungry and hunting. But Greta and her brother, half-starved and now alone, must risk death for the dream of safety they hope to find within the metal forest. Once there, nothing is as it seems: in the confines of a crumbling old candy factory, the woman who rescues them with sweet words and sweeter treats harbors a dangerous secret.

Available for purchase from:

Amazon (Kindle)

Barnes and Noble (Nook)

Smashwords (All other eReaders/Online Reading)

Release Day: Crumbs, a Lesbian Hansel and Gretel (The First Novella in the Sappho's Fables Series!)

My novella Crumbs, the first novella of our Sappho's Fables (Lesbian Fairy Tales!) series, is released today! Crumbs is a lesbian version of Hansel and Gretel~

Greta's never ventured beyond the refuge of the Heap. Outside, the Ragers lurk, ever hungry and hunting. But Greta and her brother, half-starved and now alone, must risk death for the dream of safety they hope to find within the metal forest. Once there, nothing is as it seems: in the confines of a crumbling old candy factory, the woman who rescues them with sweet words and sweeter treats harbors a dangerous secret.

Available for purchase from:

Amazon (Kindle)

Barnes and Noble (Nook) — Link coming shortly!

Smashwords (All other eReaders/Online Reading)

Announcing: Sappho’s Fables — Lesbian Fairy Tale Retellings!

Happy, happy Valentine’s Day!

We’ve waited forever to announce this–we wanted to wait until today, V-Day, because WE LIKE SPECIAL THINGS TO HAPPEN ON SPECIAL DAYS. ;D

You know that I’m Elora Bishop–that I write magical lesbian love stories (and lesbian YA love stories as another name), but you might not know that my wife, Jennifer Diemer, is also a writer. A supremely talented one at that (which, I realize you’ll have to take with a grain of salt since she’s my wife, and you know how very much I love her, but really–WAIT UNTIL YOU SEE)–she has a degree in creative writing (graduating at the head of her class, of course–she’s a perfectionist!), is a world-class editor, and an amazing, amazing storyteller. We’ve had quite a few writing projects together that were just for us, or that we haven’t OFFICIALLY announced to the world yet, but one of our oldest ones was an old zine online (sadly, defunct for years now!) that we put up in 2004/2005, called Inamorata. It was a compendium of fairy tales, retold as lesbian. It was one of my favorite things that we’ve ever shared together.

But my wife Jenn and I have been retelling fairy tales as lesbian for far longer than that–as long as we’ve been writing. Fairy tales are part and parcel of who we are–they’re in our blood. We were married in fairy wings, have bits of fairy tales tattooed on our skin, and we even take very old, unloved fairy tale books and re-envision them as wearable art. Fairy tales are utterly essential to who we are as people, and who we are as a wife and wife duo.

The thing is, that–though we love fairy tales deeply–something has always felt…off for us, in the fairy tale world. You know–the fact that there were no women like us: ladies who love other ladies.

So, like any authors would do…we set about and changed that. And we want to do it again.

There are very, very, very few lesbian retellings of fairy tales. Most of them are erotica–which, there is ALWAYS a place for erotica, but I also believe that there is a place for creative, literary re-envisionings of all of the major fairy tales (and some that most people have forgotten about!) that are NOT erotica, but are, rather, stories about women who love other women, who are courageous, who kicks ass, who wear their crowns tilted sideways, who have daring adventures and magical encounters and who fall madly and completely in love and get their fairy tale endings.

And so, Jenn and I are pleased to present a series of novellas entitled Sappho’s Fables. We have taken all of the most well known fairy tales, some from long ago that we already retold, some that we are redoing all over again, and releasing them individually as eBooks for each novella, and then volumes of collected novellas that will also be available in print. The first three stories that we chose are:

Snow White

Hansel and Gretel

Rapunzel

They will be gathered in the volume available in both print and eReader versions entitled Sappho’s Fables, Volume 1!

You might be saying–Elora, my favorite fairy tale isn’t in the first volume! No despairing! Here is a projected list of the upcoming volumes. Though these are subject to change, we’re pretty set on all of them. No, unfortunately, I don’t have dates on any of these releases! You can either add this blog to your RSS, or add me on Facebook or on Twitter–I promise that when we get closer to actual dates, I will let you know!

Sappho’s Fables, Volume 2:

Follow the Wolf (Red Riding Hood)

Shimmer (Rumpelstiltskin)

Thirteen (Twelve Dancing Princesses)

Sappho’s Fables, Volume 3:

Heart of Snow (The Snow Queen)

Kiss the Frog (The Frog Prince)

Sea Change (The Little Mermaid)

Sappho’s Fables, Volume 4:

Ember (Cinderella)

The Sleeping City (Sleeping Beauty)

The Prince and the Pea (The Princess and the Pea)

Sappho’s Fables, Volume 5:

Thorn (Beauty and the Beast)

Kitten Heels (Puss in Boots)

Wingless (The Wild Swans)

ALSO, after the above volumes are released, we have a very special short story collection entitled Snow White Loves Rose Red–it will be the last volume in the series, and cover some of our very favorite fairy tales–the lesser known ones that are still beautiful. Details on that coming soon!

What can you expect from these stories? These are not your typical fairy tales. Expect some more traditional retellings, but also post-apocalyptic fairy tales, biopunk, steampunk, mythicpunk, paranormal, science fiction…we had two driving goals in these releases: put out oustanding lesbian literature, and also very, very original retellings. We can not WAIT to share them with you.

So yes! We are SO EXCITED to be releasing these so soon! Details to follow!

Announcing: Sappho's Fables — Lesbian Fairy Tale Retellings!

Happy, happy Valentine's Day!

We've waited forever to announce this–we wanted to wait until today, V-Day, because WE LIKE SPECIAL THINGS TO HAPPEN ON SPECIAL DAYS. ;D

You know that I'm Elora Bishop–that I write magical lesbian love stories (and lesbian YA love stories as another name), but you might not know that my wife, Jennifer Diemer, is also a writer. A supremely talented one at that (which, I realize you'll have to take with a grain of salt since she's my wife, and you know how very much I love her, but really–WAIT UNTIL YOU SEE)–she has a degree in creative writing (graduating at the head of her class, of course–she's a perfectionist!), is a world-class editor, and an amazing, amazing storyteller. We've had quite a few writing projects together that were just for us, or that we haven't OFFICIALLY announced to the world yet, but one of our oldest ones was an old zine online (sadly, defunct for years now!) that we put up in 2004/2005, called Inamorata. It was a compendium of fairy tales, retold as lesbian. It was one of my favorite things that we've ever shared together.

But my wife Jenn and I have been retelling fairy tales as lesbian for far longer than that–as long as we've been writing. Fairy tales are part and parcel of who we are–they're in our blood. We were married in fairy wings, have bits of fairy tales tattooed on our skin, and we even take very old, unloved fairy tale books and re-envision them as wearable art. Fairy tales are utterly essential to who we are as people, and who we are as a wife and wife duo.

The thing is, that–though we love fairy tales deeply–something has always felt…off for us, in the fairy tale world. You know–the fact that there were no women like us: ladies who love other ladies.

So, like any authors would do…we set about and changed that. And we want to do it again.

There are very, very, very few lesbian retellings of fairy tales. Most of them are erotica–which, there is ALWAYS a place for erotica, but I also believe that there is a place for creative, literary re-envisionings of all of the major fairy tales (and some that most people have forgotten about!) that are NOT erotica, but are, rather, stories about women who love other women, who are courageous, who kicks ass, who wear their crowns tilted sideways, who have daring adventures and magical encounters and who fall madly and completely in love and get their fairy tale endings.

And so, Jenn and I are pleased to present a series of novellas entitled Sappho's Fables. We have taken all of the most well known fairy tales, some from long ago that we already retold, some that we are redoing all over again, and releasing them individually as eBooks for each novella, and then volumes of collected novellas that will also be available in print. The first three stories that we chose are:

Snow White

Hansel and Gretel

Rapunzel

They will be gathered in the volume available in both print and eReader versions entitled Sappho's Fables, Volume 1!

You might be saying–Elora, my favorite fairy tale isn't in the first volume! No despairing! Here is a projected list of the upcoming volumes. Though these are subject to change, we're pretty set on all of them. No, unfortunately, I don't have dates on any of these releases! You can either add this blog to your RSS, or add me on Facebook or on Twitter–I promise that when we get closer to actual dates, I will let you know!

Sappho's Fables, Volume 2:

Follow the Wolf (Red Riding Hood)

Shimmer (Rumpelstiltskin)

Thirteen (Twelve Dancing Princesses)

Sappho's Fables, Volume 3:

Heart of Snow (The Snow Queen)

Kiss the Frog (The Frog Prince)

Sea Change (The Little Mermaid)

Sappho's Fables, Volume 4:

Ember (Cinderella)

The Sleeping City (Sleeping Beauty)

The Prince and the Pea (The Princess and the Pea)

Sappho's Fables, Volume 5:

Thorn (Beauty and the Beast)

Kitten Heels (Puss in Boots)

Wingless (The Wild Swans)

ALSO, after the above volumes are released, we have a very special short story collection entitled Snow White Loves Rose Red–it will be the last volume in the series, and cover some of our very favorite fairy tales–the lesser known ones that are still beautiful. Details on that coming soon!

What can you expect from these stories? These are not your typical fairy tales. Expect some more traditional retellings, but also post-apocalyptic fairy tales, biopunk, steampunk, mythicpunk, paranormal, science fiction…we had two driving goals in these releases: put out oustanding lesbian literature, and also very, very original retellings. We can not WAIT to share them with you.

So yes! We are SO EXCITED to be releasing these so soon! Details to follow!

A Personal Plea: Please Don't Pirate My Work

Hello, my lovely glitter-folk! My wife and I have been in Florida for the last week or so, spending time with some of our dearest friends in the world (and our Goddess-son and Goddess-daughter!). It was pure heaven, and we return to the FAR TOO COLD reality of Buffalo refreshed, rejuvenated, and–hopefully–we will not have too many more weeks of winter.

I'm so excited about the new projects I'll be putting out in the next few months, and can not WAIT to share them with you. This blog will be hopping with a bunch of new announcements in the coming days, so look for them soon!

Before I do that, however, I did want to put something out there. People have always found this site on a variety of search terms, but–historically–the most searched for terms are "Elora Bishop pirate," "Elora Bishop torrent," and variations of "One Solstice Night" and "Cage the Darlings" with pirate, torrent and names of torrenting sites attached to the search term. And, while we were on vacation, this behavior tripled, for whatever reason.

I'm sure you can imagine, if you were in my shoes, that this would be deeply disheartening.

My wife and I operate a little Etsy shop, and are trying to pay off our debt and live solely on the income made through our writing and our shop. We're not there yet, but work tirelessly, every single day (and have, every single day, for YEARS), to reach this goal. We live on very little, we don't even buy coffee out anymore…I'm not telling you this for a sob story, but just the reality and the facts–I'm trying to put a face on the name that is searched so often for illegal downloads, a story so that you can understand that I'm human, not just a faceless author name. We hadn't bought groceries for months because we were channeling all of the money to our bills. That means we subsisted on canned food for months. The most unhealthy thing ever, and totally not recommended. Gods, I miss lettuce.

If I had the money from all of the people who have illegally downloaded my books, both as this name, and as my young adult name, we would be on the way to being completely debt free.

Which is disheartening and staggering and frustrating.

But I still have hope.

I know that illegal downloading will never stop. I understand that there are people who will always want something for nothing, who believe they deserve something for nothing. It's human nature. But I'm asking you, if you found my page looking for a free torrent of my work to please, please reconsider. My novel and novella are priced at $4.99 and $2.99 respectively. This is much, much "cheaper" than anything publishers are putting out, at $9.99 price tags (not that price should matter at all, illegal downloading is illegal downloading, and no book should be illegally downloaded, I'm just stating that this is not a lot of money!), and the royalties from my novel and novella go to paying off our debt, so I can become a writer full time. So that you can expect many, many more stories from me involving magical lesbians, love, enchantment and talking-animals-that-have-attitudes.

I'm not a faceless author, raking in millions of dollars every day, to go swimming in my pools of money like Scrooge McDuck (NOT THAT I HAVE NOT FANTASIZED ABOUT THIS, of course!). Our little family is trying to scrape by, change our lives based on our tenacity and courage and put out stories into the world about lesbians who love one another and maybe ride around on unicorns ON OCCASION.

I have been supported so completely and totally by my fans, and continue to sell more and more everyday, and I am SO GRATEFUL for that. I will NEVER cease being grateful for that. Our lives ARE changing, after years of constant work, hardly any sleep, and FAR MORE CAFFEINE CONSUMPTION than any mere mortal should have, and people are responding to my stories and in such wonderful ways–thank you, thank you, thank you.

Please know that when you purchase a copy and choose not to illegally download it, you are supporting us, you are supporting lesbian stories, you are paying for a novel and doing the right thing. Your karma just accelerates from there.

Thank you for listening and thinking about it. I appreciate it.

If you ever have downloaded my stories or found my stories and didn't have a chance to pay for them–I totally understand that this is the internet and these things happen–or you simply wanted to support my authorness by buying me a cup of tea, you could certainly do so via Paypal anytime.

Excerpts Added

Over the weekend, FANCINESS was added to the blog. I changed up the layout (who doesn't love pink? No, don't answer that–surely EVERYONE loves pink. ;D /delusional), and finally added excerpts from my two currently published works, Cage the Darlings and One Solstice Night, so you can read a scene from each online and judge whether you'd like to sparkle up your eReader or bookshelf with my lesbian romps. Wait. That sounds awkward…

Please click the novel you'd like to learn more about/read excerpt from/find purchase links for!

I'll have some new release information for you soon, my darlings! Until then, stay calm and read lesbian literature!