Back in better days, mid-October, I got word that my novel Wishbone would be included in the I Heart SapphFic Reading Challenge for “Main Character in Uniform.” I was thrilled!

I didn’t think about how I might feel this week.

Knowing this was an election year, my emotions have ranged from hopeful optimism, to concern, to terrified pessimism (really need to renew my passport), back to hopeful optimism, onto joyful confidence (maybe the passport won’t be needed), and then…well, you know.

There’s a saying that all art is political.

Some art at some times is more political than other art at other times. Right now, a lot of art has become political, especially by LGBT+ creators. Especially books.

I don’t know about other artists, other writers (hand over my heart for the terrible loss of Dorothy Allison this week!), but I don’t approach my stories as a political act. I find a story I want to tell, and I tell it. How others react to it can make it political, obscene, daring, exhilarating, criminal, liberating—you name it. You get to name it, actually.

What I do is write.

When I got that email saying Wishbone would be included, I pulled out my copy and revisited this, to me, incredible book.

I’ve been writing pretty much my entire adult life but most of that time was for my job in communications—writing news stories, marketing copy, fundraising letters, etc. For almost twenty years, I’ve also been writing fiction. I started with a really crappy novel that sits on my hard drive. It’s not a bad story, so I might dig it out one day and see what I can make of it. Realizing I sucked as a novelist, I set out to learn the craft.

At the same time, I went through some really horrendous life experiences that to this day ripple through my memories with trauma. Writing helps me cope with what’s going on in my life, and this took up pages and pages of my journal. There was a wider lesson that could be valuable if I went public, but there are some things you simply can’t write about and at the same time protect people you care for.

That’s where fiction comes in.

“Story is how I understand life.” Dorothy Allison

Wishbone took every emotion I felt and distilled them into what I think is a pretty damn good story. It’s not about me. It’s not about those I wish to protect. It’s also not about those who did me wrong in so many ways. That’s the interesting thing about fiction. It can be about one thing but also about something else entirely.

For those working on the Reading Challenge, my main character, Meg Myers, is in uniform, a police uniform. But she’s also an animal control officer (yes, the usual trigger warnings apply). It isn’t your typical romance, though it is a love story and, spoiler, everything works out in the end. That’s what I like in stories I read and also in those I write. There are too many unhappy endings in real life.

As a political act, this story represented a resistance to unfair systems. My science-fiction space series is my response to unfair politics, though perhaps in an unusual form.

Wishbone was hell to write, mostly because I had no idea how to write a novel. I had wonderful help and guidance along the way and I’m very proud of what I ended up with.

There’s something special about first novels. There’s a freedom, an innocence to them. You can go places you might avoid later, once the world has passed its judgment, making you cautious. Revisiting Wishbone has emboldened me to return to that freedom in my current project.

Totally burying the lede, the ebook of Wishbone is on sale for $2.99 for this week only. Buy through this link to give I Heart SapphFic their commission. They are doing a wonderful service to writers and readers of sapphic fiction.