Fiction Tuesday- Julie Ann Peters

What Ann Bannon did for lesbian fiction in the 50's with eye opening, heart-felt and thought provoking stories, we now have Julie Ann Peters to tell the tales of what many young adult lesbians live through.

Peters thinks of herself as a reclusive writer in Colorado. Who has been with her partner for 30 something years. Her first novel to get wide attention and nominated for a National Book Award was Luna. A shocking story about a transgender teen in the mid-west. With the story Keeping you a secret gave Julie a new direction. She has been writing about LGBT teens ever since.

"I was getting a lot of mail from young readers who were talking about how they were in love with their girlfriends, but their girlfriends were straight. Their girlfriends told them there was no possibility of a relationship and yet they would sort of give them signs that maybe there was something there…. They like the attention that you give them; they think that’s flattering. And everybody wants to be desired, of course, and we feed on that so much…. So I’m always telling these girls, “Run!” Just run as far as you can from these people. Because there’s just—there’s distance that can’t be crossed, and we need to come to that realization at some point." Peter says about the themes she chooses to write in her stories.

from I'LL BE DEAD BY THE TIME YOU READ THIS by Julie Ann Peters

Still Peters has her own way of getting the story together and meeting a larger audience as well with her novels. She has an unusual way of putting many of her storylines together. "So I do what I usually do, which is, I’ll write the last chapter first, just to see where this is going. That at least has stayed constant in my process. If I don’t do that I’ll start writing and writing and the characters take over and the story veers and I can never get it back to where I originally intended to take it. So I’ll write this last chapter and it kind of gives me direction and focus." Peters admits in her writing process.

Julie Ann Peter's latest book is SHE LOVES ME, SHE LOVES ME NOT.


DESCRIPTION: Seventeen-year-old Alyssa thought she knew who she was. She had her family and her best friends and, most important, she had Sarah. Sarah, her girlfriend, with whom she dreamed with about the day they could move far away and live out and proud and accepted for themselves, instead of having to hide their relationship.

Alyssa never thought she would have to make that move by herself, but disowned by her father and cut off from everyone she loves, she is forced to move hundreds of miles away to live with Carly, the biological mother she barely knows, in a town where everyone immediately dismisses her as "Carly's girl." As Alyssa struggles to forget her past and come to terms with her future, will she be able to build a new life for herself and believe in love again? Or will she be forced to relive the mistakes that have cost her everything and everyone she cared about?

Possibly, Julie Ann Peter's work will probably be the first lesbian fiction some will read. She knows her subject and she's creating characters that many who have questions can relate too.

 

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