Categories
Fiction The Highwayman

Daring and Decorum: Release Day and Acknowledgments

It’s release day for Daring and Decorum, so I thought I’d share an expanded version of the Acknowledgments.

Here are the acknowledgments as they appear in the novel. Thanks to everyone who helped bring my novel to the world!

Daring and Decorum by Lawrence Hogue available now


My first debt goes to all the writers who inspired me, Ellen Kushner chief among them. Privilege of the Sword showed me what was possible in combining a comedy of manners with melodrama, all while imagining an alternative Europe where people were pretty much free to love whom they chose. Emma Donoghue’s Life Mask introduced me both to late-eighteenth-century England and to ways of imagining how those of non-conforming sexualities might have fit into it. Nicola Griffith: both she and her vision of St. Hilda, as told in Hild, are my heroes. Though I came to it after I finished this book, Heather Rose Jones’ Daughter of Mystery inspired me to keep seeking a home for my own novel. You should probably read these #ownvoices before reading my attempt at historical representation of women who love women, which must inevitably rely on imagination (and research).

Categories
Fiction The Highwayman

Daring and Decorum Has a Publisher

Photo of pens and contract with Supposed Crimes

I’m so pleased to announce that Daring and Decorum will be published later this year by Supposed Crimes, a small publisher focusing on LGBTQ genre fiction. Among their stable of writers is Geonn Cannon, the award-winning author of the Riley Parra series and more.

I haven’t made a big deal about the central relationship in Daring and Decorum, mainly to avoid ruining the potential surprise for readers when the novel is finally available (that’s a crappy marketing plan, I know). But if you’ve been following along on posts like this one, or this one, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that the novel focuses on a relationship between women.

I chose Supposed Crimes for two reasons: they wouldn’t have a problem with a historical romance featuring two women falling in love with each other, and they wouldn’t have a problem with a man writing it. As their About Us page says:

‘Supposed crimes’ refers to the idea that homosexuality was once outlawed. Thus, our authors are being subversive by writing. As times change this becomes more tongue-in-cheek. Yet, Christians writing lesbians and men writing lesbians are still subversive ideas in this industry.

I’m glad to have found a welcoming publishing home here.

Why do I write about women falling in love with each other? Many, many reasons. But mainly, I just want to make readers as happy as these Legend of Korra fans when they saw Korra and Asami getting together at the end of the series.

[youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T_I4UZuALp4]

That’s how happy I feel for my characters — and it’s how happy I feel to know that their story will be released to the world.