How dare I write sapphic characters?

This is a serious question, and worthy of the utmost respect.

 Mrs Ashton and Mrs Bradshaw (“Braddie”) are lead characters in The Crooked Medium’s Guide to Murder. And they’re getting a lot of love. In 1881, their funny, tender, quarrelsome, cross-class relationship has to be hidden.   I wanted to write older women not dependent on men and without childcare responsibilities, in a place and time when that was difficult.

We see now that that all marginalised groups are stereotyped, presented inaccurately, or deliberately misrepresented. Many voices have been excluded. Women, who play such a key role in the history of the novel, have been excluded from some genres and may still be under-represented.

People want people like them to be written from the inside, with understanding. That’s the basis of wanting queer people to write queer stories. And if well-off straight people write leap in to write queer people, that might exclude different sorts of writers from being heard.

To be blunt, publishing is easier for people with money in the bank. Writing takes lots of time and work, pays badly, and is difficult to sustain as a significant form of income.

BUT.

On the other hand, we have to believe in the disciplined power of the imagination to bridge differences between us. I passionately believe that a good novel is an empathy engine. We would have few good films, plays or books if those who shaped it did not try to reach beyond their immediate selves.  And to be specific, one person’s queer experience is very unlike some other queer person. The discipline of trying to do it well involves research and may mean widening the circle of people who see the book in draft.

Three things are true at once.

Writers that want characters not made of cardboard need to aim for truth in every character they write.

Real people who are like those characters are entitled to criticise them. If you got it wrong, good intentions alone are not enough.

The industry needs to be more genuinely committed to hearing everyone and opening doors. Obviously self-publishing helps but also, being rich makes self-publishing easier.

How dare I? So, I love and read books by women and sapphic women.

I choose a diverse beta group and editorial people I have worked with. In total, a month before publication, nineteen women and two non-binary people had read The Crooked Medium, and five men. Six to my knowledge are queer. I pick betas who aren’t afraid to hurt my feelings.

Reactions are very personal. In a previous book the female lead character Molly was called ‘the best female character they’d read for years’ but also ‘too conservative’ and ‘pushing a liberal agenda’. 

I see my writing characters as creating bridges, not barriers to sapphic writers.

You write a book and let it sail into the waters of being public. It even briefly hit #9 in UK LGBT Crime

A note: in our terms, Mrs Ashton is bisexual but has sworn fidelity to Braddie, who has never felt any sexual attraction to men whatsoever. Lesbian and bisexual-in-the-modern-sense were not words used or understood in the period.