And so it begins….

So, I have to admit that I started this project as a lark. It really began with me disparaging a friend’s book, to my mind the “typical” lesbian romance in which there is softball, beer-drinking, a night at the bar, and way too much drama. The dialogue was terrible, the plot non-existent, the characters stereotypical, and the sex scenes either mundane or so implausible they left me wondering how women could even get into these positions. The drama particularly turned me off because it wasn’t something I wanted in my own life, why did I want to read about it?

Now I confess, my opinion of lesbian romance was ignorant, and I use the term used in its purest form, i.e. uninformed. I had written books in numerous other genres under different pen names, but had never had the slightest desire to write in this one. So when my friend threw out the dare, “Well why don’t you write one?” I laughed it off and did no such thing. Time passed, I wrote other things, novels, short stories, technical manuals, but no lesbian romance.

Finally, I was motivated by cynicism. I had begun pulling in a steady paycheck thanks to the digital publishing revolution, and things that I wrote 15 year ago were suddenly beginning to make money. So I had the shallow thought, “I’ll crank something out, throw it out there in e-book, and see where it lands.”

I already had an idea, kind of a dungeons and dragons type fantasy, so I started writing. I was shooting for one short book, maybe 50,000 words, I’d finish it up, then that would be that.

And then a funny thing happened.

I really started to enjoy the story, and I completely fell in love with the characters. And I realized the project deserved far more than I had intended to give, so I started over. And when I finished the first book, I immediately began writing the second. And then the third. And then the fourth.

And so the “Chronicles of Arianthem” was born, and what was going to be a “lark” ended up being a sweeping tale.