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This is a shameless plug, yet again. Following a chat with a trans friend who is also an author, I looked up her work on the net and found the website 'goodreads', which is mostly a place for readers to comment on published works. It also gives authors a chance to put up a little about themselves.
I am always looking for ways to attract new readers, so I joined. My page is up there under my real name (S.A.A. Calvert). My perfectly selfish request is that people have a look at my stuff on there and on Amazon, and if you feel like a little kindness to a middle-aged woman, leave a comment. In return, I'll work harder on 'Sisters'.
Comments
I starred all your bogs, Steff
and I will leave a review of them as well.
If you were so inclined, you could leave a review for "Quest for the Silver Cleric"
Go for It
As of today, self promoting is not a crime. In fact, I whole heartedly endorse the concept. The only thing that irks me about people who self promote are those who do but pretend they're not doing so when they are. This Saturday I'll be spending the entire day at the Mid-town Holiday Inn in New York self promoting the dickens out of the books Persephone and I have written. That my table will be nestled between the Lambda Literary Foundation table and the The Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies table should give me ample opportunity to show the flag for TG lit.
In the meantime, dear girl, promote away.
HW Coyle
a.k.a. Nancy Cole
"You may be what you resolve to be."
T.J. Jackson
Thanks ladies
Appreciate the kindness. Today, my tax return arrived. From the USA. Ah well...
Dorothy, I shall have a look for that one.
yeah
I had one of those at the weekend - for $4.30! Have a suspicion that it'll be more for 2014/15 though!
Madeline Anafrid Bell
Reader feedback
You don't recognize my name as I have just created it and I am not another writer of fiction but a reader and appreciator of your Sussex Border Stories.
It was your self depreciating "plug" for others to check your Kindle offerings and Goodreads reviews that finally prompted me to try and let you see what at least this one reader looks like.
It amazes me that anyone can create a world of fictional characters each of which I can identify with to some extent but who are different enough from me to offer surprises and even new insights (today you have managed to get me rooting for Jill, a balding, middle-aged, somewhat pudgy bird watcher!). Yet for this skill you get, beside what I suspect is little cash, next to no feedback except from your fellow writers.
Maybe that is the price for depicting as real human beings characters who also happen to be TG. Like real war veterans your characters have extremes of experience that most readers will never have and don't want to imagine having.
Even I don't want too much realism - I transitioned back in the late 70s and barely gave it a thought for over 30 years - now I read wanting both reassurance that I am not the only one with such experience and, like generations of older women before me, an uplifting ending
I am not likely to be a regular commenter as for half the year I have little or no broadband but much of what I have said applies to some other BC authors so while online I'd like to thank you Steph, Tanya Allan, Karin Bishop, Susan Brown, Jenny Walker and Nancy Cole whose works I buy for my kindle.
Rhona McCloud
Thank you so much
I have written this sort of comment before...
I was drawn to this site when I picked up on Angharad's writing, and finally decided to try my hand. I knew I was literate, as I have a degree in all that linguistics stuff, but I also knew I wasn't someone who is good at inventing Wonderful New Worlds. I sat and thought, and decided that what I would work at was character.
I wanted to create real people with real issues. I dug deep into my own neuroses (GID, PTSD) and came up with my first character. Write what you know, indeed. The first extended piece of fiction I have ever written became the first of the Sussex Border Stories, and of course after that I just HAD to write poor Mel's story.
The writing shows hesitancy, especially at the start of StD, but what I was after was to show different aspects of both humanity and GID. That is why the process each of my characters goes through is as different as I can make it, subject to one overriding rule. I believe that the vast majority of human beings are kind and decent folk, but it is the arseholes who are memorable. I have written some real arseholes, some truly evil people like Flogger Cunningham, but what I cling to are the rest. Eric Johnson is probably my touchstone. I can't do fluffy, and I recoil from such concepts as 'forced fem'. Crossdressing simply does not connect with my mind. I don't condemn it, I simply don't connect. A lot of people come to this site for escapism, and similarly I don't condemn that, but I try to keep things real.
What makes all of this worthwhile, apart from helping to exorcise demons and make sense of my own life, is when people like yourself write to me or pass comments that show me I have it right; that my fiction has touched a nerve or reflected the reality of another's life.
Such knowledge is beyond price.