While preparing for publicity events for my debut novel Queerly Beloved, a rom-com about a lesbian baker/bartender/bridesmaid-for-hire who falls for the hot new lesbian engineer in town, I spent a fair amount of time thinking up all the questions I might get from interviewers and audiences. Having attended countless events for other authors, I thought I had a good handle on what to expect. What inspired you to write the book? What do you hope readers will take away from your novel? Is the main character based on you?
I’ve definitely gotten all of those questions over the past few months since Queerly Beloved was released. But another question I didn’t anticipate has come up over and over: Why did you write Charley, the love interest, as a butch lesbian?
Sometimes it’s been a question from masc-of-center queer women, enthusiastic to see that representation. Other times, it’s come with a touch of judgment, a bit of an accusation that Charley is a stereotype. From the first time I heard that question, I’ve always had the same kneejerk response: Because butch lesbians are hot as hell.
To answer another frequent question, my protagonist, Amy, is not really based on me. But because I wrote Queerly Beloved from the heart and wanted to portray the kind of queer life I recognize, we do share some interests and history. One thing Amy and I share is a bit of a Rachel Maddow fetish. I first saw Rachel Maddow on MSNBC before I fully realized I was gay. Something about her struck me — her short hair, her blazers, her refusal to be talked over, her determination to get to the bottom of complicated issues.
It would take me a couple of years to realize that the pull I felt to Rachel Maddow was more than just an interest in politics. Not to objectify a brilliant political analyst and historian, but let’s face it: She’s hot.
For my entire life, I’d been taught by society that for a woman to be considered attractive, she must be femme. Long hair. Fluttering lashes. Lipstick. Curves. Dresses to show off those curves. High heels. Polite smiles. A sweet laugh for appreciating men’s jokes. These were things that, even if subconsciously, I’d learned to value and cultivate in myself. Growing up in Arkansas, I’d been pushed and shoved into a box labeled “wife material” without really thinking about whether or not I wanted that. There was one path to being valued as a woman, and who was I to think I could pave my own way?
My queer awakening coincided nicely with my feminist awakening, about midway through my undergraduate years. I realized quickly that nothing makes my heart go pitter-patter like a masc-of-center queer woman. I’m instinctually drawn to the energy of someone who proclaims, “F*** what society says makes me attractive, I want to look like this.” It takes a certain amount of nerve to flip off expectations for women and find your own brand of cool.
Picture for a moment the stereotypes that make lesbians the butts of jokes. Too masculine. Short hair. Ugly. Obsessed with Home Depot. Too athletic. Aggressive. Drives a truck. Tough. Unattractive. The lesbians I saw in pop culture or in my community were too often pointed out as what I shouldn’t want to be, and certainly as what I shouldn’t want for a partner. The women with short hair and masculine clothes and a certain swagger were cautionary tales. And the women who loved them? Well, they couldn’t catch a man and were settling for a cheap imitation.
Jokes at the expense of lesbians never sat right with me. I always saw masculine women as admirable rebels, even when I was told not to. And then I realized that I admired them in another way. A way that was far more thrilling than any man I’d ever thought I was attracted to.
Is there anything hotter than a woman who doesn’t care how hot men think she is? In my estimation, that’s as hot as it gets.
We’ve been blessed with a plethora of queer romance novels in recent years, and I’m honored to be in amazing company with many queer debut authors this year. It hasn’t always been this way. I’m a lifelong romance reader, but I didn’t encounter a sapphic romance by a traditional publisher until 2018. That’s eight years after I came out! I still can’t believe how starved I was for queer content for all those years. Now we have incredible romances across the LGBTQIA+ spectrum available on bookstore shelves, pushing the boundaries of gender and gender presentation.
I’m grateful for the increase in queer novels being published, and the wonderful diversity of representation in those books. But I still notice more often than not in mainstream sapphic romances that femme/femme relationships are the norm. I know those relationships exist in real life, and I’m happy they exist on the page. But I also have to wonder: Are these femme/femme books getting more attention because the world prefers women that fit in traditional boxes of attractiveness? Are we still writing and reading about queer women with the male gaze in mind?
I hadn’t considered all of this when I sat down to write Queerly Beloved. I mostly thought, “My protagonist deserves the hottest lesbian love interest I can imagine.” And thus Charley, the short haired, suit loving, environmentally conscious engineer, was born. But as I edited the book and moved toward publication, Charley as a swoon-worthy love interest became increasingly important to me. I love that I got to write Charley as a desirable, even bordering on objectified, butch lesbian. I love that the things that make Charley unattractive in the eyes of the patriarchy make her a total babe to Amy.
Masc-of-center queer women are hot. Full stop. We need more sapphic romances that put them in the spotlight and give them the happy endings they deserve. I’ll keep writing those women and hoping I can do them justice.
Queerly Beloved is available from Amazon and Bookshop.
Read an excerpt from Queerly Beloved.