Q&A

I have worked for a great part of my professional life in the world of music and the performing arts. It is a subject I know a lot about, so it is natural that I set my books within the milieu. I aim for factual accuracy. I would rather be convincing in a field I know than have to rely on the internet for research, although it is sometimes unavoidable, and I don’t mean to knock the search engines. My first experience of theatre was a musical performed by amateurs. I can’t imagine what it was really like, but to my very young eyes and ears, it sparkled and was magical from start to finish. And I fell in love with the leading lady, rather than the handsome hero, a trend which continued and only became significant as I entered my teens.

As far as I know, yes. Most certainly in the USA; and also in much of Europe. The audiences for this music tend to be conservative. I don’t need to spell out what that means in terms of intolerance. But nor do I want to push a huge and diverse audience for folk music into a small box full of narrow-minded people. The fact remains that only a handful of folk singers world-wide have come out of the closet. Statistically speaking there must be more. Obviously, they feel they have a good reason to stay within the confines of that small space, living a double life. Despite rumors swirling, some folk singers continue to deny their sexuality.

I was always an avid reader, and during my school years I wrote stories. A small number were published in teeny magazines. Then professional life took over and any ambitions to write were deeply buried. Where they would have remained if Covid had not come along. My profession, involving live performances, came to a juddering halt during the pandemic. Growing tomatoes, although deeply satisfying, didn’t fill the day. Two characters and the bare bones of a plot came into my head, and I opened the laptop and began the first story. It flowed easily. I didn’t know how it would end when I began. The characters took on a life of their own and determined their own fate. The next book followed naturally out of the first, in fact it could be read as one story. I hope the transfer to the next protagonist is seamless. Without intending to, I created a secondary character in each book, who then takes up the story, contributing to the overall arc of the series. There is a reset in the fifth book where I set the book in England, rather than Germany, but they conjoin in the last third of the volume. It wasn’t necessarily my intention when I began the book, but I couldn’t contain my curiosity about what the Starnberg Set were doing. I hope my readers feel the same.

That’s hard one. Narrative. Descriptive. Half in the first person, but not exclusively. As the series progresses there is more dialogue. One of the clichés, for want of a better word, in lesbian erotic romance is the so-called Ice Queen. The strong, independent older woman. Most, but not all, of my books features this kind of woman, although none of them is actually the CEO of a large firm, who wears pencil skirt suits and six-inch stiletto heels. Incidentally, this character is not exclusively popular with the lesbian community. There are a host of films and TV series in which this role becomes the star of the show for a heterosexual audience.

I have a good memory. I can think myself back in time to my teenage years. But most of my characters are a little, or a lot, older. In the Starnberg series, Leonie Brandt is the only protagonist who I follow from teenager to young woman. I did borrow a relationship from my own past in this one. In the fourth book in my next series, The Westminster Series, which centres itself around the British Parliament, the principal character is a graduate, and the book traces her university days. She is seventeen when the book begins. But most of my characters are aged between twenty-five and thirty-five. They do of course grow older as the series progresses. And I hope it is interesting to follow how the various relationships and career curves develop over time. When I write a sex scene it has to develop naturally out of the moment. I’m sure every writer fears repetition. I try to keep things fresh.

That is another difficult question. Is writing a form of self-plagiarism? I think it must be. Even if subconsciously. But there are only a very few instances where I have drawn on concrete occurrences from my own life. And only as a starting point. The end result isn’t easily recognizable. And the biography of a real person has sometimes been my inspiration. But only the kernel of the character. I veer away from any physical resemblance, or actual events in those people’s lives. But when describing emotions, I think personal experience will of necessity creep in. If you submerge yourself in a character, trying to bring them to life on the page and to make them credible, there is a limit to the plausible description of a deeply felt emotion if it is purely objective and not subjective. I do deal with artists who wear their emotions on their sleeves more than most, so I have an advantage. I can observe them and file away their reactions.

I have almost total recall of conversations and the inflections and nuances used by those speaking. I never have to ask who is calling me on the phone. I recognize their voice. At least if I’ve spoken to them before, and they don’t have laryngitis. And even then…Most people have an individual speech cadence and vocabulary. Almost like a fingerprint. If the person calling has a media presence, sometimes I don’t even have to have spoken to them personally. I recognize the voice.

It is particularly fascinating in a foreign language where the stress word is placed in a different part of the sentence. And different nationalities have different traits. Germans often speak nasally, the French at the back of their throats, the Italians on the front of their tongues. Nowadays most English people swallow their consonants. But this is a diversion, because I don’t write in a foreign language. I hear my literary dialogue and the timbre of the voices in my head. Probably other writers do too. It doesn’t make me very special.

During the pandemic I read a lot of the lesbian romance genre on my kindle. It was a form of escapism, and certainly influenced me in my decision to launch out myself. The standard of writing on offer varies wildly from extremely well written multi-layered volumes not shying away from politics or the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy of the armed services, to privately printed epistles from which I moved on after the first few chapters. Most of these books are set in the USA, and surprisingly, in small town America as opposed to the large metropoles, although there is a weighty contingent of glamorous Hollywood locations. There are some writers who set their books in Britain, and there are excellent books set in Australia and New Zealand. I found only one who writes using a German setting.