wasn’t great. For me, it was a year of breakdowns and things beyond my control. Sure, there was a lucky break or 2, 3 vacations, and more than a couple of warm fuzzy moments with other living beings… but the bulk of it mostly just left me frazzled. It didn’t help that I had stupidly laid out challenging career/financial goals for myself at the beginning of the year, which meant I set myself up for year-long sensations of failure when the chaos of the universe demanded more from me than I had visualised myself giving.
This year, I’m not going to be that guy. The theme now is to become the kind of person who never gets frazzled or angry. Like that girl with the bloodied nose, bruised eye and scratched limbs who never appears bothered by anything you might do. Career/financial goals are still important, but no longer the most important. This year, I am making space for fun and chaos.
Working on: Business #2 and Business #3 which have been on some kinda roll since the beginning of the year for reasons I don’t fully understand. Unfortunately, due to that, I’ve got to pause work on Those Strange Women #4 for a bit to roll with the rolls while they still do roll, ya know? I’ll resume Those Strange Women #4 as soon as I can work out how to fit in some regular writing time in between.
Reading/Read: Travel guides. When the world began to reopen, my partner developed a passion for revenge travel and has been dragging me along since. (To the dismay of our very beloved and most precious will-always-be-my-baby fur baby to whom I am giving loving mushy faces to as I type this.) (But hey, we got to eat Racoon City Police Department Emergency Rations!) Also read: Empire of Pain—The Secret History of the Sackler Dynasty, A Woman In Berlin, Nazi Wives, The Making of Second Life—Notes from the New World.
Watching/Watched: Sympathy for Lady Vengeance (loved it before, was so happy to see it available on the flight I was on last week). Superintelligence. A whole bunch of true crime flicks on Netflix like the Most Hated Man on the Internet; Our Father; Keep Sweet: Pray and Obey; etc. Little Women (the Kpop version). The Lost City. Bullet Train. That cheesy set-in-Bali comedy starring Julia Roberts and George Clooney. Those are just what I remember. There’s prolly much more but yea, doesn’t really matter at the moment. Also watched: Uncensored Itaewon crush videos. (Yeah 🙁 )
Thinking a lot about: Business #2’s growth. Business #3’s projects. How is it the year is already coming to an end? And oh man, did I just totally forget about my new year’s resolution to play the IHL Reading Challenge and Jae’s Sapphic Book Bingo challenge? (Yep, I think I did.)
Working on: Those Strange Women #4. Business #2. Business #3.
Playing: Siberia 3. SimCity 2000.
Reading/Read: Acts of Contrition by Elena Graf. Research for Those Strange Women #4. My new year resolution to do both TB and Jae’s lesfic challenges has already been forgotten.
Watching/Watched: You Me Her, Death On The Nile, Uncharted the movie, Love On The Spectrum, The Principles of Pleasure, Jane The Virgin (leslove parts only, and I love Sin Rostro), Mindhunter (leslove parts only), Tinder Swindler, Fyre Festival, Snowpiercer, I cannot remember what else.
Thinking a lot about: Those Strange Women #4. Business #2’s project. Business #3’s projects. That seaside vacation I may be going on in June. Nothing else. I’m quite a boring workaholic these days.
Last year, my choice of hobby was wandering the land aimlessly with my partner and lounging lazily with our pet. This year, I’m going to give my free time more structure and play both the IHL Reading Challenge and Jae’s Sapphic Book Bingo during it so that… you know, achieve something, connect with new people, yada yada.
Since 2022 started, I’ve read:
Breaking Character by Lee Winter (Fake Relationship bingo box / challenge category)
Faltering by Jennifer Lyndon (POC character bingo box / challenge category)
Next I’ll read either The Delicate Things We Make by Milena McKay or Acts of Contrition by Elena Graf (for the Age Gap challenge category). I’ll post more about this new hobby of mine here (and I suppose reveal my taste in books). Lemme know if you’re playing too.
Last year, I set 3 goals for myself but met only 2. This year, I set myself 8 goals… one of them being “Finish and Publish Those Strange Women #4”. So off to work we go…
So I saw some readers wondering/asking if I’ll finish the Those Strange Women series. Short Answer: Hell yes. Long Answer: It will take a while because firstly, I’m writing the last 3 books all at one go for efficiency so this phase will take 3x longer than normal. Secondly, because book writing doesn’t pay the bills (for me at least, lemme know if you have tips and tricks to turn that around), I have 2 other businesses I work on to stay fed and grow my portfolio of stocks with so book writing is something I do a little bit at a time, slowly but surely. But, as someone coming from a place that treats LGBT content and honest expression like disease, I swear I will always treasure writing and publishing books online and I promise you I will finish Those Strange Women if it’s the last thing I do. So, everybody, please grab a magazine and a disposable cup and I’ll call your number when it’s time to read. Happy Holidays!
Florida, USA and want to read Notes on Parental Estrangement for free… you can now borrow it from the extremely awesome Pinellas Public Library Cooperative online system here: https://pplc.overdrive.com/media/6134949
“The series always has twists and turns and in The Woman Who Tried To Be Normal there were more than ever.”
“Trying to put together the pieces of Helen and Ethel was a lot of fun…. Their connection was absolutely fascinating like how they went from just hating each other to being completely obsessed with each other.”
“Every piece of the puzzle when it was all revealed was like… surprise.”
“I recommend this for everyone who’s looking for a little something different with a sci-fi element.”
Mega project is done and now in the ongoing forever stage. I have vacay-ed and rested. And this week, I resume work on Those Strange Women #4… by first re-reading Books 1-3 all over again because even the most excited of authors can forget what they once wrote (old age is going to be so fun).
Hello! It’s been a long while, i think, i don’t know, for me, this year has been whizzing by at the speed of light because i have been building something mega for my other business and behind in deadlines and scrambling to get it done while fending interrogations about when on earth it’s going to get done. But then I realised you might think Covid-19 got me or something (i think that a lot these days) so here i am to report that I’m safe and well and still somewhere out there making fun stuff for the world.
In other news, i am now vaccinated against Covid! First jab, my arm hurt for about a week and I developed a mild fever 24h in that lasted for 12h. Second jab, my arm hurt for 36h only but 12h in, I got really sick with a high fever, crazy full body aches, breathlessness, chest pains and a strong desire to vomit which lasted for a full day and slightly more. 12 days after my second jab, i developed BPPV which lasted 3 weeks and although the authorities won’t admit it, I’m pretty sure it is a consequence of the jab because I’ve never had BPPV before this and i don’t believe that much of life can be made of coincidences. But, all that’s over now and i’m back to what I was before, i think. In any case, I’ve no regrets getting the jabs because where i am, you can no longer enter any public or commercial establishment without being vaccinated so my not-a-nurse partner would have likely vaccinated me in my sleep with vaccines from a dodgy ebay-ripoff just so we could go out to dinner.
Okay that’s all the jokes from me today because i have to go right back to that all-encompassing project which is really all i do these days but hopefully the next time i say hi, it’ll be done and I’ll be on a short vacation at last, getting ready to charge ahead with my quarter-done Those Strange Women #4 instead. Take care you and have many nice days ahead!
Working on: Those Strange Women #4. And also that major project for my other business that I was supposed to have finished last month—but have not…
Playing: Resident Evil Village, Hitman 3, Uncharted: The Lost Legacy, Until Dawn
Reading/Read: The Story of the Human Body, The Nazi Doctors, The Private Lives of the Auschwitz SS, Anthro-vision
Watching/Watched: Fear Street Part 1, Snowpiercer, A Tale of Two Sisters (love this!), Year Million, Origins, Black Summer, Eli, Night Stalker, The Ripper, I’m sure there’s more but you know, movies come movies go…
Thinking a lot about: Which vaccine to get? Will mRNA give me cancer in a decade? How to work faster? How to keep your brain sharp? Is having not had a long holiday type of break since 2020 burning me out? Should I just take two weeks off to do absolutely nothing to recharge? Why do I keep getting migraines? Are you sure mRNA won’t give us all cancer?
Now that my strangest book yet is published and done, it’s time to go back to regular programming. Those Strange Women Book #4 is in the works. Stay tuned.
write something about my books. Why I wrote it, what I like about it, what I think of it, etc etc. But for Notes On Parental Estrangement (which, fun fact, I call NOPE in my files folder), I just don’t feel like saying much. Possibly because I’ve already said everything I need to about the book in the book itself. Mostly because I’m so done thinking about it. I’m glad I wrote it, I had a good process writing it, but that phase is over. And boy am I glad it is.
(Also my first, and possibly only, non-fiction book…)
So your estranged parent is dying and someone decided to tell you against your estranged parent’s wishes. Should you go visit, or not? Should you go to the funeral, or not? And what would you end up discovering about that parent you never knew, whose face you don’t even remember, whose life you have heard nothing about in recent years? What would you do and realise in the years after their eventual death? How would you grieve? Would you even grieve?
Those were the questions lesbian fiction author, Anna Ferrara had after getting a text message from a stranger on an otherwise regular weekday morning, informing her of the impending death of the mother who disappeared from her life when she was 5. What followed was a complicated 800+ days of discovering the secrets of a woman she knew nothing about, the uncovering of past hurts and buried emotions she didn’t even remember she had, which she documented in a series of journal entries that eventually provided the content for this book.
Written for adult children of absent, toxic or negligent parents and professionals seeking a real-world case study of the subject, this book is a real and honest record of the stages of grief, coping and self-discovery an adult child will go through when their estranged parent remains self-centred and unloving up till the very end.
Notes on Parental Estrangement Coming to you on 6 April 2021. Available for pre-order now.
The Woman Who Was Normal (Those Strange Women #4) is next (those who have been asking for it: yep heard you, on it). But before that I’m going to release a book that isn’t like my other books… isn’t something I enjoyed writing or want to read. This book isn’t even fiction and honestly I don’t even feel like talking about it.
But release it I must, because it‘ll do more out in the world than in my head (I think, and hope). Also because I’ve been working on it since 2018 and I really just want to be done with it.
Recently, I wrote a story about kindness for I Heart Lesfic. It’s about my partner’s parents and bananas. To go with it, I’m also giving away a copy of Snow White and Her Queen 2. You can read it and sign up to win here: https://iheartlesfic.com/2021/02/05/going-bananas-by-anna-ferrara/ Happy Monday everybody!
Working on: Notes On Parental Estrangement (non-fiction)
Playing: Resident Evil 3 2020, Bitlife, Until Dawn, Monopoly
Reading/Read: Keep Hold by Michelle Grubb, Elements of Game Design by Robert Zubek, The Woman Who Made Me Feel Strange & The Woman Who Pretended To Love Men by myself, Mengele: The Complete Story by Gerald L. Posner, The Nazi Doctors by Robert Jay Lifton
Watching/Watched: CNN & Fox News for US election gossip, American Horror Story 1984, The Haunting of Bly Manor, American Murder: The Family Next Door, Sisters Who Make Waves, Start-Up, Wonder Woman 1984, 8 seasons of Wentworth (Ballie! Mallie! Rallie!), History 101, Sex Explained, High Score, probably more than I can’t remember at this particular moment
Thinking a lot about: Work. Being productive. Improving myself.
When I first wrote Snow White and Her Queen, I intended it to be a standalone. It was my first book after all, I was just happy to get it done. But then I started hearing readers say they hoped to see more of them. So I read the story again then realised I too wanted to see more of them. Thus I began to wonder and ponder what ifs… and Shrek came to mind. Then Beauty and the Beast. Then Cinderella. And relationship dynamics beyond the honeymoon stage… and soon my brain was doing what it likes to do. The ideas began crowding my mind and the only way to get them away was to write them down… TLDR: I just felt like it. Snow White and Her Queen 2 seemed the right thing to do.
Pandemic. Snow White and Her Queen 2. Lockdown. Plans changed. OCD. Hoarding. Masks. Hand sanitiser. Opportunities. Stocks. Other business. Busy. Firsts. New home office equipment. Ergonomics. Partner. Pet. Lots of TV. Lots of games. Donald Trump. Zero travel. My first year ever with zero international travel. I miss travel. I really, really miss being able to travel.
Katherine – When I was writing Snow White and Her Queen 1, she was a Greta Garbo-Maleficent-Cartoon Evil Queen hybrid. This round, because I had been infusing my eyes with I bastardi di Pizzofalcone reruns, Rosaria (of Alex x Rosaria) was who I imagined most of the time when writing her.
Eirwen – In line with the above, Alex (of Rosaria x Alex) was who came to mind. And a very fair Megan Fox. Mashed up in the way only my mind can do.
Petronella – young Erika Linder
Isabella – young Kristen Stewart
Deora – Gossip Girl’s Lily van der Woodsen
For those who don’t know Alex x Rosaria, here’s YouTube:
Long before there was Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, there were two other stories some preferred not to tell…
“I have three profitable businesses and more money than anybody else in the land, some people even say I’m the fairest in the land, and yet you who obviously enjoys everything I buy for you are ashamed of being seen with me because I am a woman?!”
One year after leaving the North behind, Queen Katherine and Princess Eirwen find themselves struggling with new desires they never had to deal with before.
It doesn’t help that Eirwen’s new cinder dust covered apprentice brings to Eirwen something Katherine can never give, while someone Katherine once knew has taken to calling them “beasts”.
When desire brings out the worst in them and those around them, Katherine and Eirwen have to seek creative ways to get to that happily ever after they once thought possible, before it slips out of their reach once again, this time maybe forever and always.
Working on: Snow White and Her Queen 2 (Done. Now crawling through pre-publishing chores. I foresee a Dec 2020 release date.)
Playing/Played: The Last of Us 2 (terrible, terrible game, despite having lesbian protagonists), Resident Evil 6
Reading/Read: Nothing. Only the news these days. I’m not proud of this.
Watching/Watched: Into The Night. Many Zoom meeting videos. 1 Zoom interactive theatre play. Locked Up (I love Zulema!).
Thinking a lot about: Work. Work. More work. My country’s government is a b*tch when it comes to accepting or even acknowledging LGBTQIA+ matters but they’ve been surprisingly generous throughout COVID-19. So despite the pandemic destroying lives and ruining economies all around the world, my other business has been getting more opportunities than it’s ever had and I’ve been more preoccupied than ever grabbing those while I can. Life is bewildering sometimes.
Good news: I finished Snow White and Her Queen 2! Bad news: It’s a tad too long so I’m in the midst of cutting stuff out. Good news: Snow White and Her Queen and Eritis Mea are now available for borrowing at Public Libraries in Wisconsin and California, United States! Bad news: Given the way things are, I’m unlikely to get to visit any of those places any time soon. Good news: There’s always “one day”, “some day”. Bad news: Which could also be euphemism for “never”.
Hullo! It’s been a while! And that’s because ever since my partner began working from home with me, we’ve been having logistical issues, particularly because we share a study, with my work desk right behind hers, and because she’s in a people-centric job role and needs to be on video calls almost all the darned day long. The reason you’re hearing from me now at last though is because I finally decided hopping from iPad to computer 10x a day was no longer sustainable and moved my desktop computer out to the dining table. Yes, you heard that right. Dining table is now my work desk and I can now use it all the livelong day like before without having to shift in and out of the study just so the back of my head won’t be visible during a video call. Phew. Anyway, just want to tell you I’m thrilled as hell to be having 100% access to my computer again and I hope you’re feeling great these days too. And for Robert Jenner and all who might have been biting nails in wait of this—yes, Snow White and Her Queen 2 is almost done. Almost, though not quite yet 😉 Maybe next time I post again, or next next time, I’ll have the big announcement for you. Stay tuned.
Hello! How’s everybody doing? Is everybody okay out there (or should I say in there)?
I was sick a few days ago and quite convinced I had the coronavirus but today, it seems the the fever, urge to cough and breathlessness is gone. Was it just a mild case of the coronavirus good old garden-variety influenza? Who knows? Ever since a couple of my neighbours contracted the virus I’ve been too creeped out to leave my apartment. Even to get checked. Especially to get checked.
Anyway, amid all this doom and gloom, I told a funny story over at I Heart Lesfic’s blog. I don’t normally do funny and honestly I am not even sure if I can do funny properly, but after all that’s happened since the beginning of this year, I thought it’ll be good to try.
You can read it here. Lemme know if you laugh. Or don’t. Either way, stay home. And always wash your hands.
Playing: Hitman 1&2, Death Stranding (kinda gave up halfway because it’s the most tedious game I’ve played in a while)
Reading/Read: Fairytales, Coronavirus News (and nothing much else because I’ve been trying to keep my brain in fairytale narrative mode for Snow White and Her Queen 2, which has already made me miss reading fiction terribly)
Watching/Watched: Gypsy, Crash Landing On You (one about an unrealistically psychopathic romantic partner and the other about unrealistically perfect romantic partner; I binged on the former last weekend, 1+9 hours straight and I’m horrified it ended that way.)
Thinking a lot about: Washing hands and staying away from people. Why this year seems to be full of bad luck with the coronavirus pandemic killing businesses and travel plans, leaving people stuck at home afraid to be social, and on top of that my 11-year-old hardy computer dying on me. Whether or not to go big on buying stocks now or to hold out lest share prices drop even further.
I invited a woman I’d met only less than a month ago back to my apartment to hang out and watch DVDs (this was before the days of Netflix and chill). She had been introduced to me at an underground lesbian party by an acquaintance of mine (and friend of hers) who thought we’d be great together.
At that point, I had just come out of a long period of dating multiple women in an uncommitted manner and she had just ended a 2-year relationship. I told her I was tired of dating and just wanted stability from then on and she told me she had always been a very stable person.
We spent the rest of the party smoking together and after having to cross a “dangerous” road to purchase cigarettes on the other side, ended up holding hands till we went home.
When I invited her to my apartment that Valentine’s Day 8 years ago, we’d already gone out a couple of times but I still wasn’t properly sure if she liked me as much as I liked her until… she made very sure I understood that was so.
We promptly became “girlfriends” after that.
2 months later, I ended my lease early and moved in with her.
3 months after that, we bought each other rings, said vows to each other with only our stuffed toys in attendance and swore to be with each other till the end of our days. We began referring to each other as “wife” from then on.
A year later, I quit smoking. 5 years after me, she quit smoking.
It is now 8 years after that first Valentine’s Day we spent together and I… despite being the rare lesfic author who enjoys NOT having HEAs at the end of every book… am going to be spending this Valentine’s day with that very same woman.
What this means is that the same could happen for you too. Also that horror writers are indeed always the sweetest people you’ll ever meet in real life 😉
Happy Valentine’s Day, dear readers. Have a good one.
In collaboration with the awesome I Heart Lesfic’s Love Is In The Air Sale, Eritis Mea: An interactive horror story about same-sex attraction will be at $3.99 before returning to the price of $7.99. For those who have Kindle Unlimited, this is also your last 10 days to read Eritis Mea for free before I remove it from KU once and for all. Lots of other lesfic books at the sale too so you might want to check it out here.
As I promised, I’m going to add to this list I’ve been building once a month, so here are my Jan 2020 additions: Cynthia Nixon, Christina Marinoni, Fiona Shaw, Sonia Deraniyagala, Lori Lightfoot, Wanda Sykes, Alex Niedbalski, Ginny Dougary, Alison Goldfrapp, Lisa Gunning, Vita Sackville-West.
Many of the above are late in life lesbians with crazy-admirable careers so you know it is possible to be past 40 and falling in love with a woman for the first time, while also kicking ass at work. Anything, and everything is possible, dear readers. Everything.
Snow White and Her Queen 2. I didn’t expect it to be. I sat down and set out to work on The Privileged Ones but by the end of the hour, ideas for Snow White and Her Queen 2 were swarming and it ended up being what I spent the rest of the day, week and month doing. You must know I’m seldom in control when writing. My brain and heart want what they want and the rest of me just follows.
I’ve got 2 books in my head right now. The sequel to Snow White and Her Queen and another interactive one called The Privileged Ones which came to me in a dream, complete with cliffhangers, plot twists, ending and all (I literally watched the whole story play out in my sleep like a movie, weird but true). Of these 2, I haven’t decided which to work on first but they both will be done before I embark on the next mega project—the last 3 books and resolution of my Those Strange Women series.
If that excites you, remember you can always join my mailing list to be updated when new books come out.
Since it’s the season for new resolutions, I thought it might be helpful to mention that Amazon Kindle is not available in my home country. Meaning I cannot buy Amazon Kindle books directly or view my own Kindle titles on Amazon.com (they don’t even appear in search). Nor can banks in my country receive direct payments from Amazon. Nor can foreign currency cheques be processed for cheap.
What I always see when browsing the Amazon Kindle store. No lesfic title is ever available for purchase.
It’s even worse with iBooks, where all I ever see in the app store is a permanent collection of about 50 free titles from the Dickens era.
And yet, I’ve been self-publishing and earning from both those platforms for almost 3 years now.
My point is: Life always finds a way.
So think bold, dream beyond your boundaries and may you all have a brilliant and very exciting New Year ahead!
If you didn’t win any Anna Ferrara books in the Women & Words Hootenanny event this year, here’s another chance for you to buy one at a discount: I Heart Lesfic’s Mega New Year Sale where over 100 lesfic authors (including me) do Boxing Day sales from 26-30 Dec. I’m going to busy myself with ingesting the ton of chocolate in my fridge and boiled wine now. See you again next year!
When I started The Long List of Lesbians last year, I had this idea to compile a very extensive database about everything lesbian related. Unfortunately, life got in the way and I ran out of time and resources to attend to it. So here’s what it is now: just one long list of female celebrities or newsworthy women who have professed to have romantic feelings for other women. I’ll update this list once a month!
Like I mentioned before, the leads in Eritis Mea are based on real people I watched from afar, who seemed to vibe more than just a work relationship, but I don’t want to go as far as to ‘out’ them (especially since I don’t even know them). So here are the closest approximates: Vlada—Natalia Vodianova (aka Supernova) Dasha—Milla Kunis (but taller)
On her death bed, her friend who was arranging her end-of-life matters, told me I would be going to hell if I didn’t believe in God (meaning: their version of God). At the funeral service, that same friend introduced me to the pastor as a non-Christian and he in turn spent the entire sermon telling all the people in attendance how important it was to convert me to Christianity. In the 6 months after that, I was constantly bombarded by invitations from my mother’s friends to go to their churches, fellowship group gatherings, celebrations, camps, Bible study classes, revival events, and so on and so forth. Some invited me to lunch and sat me next to a pastor. Others gave me books and pamphlets to their churches. Many asked to pray for me or told me they will be or had been praying for me. Not one of them asked me what I believed in, or even how I was feeling (you know, since I was next-of-kin of the deceased?).
Eventually I found out the mother I never knew had a Master’s Degree in Christianity and had willed all her money and assets to Christian organisations.
I declined all her friends’ invitations because I could smell a repeat of that very awkward funeral service coming from a mile away, but out of courtesy and curiosity, I did read the books they gave me, and the Bible itself, and I spent most of this year trying to understand the religion, and the enigma that is my mother.
After that, I rewrote Eritis Mea as a horror story.
What’s most scary about it, if you ask me, is that many of the non-supernatural events in the book are based on events that have happened to real people in reality. Those, I think, are way more terrifying than any made-up supernatural event could ever be.
For Vlada, a cruise ship singer, raised to be Christian, her same-sex, God-fearing, Bible-quoting singing partner, Dasha had always been someone she could only ever peep at in quiet moments, whenever nobody was around, or looking…
… until a stranger claiming to know how to get her the love of her dreams changes everything.
Suddenly, Dasha is head over heels in love with Vlada, open to homosexualism, ever ready to throw religion into the wind in order to be with her. Everything is lovely and wonderful, for a while, until the consequences Vlada had not been warned about rear their terrifying heads… and make her question the rationality of giving up everything for a love disapproved by God, church and family.
In this story with multiple endings and many surprises, the fate of our protagonists will depend on the choices you make on their behalf. How will you behave when life pushes you beyond the boundaries of what you know to be possible, or true? Would you put your trust in faith or love when that happens? Would you be able to survive?
Hello! Welcome to my refurbished site! I decided to revamp because the previous one was a little slow to load and not particularly user-friendly. Like Goldilocks, I found v1.0 too simple, v2.0 too complicated, so I can only hope v3.0 will be the one that will be just right! Of course, as with everything else, only time will tell.
In other news, Eritis Mea, the book I spent the whole of 2019 writing, is now available for Pre-Order on Amazon at just $0.99! CLICK HERE TO PRE-ORDER. It will be available on KindleUnlimited and Amazon only until the end of Feb 2020. If you need information about when you will be able to get it at other e-book retailers, in other formats, contact me.
Photo by Matthew Henry. Cover design by (as always) Me. Because I enjoy doing it. I find design very relaxing. Publish date: 25 November 2019! Stay tuned for updates.
Ok these posts are starting to all sound the same, but here goes… Another sale this week (Nov 4 – Nov 8) with the very superb iheartlesfic.com: Get Snow White and Her Queen, the book that started my lesfic writing journey at only $3.99 (Usual: $8.99), along with FREE or very discounted books by TB Markinson, Monica McCallan, Miranda MacLeod, K.B. Draper, Jax Meyer, Niamh Murphy, Nicole Higginbotham-Hogue & S. T. Gibson! Click here to see the full list of on-sale books! 🙂
That’s all from me for now. I’m kinda swamped with trying to finish Eritis Mea (my next book) by the end of fall like I promised so I’m prioritising doing that over blogging for now. Hopefully I’ll have a new book to sell the next time I come back here. Can you believe it’s been almost a year since I last finished a book now? Time does fly, whether or not you’re having fun!
I’m that kind of person. I like to build, rebuild, and rebuild all over again. It brings me joy the way cleaning brings some people joy. I don’t know why, but here I am, in the midst of doing it, just because. I’ll only be done in a couple of weeks though because I only have a couple of hours every weekend to work on it.
Playing: Cordless VR shooters by Zero Latency, The Sims 2
Reading/Read: Unicorn Tears by Jamie Pride, My Warren Buffet Bible by Robert L. Bloch, Oprah by Kitty Kelley, 96 Hours by Georgia Beers
Watching: The Avengers, Avengers Infinity War, Avengers Endgame, Captain America, The Feels, Bao Bao, We Are Gamily, Greta, Hotel Mumbai, a ton of Asian LGBT documentaries on the GagaOOLala app
Thinking a lot about: The game of life. Next moves, next next moves and next next next moves…
So I’ve been kinda lax with this one. I scheduled it to be out in Jan 2019 and was completely on schedule until my mum started to die and eventually died, throwing my life into a mess for the next half a year or so.
I was not my old self when in grief. It was like I took on my mum’s interests (Religion! Local affairs!) and lost interest in writing lesfic because she would have thought it shocking (thanks to her religion) and possibly frightful.
Thankfully, that’s all past. After I learned more about her and realised I didn’t want to be anything like her, I went back to my old self in a heartbeat. So here we are, ready to go back to being the speedy writing machine of before, 100% comfortable again with being a women-loving creative woman.
In the meantime, Happy Pride Month! I love you all, just as you are!
Of all the over 200 books available in the sale, here’s what’s caught my eye:
The Immortal by Natasja Hellenthal
Rapture by Pike Martell
Dark Alleys by Lola Andrew
Vampire Tears by Jade Astor
This Time by S. W. Andersen
Artemis Gardens by Jade Astor
Girls Don’t Hit by Geonn Cannon
The Curse of Doll Island by Ocean
Occasions of Sin by Elena Graf
Lies of Omission by Elena Graf
Acts of Contrition by Elena Graf
Olympus Nights in the Square by Vanda
Paris, Adrift by Vanda
Mask of the Highway Woman by Niamh Murphy
In This Small Spot by Caren J. Werlinger
Time Undone by AJ Marchant
Turning Point by Lara Zielinsky
I Remember You by H. L. Logan
Separate Like Stars by Diana Kane
The Actress by Marian Snowe
Homecoming by Marian Snowe & Ruby Grandin
Willow by Raven J. Spencer
Harem by Raven J. Spencer
Writing this list has taught me I’m likely a fan of Jade Astor, Elena Graf, Vanda, Marian Snowe and Raven J. Spencer. And also that I dig Hollywood stories.
My second five are: Botswana, Solomon Islands, Maldives, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines and Yemen.
What I’ve noticed so far is that the countries that punish homosexuality tend to belong to either of two camps: 1. An Islamic country under Sharia law (usually punishes by lashing, stoning and imprisonment) or, surprise, surprise, 2. a former British protectorate/colony (using ancient British penal code that declares homosexual activity an unnatural offence/indecent practice between persons, usually punishes with years of imprisonment). No comment on the Islamic states but I do hope Britain will do more to clean up the messes it started.
In the wake of Brunei’s decision to stone to death those who admit to homosexual activity (or those who have been unfortunate enough to have been seen by four eyewitnesses when indulging in so), I’ve decided to dedicate my next few Long List of Lesbians additions to providing information on places where lesbian activity could get you punished because, really, who wants to be arrested, detained, caned, stoned or die when on holiday, right? My first five entries on this topic are in Asia and Africa: Brunei, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Mauritania, Nigeria.
Playing: InstLife (Android), Shadow of the Tomb Raider (PS4)
Reading/Read: 90 Minutes in Heave by Don Piper, The Art of Power by Thich Nhat Hanh, The Eleventh Day by Anthony Summers, Toxic Parents by Susan Forward, The Emotionally Absent Mother by Jasmine Lee Cori, The Art of Disappearing by Ajahn Brahm, The Teaching of Buddha by ? (was a free book I got from a hotel room in Myanmar), Grieving the Loss of a Parent by Silas Henderson, The New Testament by ? (was a book on a shelf at the hospice my mum was warded at).
Thinking a lot about: Business building, quitting coffee, religion, life.
My partner likes to veg out to random movies before bed and on one of the nights recently, the movie that got lucky was the Hong Kong-Taiwan-and maybe China production, Girls 2, also known as Girls vs Gangsters I think. I prefer reading before bed so I usually seldom pay much attention to anything she puts on, but for Girls vs Gangsters, I found myself looking up, a lot, and eventually even put away my Kobo to watch the whole thing with her.
Before we go on, let me make it clear Girls vs Gangsters is not a lesbian movie. None of the characters are lesbians, the romantic storylines in the film are entirely heterosexual and they are very definitely identified as simply really good friends. It is also a very cheesy movie with a very slapstick plot that I’m not going to discuss here because, while I did have a few good laughs, I don’t really have much to say about it.
What I do want to mention, however, and this is also the reason I began watching and persisted with watching even as the story got covered in a layer of cheese thicker than my quilt, are the long gazes the lead actresses (there’s 3 of them and they are all gorgeous) would give each other, and the kisses they put on each other’s lips, and the tender hugs and caresses they would offer each another at every little opportunity, and the outright verbal expressions of ‘I love you’s. Basically, if you took away the rest of the film, exercised your imagination and put all those affectionate moments together with a little creative editing, you could probably get a beautiful, much-liked twenty-minute lesbian short film for YouTube out of it.
Like this… (Credit: YouTube)
… and this… (Credit: YouTube)
…. and this… (Seriously, there’s a ton more but I need to move on with life now.) (Credit: YouTube)
Confused, I picked out Girls 1 next and watched it for clues about what could really be going on, like if it could be something the director (who was also the writer) intended or if something was happening between the actresses in real life? I ended up finding more of those ‘I love you’s, pecks and hugs and professions to be there forever for each other, and even a scene where the 3 gorgeous leads strip off and jump into a shower together (yes, all 3, 1 shower, together), all in the name of being really good friends, and all while simultaneously professing an interest in dating/sleeping with men.
Just good friends.
Very good friends.
Very, very good friends. Yup.
Now, I don’t have a lot of heterosexual close female friends but the ones I do have, I will never kiss or hug or say ‘I love you’ to. And they neither have nor will to me, or each other, as far as I can tell. The close female friend that I did most recently kiss and hug and say I love you to became my partner. And for the record, we only began showering together after we started sleeping with each other.
So I have no idea what’s really going on in those movies, if it’s a culture or state of mind I don’t yet understand, or a means of making a film where girls get to kiss each other and show love for each other without the film being banned from or rejected by the box office? I don’t know. All I can tell you is that if you want to see very pretty, femmy Chinese actresses holding each other tightly, stroking each other lovingly, showing infinite concern for each other and proclaiming their love for each other without anybody making it into a very big deal at all, you will enjoy Girls 1 & 2.
I certainly did.
(Because it’s not properly a lesbian film though, I didn’t add it to my Long List of Lesbians. But I did only just add others, mostly in the United Kingdom section. Go here if you want to see.)
Okay, so I’ve gotten back into writing Eritis Mea practically daily, however, because I simultaneously launched my freshly-revamped other business—the one I use for Linked In and to talk to acquaintances and distant relatives about since I can’t seem to ever make myself mention the L-word to their faces—and because I’ve been busy settling my freshly-deceased mum’s affairs, progress on Eritis Mea has been extreeeemmeeeelllyyyyyy snail-like.
I took two weeks to finish writing/editing a single 13-page chapter—not kidding. The famous author (sorry, I can’t remember who right now) who said write everyday or you’ll lose the flow was right. After months of not writing, I feel like my engine can’t quite run as fast as it did before. With The Woman Who Tried To Be Normal, I was doing one chapter every six hours at this point in the writing. Right now, no matter what I try, I can’t recreate that level of productivity for some reason.
It does, however, feel very nice to be writing slowly enough to get to properly enjoy the words and play around with situations, which I perhaps hadn’t been doing enough of when speeding along. Perhaps it’ll make the work better? Who knows? Let’s see.
In other news, I resumed compilation of the Long List of Lesbians and only just added 15 new entries. And I think Jacintha Ardern is just absolutely fabulous and inspiring.
I can tell because my dreams have changed and my thoughts have gone back to being the ones I used to have before everything went to hell. I think I’ll resume writing Eritis Mea tomorrow. I’m quite looking forward to it really. In the meantime, I’ve been updating my Long List of Lesbians on and off. Have you noticed? Talk again soon.
My mum passed away recently, abruptly killed by a vicious disease that transformed her from functional to dead in a matter of weeks. I never thought I would care if she died, since I hadn’t actually had a relationship with her past age 5, but, turns out, I do. And rather deeply too. Unfortunately, by the time I saw her again, for the first time in almost two decades, she could no longer speak and died soon after, without leaving me any note, video or message. All I have now are her objects, the words of strangers who knew her better than I ever did, questions, buckets of regret and a reservoir of wishes I know will never be fulfilled. All of a sudden, I am painfully aware of how lousy I am at making wise choices, as was she, and am no longer certain if what I believed was best for myself is truly the best thing to be doing with my life at all. All of a sudden, all I want is to sit and rethink my whole life, to scour her apartment for information on the person she was, to cry and learn from our mistakes, and to rewrite my narrative to incorporate the lessons I have since learned from her existence and passing. I don’t know when I’ll be done with this, if I’ll ever be done with this; I can only leave you with the lyrics of Passenger’s Let Her Go and tell you that my eyes fill up every time I hear it now. Publication of Eritis Mea will be delayed.
Something awful happened to me recently; something that might have changed me forever… but I agreed to be part of I Heart Lesfic’s Mega December Sale before the ground got pulled out from under my feet so here you go, Snow White and Her Queen, my very first lesfic novel, at only $2.99 from now till 2 Jan 2019 (regular retail price: $8.99). I’ll tell you more next week but for now, you might want to grab some heavily-discounted lesfics from I Heart Lesfic’s Mega December Sale page before the promotion ends. I hope you had a Merry Christmas and will have an equally Happy New Year.
Yes. Do I have feelings for her the way Snow White had feelings for the Queen in my book, Snow White and Her Queen? No. Hell no fucking way no! Even though the age gap between her and I is less than the gap between her and my father, we have no relationship. Zero relationship. If I had to choose between her life and my darling, precious pet’s life, I’d choose my pet without even blinking. If I had to choose between her life and an ex-colleagues life, I’d choose the ex-colleague after blinking. If I had to choose between her and one of my readers, I’d choose… you get the idea. The stereotype is real. My stepmother came into my life when I was really young and I hated her the second we were introduced because she represented the death of my parents marriage. It wasn’t even about her. It was what she represented that I hated. I think she tried a little, at the beginning, but gave up the second she had a child of her own. Today, we don’t even keep in touch. I wouldn’t call her if I won a million dollars and I know for sure she’d hang up on me if I called her to ask for a million dollars. This is the reality. All that romance between Snow White and Her Queen? Sheer imagination and fantasy.
I was on a cruise in the summer of 2018, not working, not writing, not thinking about stories or anything creative, and I indulged fully in the music of the band that played on some nights on the pool deck and once inside the theatre. The band was made of two singers, both female, and, I think, four male instrumentalists. The singers had accents I couldn’t decipher and one was blonde while the other had dark brown hair. They were both in their late 20s, I think, and quite pretty, but what stood out for me was the way the blonde singer kept glancing over at the singer with dark brown hair while singing, as if taking peeps at her, even though the one with dark brown hair never once looked her way… And of course, my lesfic-soaked mind thought only of one thing… and next thing I knew, I was typing out Eritis Mea as quickly as my fingers would go…
Playing: Far Cry 5 (PS4), Daisy Chain’s Superstar (DOS), haunted houses (in October)
Reading/Recently Read: The Woman In Cabin 10 by Ruth Ware, The Fall Girl by T.B. Markinson, The Morning After by Jae, Psychology Made Simple by Alison Thomas-Cottingham, The Spiral Notebook by Stephen Singular, The Psychology of Romantic Love by Nathaniel Branden, A Dark Night in Aurora by Dr. William H. Reid
Thinking a lot about: How differently the same story can be perceived by different people, how life is constant hardship, the workflow for the Long List of Lesbians, all sorts of stuff related to my other business.
Watched Disney’s Christopher Robin over the weekend. Cried through most of the movie and was miserable for a full day afterwards so I really think it’s the best thing I’ve watched all year. You see, a long time ago, I had as little brain as Pooh has and I was as happy and at peace as he was, but I became just like grown-up Christopher Robin without even realising so. I thought being dedicated to work, a fighter, a survivor, competitive, tough and emotionless would lead to happiness but seeing Christopher Robin yell at Pooh for being a dimwit/nuisance changed my mind about everything. I don’t want to be that guy. Now, all I want to be is simple, sweet, kind, present for my loved ones and eternally positive—all the things I used to be before school and work told me to go fight everybody else for a living. I’m telling you about this because it is most likely going to affect the endings of my next few books. I’m going to move away from doom and gloom maybe forever because all I want to do now is fill the world with Winnie The Pooh soft toys.
So, I’ve this thing where I like to build and tweak and build and tweak and tweak and tweak and tweak things to perfection, and recently I did it to Annaferrarabooks.com too… So, if you have the time, please poke around my self-made upgrade. And yes, I did it myself because I really do have this thing for building things from scratch. Brands, businesses, rooms, stories, systems… Once I get started I just can’t stop… Anyway…
What’s New:
More content is now directly visible on the main page.
You can now read all book blurbs from the main page.
I don’t write them because I enjoy seeing them happen. Rather, I write them because I have seen them happen and don’t quite know how to discuss them other than through fiction. It’s not quite the same thing. Also, the opinions of my characters do not reflect my own.
A couple of months back, I decided to try exercising outdoors before work to see if it would improve my productivity through the day since many self-help books said it would.
Shortly after I started, I began saying hello to a man in his 60s who had the job of keeping the plants in the neighbourhood watered and trimmed because we saw each other every single day. After a few weeks of hellos, the man initiated conversation and after that would make small talk with me about impersonal matters once in a while. This went on harmlessly for a few months, until one day, out of nowhere, he suddenly said (not in English)—
“Girl, let me tell you this, as a friend, because I care about you. You are married aren’t you?”
I said I was even though legally, I’m not. Same-sex marriage isn’t a thing where I live and I wasn’t interested in telling him—an acquaintance—about the female partner I was committed to and living with in the block just metres away from his place of work.
He then said…
“Just go see a fertility doctor.”
My eyes got big.
When I was 16 or 17, I knew with certainty there was something terribly wrong with me.
I had never crushed on a guy in all my years of life, not even a pop star guy, yet somehow I was always crushing on older women, even pop star women.
This was the early 2000s when nobody in my country was talking about homosexuality so, being young and green in life, I was a little confused. I didn’t know anything about lesbianism other than what I saw from the five lesbians I knew from school and two of them were butch and three of them liked only butches so I was pretty convinced I wasn’t a lesbian. How could I be when I wasn’t attracted to butches or wanting to be butch, right?
I didn’t know what I was but I knew I was going to have to find a man to marry and get divorced from anyway just so nobody would know how weird I really was. It was more socially acceptable to be a divorcee than it was to be a lesbian in those days, obviously.
All the books in the series are standalone stories with their own storylines and conclusions but the deeper histories and genealogy of a few key characters are explained across the series. I don’t know how to explain this to you without giving too much away but for example, you will find out more about Lane’s (lead character in #1) heritage in #2 and #3.
So, ideally, for maximum enjoyment, start from #1 and work your way to #3 chronologically. The series goes back in time so you first see the characters in the future (2030), then in the past (1999 then 1975) as the books go along, so you can see why starting from the future might make the past that little bit more surprising.
If you started with #2, you can choose to read either #1 or #3 next, depending on who you care about more. The woman or the child?
If you started with #3, the stories will make more sense to you if you do #2 first then #1 after.
Helen – H.G. Wells of Warehouse 13. I think the whole character was written as homage to H.G. Wells of Warehouse 13. Obviously, I am a secret fan (of the lovely Jaime Murray too, of course).
Ethel – A real woman I know of but I’m not saying who this time because I made her way worse than she actually is and I don’t want to get sued. You can pretend she’s an older and more messed up version of Myka of Warehouse 13 if you want. And treat the whole book like Bering & Wells fanfic, which it might very well actually be, although I didn’t consciously realise so when writing, only after, when reading.
Lilly & Wanda – They’re the leads in Those Strange Women #4 so I’ll tell you when that comes out.
The Husbands – Yes, unfortunately, there are husbands in this book, since it is 1975 and it is about a woman trying to be ‘normal’. You can think James Stewart or Gary Cooper or whichever traditional American man you can envision…
The Woman Who Tried To Be Normal, third book in the Those Strange Women series is a standalone story that reveals the secret past of the mysterious female doctor Fleur befriended in Those Strange Women #2.
Can you read it without reading the earlier books in the Those Strange Women series? Yes.
Will you be thrilled about the twist of events if you have read the earlier books in the Those Strange Women series? Absolutely. Click here to find out where you can buy The Woman Who Tried To Be Normal in ebook and paperback.
You can now buy my books in paperback at GinGin Store in Taipei!
This is really cool because GinGin and Taiwan, of which Taipei is capital, are sort of heros of the LGBT community in Asia. You might already know that in May 2017, Taiwan became the first and only country in Asia to allow same-sex marriage but what you probably don’t know is that GinGin Store began almost 2 decades before that, while discriminatory incidents were still occurring against gay men in public establishments, because its founding team wanted to give LGBT individuals in Taiwan a place where they could feel welcome during daylight hours. Before it came into being, gays could only hang out in bars and parks at night and nobody talked about lesbians.
To be published Sep 2018.
Third book in the Those Strange Women series.
In 1975, 375 miles away from Area 51, Helen, a synaesthete who sees sounds and hears images, marries an aircraft engineer, hides her dreadful past and tries to live a normal life for a change. That all crumbles when her new neighbour, Ethel, wife of her husband’s colleague, regards her with extreme hostility and, later on… love. Click here to read more or buy.
Working on: The Woman Who Tried To Be Normal
Playing: This War Of Mine (again)
Reading: S by Koji Suzuki (author of The Ring), Area 51 by Annie Jacobsen, NeuroTribes by Steve Silberman
Watched: The Meg (cos Ruby Rose!), Disobedience (Rachel Weisz + Rachel McAdams = very hot), Titanic, A Quiet Place
Thinking a lot about: The revamp of my other business, the story I’m going to write after Those Strange Women 3 and its format, how to improve my typing speed.
Chemical imbalance? Maybe. Possibly. More often than not—unlikely. You know what I think causes depression? I think racism causes depression. Homophobia causes depression. Inequality causes depression. Knowing you’ll starve and become homeless if you don’t keep going to that job you hate and suffer at causes depression. Being told you’re not popular enough causes depression. Being told you have to be popular causes depression. Being told you’re ill and require pills for the rest of your life just to be normal causes depression. Instead of trying to change someone’s brain chemistry to cure depression, why not try changing how you’ve been treating them first?
Working on: The Woman Who Tried To Be Normal
Playing: Various real-life escape rooms
Reading: Dolly by Susan Hill, When Work Doesn’t Work Anymore by Elizabeth Perle McKenna, Women Aviators by Karen Bush Gibson.
Thinking a lot about: Who I want to be now that I’m one year older. How much life resembles a game. How to fit all the things I want to do into the limited time I have.
It’s my birthday this month! To celebrate, you can get all of my books at 75% off when you buy them from Smashwords (offers EPUB/MOBI/PDF versions)! Click here to get them before the sale expires on 31 July 2018!
Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs was published in the early 19th century. Because I wanted Snow White and Her Queen to be possibly real, it had to take place a couple of hundred years before that, long enough before for the truth to be distorted beyond recognition. I settled on the 16th century because it had castles, huts in the woods, inequality and violent punishments—all the things I needed for my story—and I put my characters within it. It was a very different time back then. Average life expectancy was 35 years. Many died in infancy, more died in childhood, even more died in childbirth. The ones who survived lived till age 50 or 60 only. The average age of marriage was, as a result, much earlier than it is today. It was also arranged, for reasons that had absolutely nothing to do with love or romance. Girls could legally be married from the age of 12 onwards, though it was usually only the girls from rich families who married young. Thus, in accordance with those circumstances, my poor little rich Queen Katherine was made to marry at age 13.
Snow White and Her Queen was the very first book I published. Naturally, I made a ton of rookie mistakes while doing so. While I’ve since fixed the typos, I can’t help but cringe every time I imagine what my first few buyers must have thought of me. So, if you’re an early buyer of Snow White and Her Queen and have the version that says ‘First Edition’ (in the copyright page), drop me a note and I’ll send you a coupon to get $7.99 off any purchase on annaferrarabooks.com. Just my little way of saying sorry and thanks and love you!
Working on: The Woman Who Tried To Be Normal
Playing: Resident Evil 6 (PS4)
Reading: Memory Man by David Baldacci & Under The Influence by James Milam and Katherine Ketcham
Thinking a lot about: How to make more money? How to revamp my other business? If writing lesfic novels can really be my whole, sole purpose in life?
When I was a really old teenager, I wanted to die. I read up all the ways to get it done, picked my favourite and made a decision to just do it within the year. I then let myself do all the crazy things I never dared to do before, just so I could ‘go out with a bang’. I dropped out of college, moved in with a woman I kinda had a crush on and did whatever I felt like whenever I felt like. Guess what happened next? By the end of the year, I decided I liked being alive after all. I had figured out how to live properly, the way my body needed me to. I never wanted to die ever again and it hadn’t taken one antidepressant for me to end up that way.
Now imagine if I had taken antidepressants instead.
The first book I tried to write was actually the third book I published while the first book I published was the third book I tried to write. Why?
It all started in June 2015, after weeks, or maybe months, of deep, frantic soul-searching (I’ll tell you all about that some other time). I decided to write and self-publish lesbian fiction and had an idea for a series (I’ll explain why another time too) so I jumped right into getting the first book written. 11 months on, in early or mid-2016, when I had three vastly different rough drafts of that very first book down, I, out of nowhere, got the idea for the Lane Thompson character (the lead in The Woman Who Made Me Feel Strange). I quickly realised she would be a more interesting character to start my series with so I paused all work on my first story to work on hers instead.
By late 2016, I was 80% of the way with the Lane Thompson story when, again, out of nowhere, Snow White and Her Queen materialised in my head (read how that happened here). That story was so clear to me, so straight-forward, so likely to be thought of and written by another person, I knew I had to write it—fast—before anybody else did. So once again, I dropped the Lane Thompson story to write Snow White and Her Queen.
(off the top of my head, in no particular order) Carol (I loved it so much I even downloaded the music sheet of its theme to play for fun), Dr Marsten and the Wonder Women, Chungking Express / My Blueberry Nights / Fallen Angels / generally anything by Wong Kar Wai, Memento, Oldboy, Sympathy For Lady Vengeance, 301/302, Grave of the Fireflies, Earth 2100, He Loves Me He Loves Me Not, The Orphanage.
My wife and I finished A Way Out (PS4 version) over the weekend and we both loved it since, for once, we actually got to play together, at the same time, on the same TV, while sharing snacks and mudshakes. The only other time we got to play that way was with Resident Evil Revelations II—months or maybe even years ago. Frankly, I miss how you could buy a game without having to check if multiplayer includes local multiplayer. Console technology may have gone to the moon since the 90s but it left out the best part—the part where two players could always play together on the same console right out the box. I don’t care about playing multiplayer with a ton of people from all over the world or about ‘sharing’ my gameplay or ‘trophies’ with ‘friends’; I just want to play with the person next to me, on the same TV, using the same console. Why is that so hard these days?
Because none of my experiences with employment have been positively positive. Because everything I wrote about in Chapter 11 really happened and, perhaps, shouldn’t be forgotten. Because telling a woman you don’t love her when you do does happen, especially when you’re a woman too.
Fleur – Tasya van Ree
Milla – Cara Delevingne
Danny Diaz – Maluma
Carla – Cecilia Cheung
Dr Jones – (I will tell you when the next book, The Woman Who Tried To Be Normal, comes out.) (UPDATE: H.G. Wells of Warehouse 13!)
Published: 26 April 2018
In 1999, Hong Kong, Fleur repeatedly denies having feelings for Milla, daughter of a New York mob boss, because she has secrets—another identity and a job she can’t talk about. Trouble comes when Milla moves on, starts dating other women, and leaves Fleur all by herself, amidst feelings of loss and wanting… Click here to read more or buy.
About the lies we tell each other and ourselves / set in 1999, when Nokia ruled, Discmans rocked and Columbine happened / set in Hong Kong, home of six million people and Wong Kar Wai / a mystery-suspense-lesbian romance (but of course) / the second book in the Those Strange Women series / about jobs and employment / getting published really soon.
The Last of Us (PS4), Resident Evil 7 (PS4 / still can’t get the theme song out of my head), This War of Mine (Mac / the first time I played it, I actually felt emotionally traumatised), Escape Rooms (in real life and on phone), Dead Rising: Chop Till You Drop (Wii), Silent Hill: Shattered Memories (Wii), Pokemon Crystal (GBC), Harvest Moon (GBC), Phantasmagoria (PC), Princess Maker 2 (PC), Real Lives (PC), Creatures 2 (PC / didn’t dig Creatures 3 as much somehow), Superstar by an indie game developer called Daisy Chain (PC), Leisure Suit Larry (PC / I played it as a teen and thought it hilarious), Bart Simpson’s Escape From Camp Deadly (GB) and last but not least, Chip ’n Dale Rescue Rangers (NES / this was most fun when you played it with another person).
The Sims 2 hands down (with all its expansions, a few mods and loads of custom content). I started playing in 2005 and 13 years on, I’m still playing it! I can play till my hand stiffens with pain and yet still want to play. There’s always more buildings to build, more businesses to start, more personalities to fill your neighbourhood with, more babies to grow into adults and I haven’t even done everything there is to do within the game yet. I wish I could stop liking it so much, especially since I’m now 13 years more adult than I was when I started, but, as it is with love, I just can’t help myself.
Queen Katherine – Greta Garbo / Angelina Jolie in Maleficent / Disney’s cartoon version minus the perpetually evil stare and crazy eyebrows.
Princess Eirwen – This was tough since who can we really say is, universally, the fairest of us all? In the end I used Megan Fox. Megan Fox but many, many, many, many shades fairer.
Three words: topical steroid withdrawal. If you don’t know what that is, I fully recommend you find out before you accidentally get yourself into it like I did. The Woman Who Made Me Feel Strange isn’t about the medical condition per se (it’s way more fun than that!) but it embodies everything I learned about the world and life while going through it. I don’t want to say too much (because I don’t want to give the book’s ending away) but in short, five months of escalating steroid cream usage landed me in hell for an entire year. Before, I didn’t think such a thing could happen but now I know it can and has happened to many other people as well (to those who are still battling tsw: Know that it really does get better!). When I made it out of hell, got my skin back to normal all by myself, I read up pharmaceutical drugs and my entire take on modern medicine changed. After that, I wrote The Woman Who Made Me Feel Strange.
Dear annaferrarabooks.wordpress.com, thanks for having been there for me when I first started publishing books, when I hadn’t sold enough books for a domain of my own. You will always be in my heart and somewhere in cyberspace. Lots of love, Anna Ferrara (who, from this day on, will blog only at annaferrarabooks.com)
At last! After weeks of tweaking and troubleshooting, sandbox testing and deliberating all the things I wouldn’t even be thinking about otherwise, I finally got this website done and up! New and improved features: 1) You can now buy ebooks directly from annaferrarabooks.com. 2) I have, at last, a mailing list sign up widget like everybody else. 3) Bye awkward, boxy WordPress ads. 4) Hello stylish, monotone, ad-free interface! What I haven’t quite figured out is how to port followers and likes from the old blog into this one or how to get the WordPress follow or like button appearing properly, but, you know what, the weekend is coming up so I’m done for now. It’s beautiful as it is and it works great so I really hope you’ll take a look around and maybe play with what I made.
Get it from Amazon.com for US$16.99! In other news, now that my third book is on its way and the Books page of this blog is starting to look real untidy, I’ve been thinking of getting a proper website with a proper domain of my own to improve viewer experience. In typical indie fashion, I’m going to build the whole thing myself. I don’t know how long that will take so do check back in a few weeks if you want to know what a person who’s never done web design professionally can come up with.
Book Length: Longer than my first book, Snow White and Her Queen. Book Price: USD$3.99 (Cheaper than Snow White and Her Queen because, first book in a series). Paperback version will be out on 16th January 2018. Happy New Year readers!
Published: 29 December 2017.
How do you find out what’s really going on when you can’t trust anything anybody says? This book is a psychological mystery full of clues hidden in plain sight. Can you figure out what’s really happening to the lesbian protagonist before the end? Click here to read more or buy.
If it were up to me, Book 2 (a really fun mind-twisting mystery! with lesbians of course) would have been done by August. But it wasn’t. The book took over. Each time I finished a draft, the book gave me ideas for new perspectives. Each time I changed the perspectives, the book gave me ideas on how to thicken the plot. And so on and so forth. Mysteries are way harder to write than straight-forward romance novels, I’ve since realised, or at least that’s how it feels for me. It’s been a long few months of eight (or nine? lost count) vastly different drafts but I’m thrilled to say, at last, that it’s almost all there and the story that’s come out of the process is leaps better than the one it was in draft five. I’m at Chapter 26 (of 31) in final revisions now and thereafter will embark on a month of pre-publishing work which means Book 2 should be out by mid-Dec or so? Phew. I have no idea how so many authors manage to get 3-5 books out a year (Harper Bliss! your productivity is amazing). I feel like I’m perpetually racing against time as it is so I suspect many other authors might secretly be superhuman.
Still writing my second book, building worlds and relationships that aren’t in the least ordinary. Hope you’re living as courageously as me and my new characters are.
Last week, I saw something I never thought I’d ever see on TV. A character named Alex Danvers proposing to a character named Maggie Sawyer. It was mind-blowing because Alex Danvers is a woman. A heavily-mascaraed, lycra-wearing babe, as is Maggie. Surprising because lesbians on TV used to be perpetual villains doomed to be dead, punished or “cured” and subtext was even a thing. Fascinating because where I sit right now, same-sex marriage isn’t even legal and LGBTQ content is non-existent on local television channels. That I could actually watch a woman proposing to a woman on a TV show while being here is amazing and surreal. Like the impossible occurred. So thank you all who made it possible. You have changed my world completely, whether or not you know it.
So I read my own book last weekend and found to my horror, typos. Yes. Obviously I freaked and wallowed in shame for days but good news is, amendments have been made along with a few other editorial and aesthetic improvements. So, if you bought Snow White and Her Queen before 1 June 2017, please do download the updated version for future reading or keeps. I apologise for the imperfection with all my heart and pray you enjoyed the story anyway. The production process has since been refined so Book 2’s gonna be better from the get-go for sure. By the time Book 3 rolls out, I’m certain I’m gonna be so pro. Thanks for reading.
will be set in the near future. In an overcrowded megacity where strangers rub bodies daily but don’t make eye contact. There will be a character who is hot, tall and blond, with amazing hair and the power to stir fantasies in all the women who meet her puppy brown eyes. Yes, she might look a little like Delphine from Orphan Black.
was watching the Disney version with my mother at the cinema when I was either 2 or 3 or 4. I remember being mainly petrified by the wicked Queen on screen and might have even cried during the show itself. Whether or not that happened can’t be verified now because Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs turned out to be the last movie I ever saw with my mother. A year or so after that, she walked out on us and we never did stuff together ever again. Am pretty sure that screwed me up. And no, I didn’t gush over the Prince or fantasise about getting married like a Princess after the movie. I still don’t.
I was on the train home from my day job one evening when some article about true stories behind classic fairy tales popped up on Facebook. It took my mind into that place my fellow commuters never get to go and suddenly it dawned on me that the wicked Queen in the Snow White story sounded really fishy. Obsessing over another woman’s appearance, hunting her down, giving her gifts, going mad when she gets married, all because you’re jealous of her looks? Unrealistic. I’ve never seen a woman behave that way when envious of another. In real life, a woman only gets that sort of crazy when afflicted with a bad case of crush. Right?
I sought the original version of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs and more gay possibilities came up between the lines – “From that hour on whenever she looked at Snow-White her heart turned over inside her body… until she had no peace day and night.” “At first she did not want to go to the wedding, but she found no peace. She had to go and see the young queen. When she arrived she recognized Snow-White, and terrorised she could only stand there without moving.”
Of course, the Grimm Brothers cited vanity as the explanation for her behaviour – “From that hour on whenever she looked at Snow-White her heart turned over inside her body, so great was her hatred for the girl. The envy and pride grew ever greater, like a weed in her heart, until she had no peace day and night.” – but it made me wonder, what if their male heteronormative gaze simply misunderstood the Queen or whoever it was that served as inspiration for that character?
I arrived at my stop, got off the train and began to write the story from a completely different perspective. My kind of perspective with my understanding of what truly makes a woman that jealous. That’s how Snow White and Her Queen came about.
of Snow White and Her Queen, do also read the Grimms’ version of Snow White’s story, written by the brothers in 1812:
Once upon a time in midwinter, when the snowflakes were falling like feathers from heaven, a queen sat sewing at her window, which had a frame of black ebony wood. As she sewed she looked up at the snow and pricked her finger with her needle. Three drops of blood fell into the snow. The red on the white looked so beautiful that she thought to herself, “If only I had a child as white as snow, as red as blood, and as black as the wood in this frame.”
Soon afterward she had a little daughter who was as white as snow, as red as blood, and as black as ebony wood, and therefore they called her Little Snow-White. And as soon as the child was born, the queen died.
A year later the king took himself another wife. She was a beautiful woman, but she was proud and arrogant, and she could not stand it if anyone might surpass her in beauty. She had a magic mirror. Every morning she stood before it, looked at herself, and said:
Mirror, mirror, on the wall,
Who in this land is fairest of all?
Published 21 April 2017.
Before there was Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, there was another story some preferred not to tell.
“Mirror, mirror on the wall, who in this land is fairest of all?”
“You, my Queen, are fairest of all,” the Princess had said, unravelling a nightmare of obsession and forbidden desire.
This intimate retelling of the popular Grimms’ fairy tale will change your understanding of the wicked Queen’s infamous jealousy forever. Click here to read more or buy.
Nobody in particular. Just your average woman like every other average woman out there. If you saw me at my day job, you’d see I have long hair, wear make up, smile when I’m supposed to. I say all the appropriate things. I accessorise. I wear womanly shoes, bracelets, chiffon. There is nothing about my physicality that suggests I am anything but heteronormal. If you – an acquaintance, a colleague, a relative, a male friend, an old friend from school – ask me why I’m not married yet, I might just tell you it’s because I haven’t found the right guy. If you’re lucky enough to be a perfect stranger, I might even tell you that I am already married and have been for a good few years now. Because that is just the type of person I truly am.
