A look at Muse and Spice - Rainbow Awards Winners

  (actually a post for the Evernight Blog, reproduced here because I can 😏 )

Best Transgender Romance 

and 

Best Transgender Book 2018-2019

A Muse to Live For

A Muse to Live For is the story of a Victorian painter and the crossdressing male prostitute who becomes his muse and lover. As one of the Rainbow Awards Honorable Mentions correctly points out, Gabriel/le is “not so much trans as truly androgynous”. I thought this was truly central to this character, who, at a time when coming out and transitioning were out of question, must be pragmatic about his identity, and straddle the lines between common sense, sexual fetish, artistic performance, and gender dysphoria as best they could.

This is my first serious attempt at historical fiction, and oh boy, was it a steep learning curve! There was so much to research that at times it was all I could do to write a paragraph in one day! I was delighted when one reviewer commented “I googled this”, as they thought it might be genuinely historical. There’s no higher praise for a fiction writer!

Part of the realistic feel comes perhaps from the locale of the story. I was stubbornly set on avoiding the more usual historical romance haunts. No ballrooms, no dukes and debutantes, no grand country houses. We have a saying in Italy, "nothing grows from diamonds; flowers grow from manure". Perhaps I am just more familiar with manure than diamonds, but given my fascination for Pre-Raphaelite painters and their penchant for picking stunning beautiful lower class women as models, muses and wives, it was natural that I would gravitate towards the less glamorous districts and professions, and the often harrowing life of the London poor. 

In a story that is so much about the creation of art, the contrast between the darkness of the setting and the purity of love and beauty found within it has an almost painterly chiaroscuro effect that gives much more depth and brilliance to the characters and their journey.

A Muse to Live For on Amazon 

Best Transgender Romance  2018 - 2019

Spice & Vanilla

Spice &Vanilla was originally conceived as a quick and hot Erotic Romance, but then the story got out of hand entirely and became a true emotional roller-coaster. The core of this novel is Lucie’s struggle for acceptance after her first disastrous coming out. When I first started researching M to F crossdressing and transition I was struck by how many heart-breaking stories of coming out, rejection and purging popped up on forums and message boards. Purging is a word often used to describe the heartrending destruction of all female clothes and accessories from one’s closet (real and metaphorical), in an attempt to repress one’s gender queerness. It goes without saying that the material objects carry more meaning than just “clothes”, “hats”, “lipstick”, "mascara". It’s a whole, real identity that gets denied existence.

It’s a tremendously painful (and alas common, and recurrent) experience for some people, in a world where gender issues are still very little understood by the majority of the population, despite all the howling media coverage we are witnessing every day. It strikes me as odd that so few transgender stories are written for a cisgender public, because this is something sorely needed to bridge the gap in understanding.

It takes I think an almost superhuman courage to collect the pieces after such a rejection, and find the hope and determination to try, again, and again, to find love and acceptance.

I wanted to explore this in detail, and other things. The different nuances of crossdressing as a sexual fetish and crossdressing as an exploration of a different and whole gender identity, for example. Two things that can overlap, but are also distinct. Gender issues are a very intriguing and poignant way for a writer to explore the depth and intricacy of the human psyche.

And I wanted to write about the collateral damage of an awkward coming out. After all it’s pointless to deny that transition affects the lives of spouses and families too, often very painfully. Compassion respect and understanding are things that must go both ways for love to survive.

Spice & Vanilla on Amazon 

Victorian research - The Bustle Dress - with illustrations by Nicole Rubio

When I wrote A Muse to Live For, I spent more time doing historical research than actually writing. It is normal with historical fiction especially if it is your first! I became quite fascinated with Victorian clothes, and I am delighted to have discovered the beautiful art of Nicole Rubio, and to have her permission to use it on my blog as I ramble on a little about the Victorians and their apparel. I hope this post stirs your interest not just in my book, and Victorian fashion, but also in this artist's amazing talent and her deeply moving journey.

"When I could see my work I was too much of a perfectionist and severely blocked. It was only when it became real that it was now or never that I was willing to try. Somehow it felt like I had less to lose if I was starting with a handicap." 

Nicole Rubio

Bustle 8
"Delicate Presence"

Pastel Drawing on Paper

ⒸNicole Rubio 

"What bothers me most is losing color, which I can still see some, but not with the subtlety I could before. I am legally blind, due to a degenerative retinal disease." 

Nicole Rubio

One of the things I had to figure out for this story, where Gabriel/le, my main character does quite a lot of dress-making, dressing up and, ahem, undressing, is how on earth these cmplex outfit were put together, and worn. 

Man outfits of the time were not so very different from modern suits, but Victorian women clothes are… well, there was such a bloody lot of them, to begin with! There is no doubt that getting dressed was a bit of a hassle, although much less than one would think. It would take about fifteen minutes to get ready to go out, from drawers to hat-and-parasol, with a bustle dress of the kind worn by the middle-class woman (or the better dressed lower class, too) in the 1880s. I did choose this decade because bustle dresses are definitely more attractive (at least to me) than the cumbrous bell-shaped crinoline gowns that preceded them, and they seemed to fit my main character’s style much better.

So how would you wear one of these? They look so incredibly complex, that it’s difficult to understand how one can get in or out of them. So I ventured into a journey of discovery, and tried to understand each element of these complicated outfits.

First, a chemise, to go under the corset, and drawers, if you were so inclined. My MC does not believe in drawers, much, and it must be said that a knee-length ruffled, flouncy things lacks a certain sex-appeal to the modern eye. Victorian drawers were not completely boring though. They were crotchless, to begin with, for ease of uh… chamber pot use. That might explain why the can-can was considered such a scandalous dance. Try throwing your leg and skirts far up in the air with a pair of crotchless panties… well, you get the picture. But, if you thought that the love-slit was a modern kinky twist on lingerie, think again…

Then stockings and boots. What? They wore their boots before getting dressed? Why, yes. Before the invention of the zipper, boots were fiddly. Lots of laces and/or tiny buttons. Not easy to work those while wearing a stiff corset that makes it impossible to bend forward with any ease. But you can see that this opens quite some doors to the fetish-inclined mind. Because after the boots one would put on the corset (which contrary to common opinion, a moderately limber woman could well tie by herself, at least after the invention of the hook and eye fastening for the front), and there you have a very pretty image, of a stockinged, booted wo/man in a tight corset… well, mind out of the gutter, Wyvern.  

Bustle 1

Pastel and Ink on Paper

Ⓒ Nicole Rubio

"As I have gotten older and my eyesight worse, my work is less about seduction and increasingly about the fear and vulnerability, I feel in facing new situations." 

Nicole Rubio

Add a bustle. The bustle is of course the crucial point of the bustle dress, and the signature element of the fashion of the time. The cheaper ones were basically horse-hair-stuffed pillows one tied over one’s butt to give the skirts a lift behind, and that typical high-rear profile, but the expensive ones were complicated bits of work, including hoops and tabs, and tapes, and complex cages with springs, and even musical boxes, sometimes. I kid you not. All these strange contraptions had to be fastened to one’s waist, and shaped the back of the skirts when one was walking, and folded like a concertina when one was sitting. I am not sure how easy it was to go about one’s business with such a complicated apparatus hanging from one’s ass. But it was certainly easier that the far more enormous gowns worn in former decades.

Over the bustle, a petticoat (underskirt), and a blouse. And then a skirt, and an apron overskirt (the ruffly, draped, upper part of those complex multi-layered skirts).  Over these a taille (basically a tight jacket, matching the skirt), and then all the necessary accessories (collar, gloves, shawl, or a coat, if one could afford it, muff, reticule, parasol/umbrella, bonnet/hat).

It was a lot, and new clothes were expensive. Those were the days when much work was still hand-made and time-consuming. Sewing machines did exist (since about 1846), but they were still slow and they could do little more than “plain work” (straight simple seams), and although the labor force (read: lower classes) were plentiful and paid barely enough to survive (if at all), the complex, highly embellished garments of Victorian fashion were expensive. The middle and upper classes could afford new clothes, but the poorer people most often bought second hand, adapting and fixing them as best they could. Darning is a lost art now, but very much an endless chore at the time. The interesting part of this is that a handy lower-class girl could very well wear very pretty clothes, if a bit faded. Even boots were sold and worn again until each owner found them too disreputable, and resold them to someone less picky or more desperate. 

 Bustle 15 

“Tuffet in the Rain”

Pastel and Graphite Pencil on Paper

Ⓒ Nicole Rubio 

“For an artist capturing the outer world, what matters most is the light. For an artist capturing the inner world, what matters most is honesty.”

Nicole Rubio

And when clothes became really unwearable? There was still a lot that could be done with them. Even the poorest rag was valued and could be bought and sold and put to use. Sometimes in fascinating ways. For example the front of a gentleman’s vest, with all those time-consuming button-holes (if you have ever hand-sewn a button-hole, you will know that those are represent real value) could be reused to fashion the top of buttoned boots. At the very least old fabric could always be taken apart for making new yarn, which in turn was used to make a new fabric called “shoddy”.

Please visit Nicole's website to see more of her magnificent bustle drawings, and find out much much more about her art and writings.

You can also follow Nicole on Instagram

@nicolerrubio

Special thanks go also to my Instagram friend @mauveink, who generously shared her knowledge and expertise when I was researching obscure dressmaking details for my story.

 

It's live!!! A Muse to Live For - now available!

Ok, I am really emotional about this one, so I don't know if I am excited or panicking, but Nathaniel and Gabriel/le are out there in the world!

And it's an Editor's Pick!

Come take a plunge in the 1880s and deep into the souls of my favourite characters ever!

Find A Muse to Live For at Evernight

Or on Amazon

London, 1884

An artist lives to create. When Nathaniel’s urge to paint died, so did his will to live.

Until the night he meets Gabrielle.

Gabrielle may be just a poor prostitute, but she has the beauty of a Pre-Raphaelite stunner and the otherworldly aura of a fallen angel. She also has a secret. Gabrielle is Gabriel, and when Gabriel’s dark past comes knocking and Gabrielle must abandon her new career as an artist’s model, Nathaniel’s whole world comes crashing down again.

Better to die than living without her love, and the breathtaking creative drive she brought him. But it’s dead easy to die for a woman. Any fool can die for love. To live for it, that takes altogether more courage, doggedness, and imagination.

Be Warned: transgender romance, queer romance, cross-dressing, m/m sex, anal sex, rape

A Muse to Live For - Official Excerpt Sneak Peek

 I had meant to post this to my Wix Website first, but the Interwebs is so slow today that I will put it here instead. Here's Muse's official excerpt. It's sensual and bittersweet, I hope, like the rest of the story.

London, 1884.

An artist lives to create. When Nathaniel’s urge to paint died, so did his will to live.

Until the night he meets Gabrielle.

Gabrielle may be just a poor prostitute, but she has the beauty of a Pre Raphaelite stunner, and the otherworldly aura of a fallen angel. She also has a secret. Gabrielle is Gabriel, and when Gabriel’s dark past comes knocking and Gabrielle must abandon her new career as an artist’s model, Nathaniel’s whole world comes crashing down again.

Better to die than living without her love, and the breath-taking creative drive she brought him.

But it’s dead easy to die for a woman. Any fool can die for a woman. To live for her, that takes altogether more courage, doggedness and imagination.

COMING SOON from Evernight Publishing 

... a book with my soul in it...

❤️💔❤️

Official Excerpt:

I am not sure how to touch Nathaniel. I want him to kiss me again, I want him to hold me, I want him to look at me that way he does in his studio, when he watches every line of my body and sees a woman. And at the same time, I wish he would see me for what I am, all that I am, once and for all, so I don’t have to hide anymore.

So I shed my jacket, and the blouse underneath. I shiver a little in the cold when my arms are bared, and he runs his warm palms on my goosebumps, soothing them.

Then I stand to unbutton my skirts and petticoat, and untie my bustle, and I let it all swish down around my knees, and I stand here naked, in my small chemise, and stockings and corset, and my boots.

I am still silk-skinned and woman shaped.

Except for that one thing.

I steal a glance at his face—I can hardly bear to look at his eyes, standing here so naked—thinking he will wince, or frown. Or scream, what do you know. You can never tell, with a sensitive artistic temperament.

But he does none of these things.

Instead he goes to his knees on the floor, like a man about to propose in some play, and with a sort of mute reverence he strokes my thighs and my buttocks, and the back of my knees, through the stockings. When he lays a kiss and then his forehead on the hard of my hip, where the bone pokes sharply under my skin, I put my hands on his crazy hair, and hold him there, and with the barest, lightest touch of his fingertips he caresses the front of my corset, on my belly, and then down, down.

And to my acute embarrassment, the damn thing shivers to his touch, stiffening, rising.

Well. He has certainly seen me, now. He really has.

He is not screaming.

I pull him to his feet and I step out of my puddled skirts, and gently I undress him. Jacket and shirt and trousers and drawers, socks, everything.

He is as tall as I am, which I had never noticed, because he always stands with his head bent and his shoulders slumped. He’s not muscular, but there is no fat on him either. He has well-built bones under his lumpy clothes—he badly needs a good tailor—and he would be rather handsome if he held himself straight, with his chin up, and didn’t look so much at odds with himself. He’s pale, but not as pale as I am, and there is just the merest spray of hair on his chest.

I caress his skin all over as I undress him, and he looks transfixed, as if it had never occurred to him that it takes two to dance this dance. Perhaps he thought I’d make him spend the night on his knees adoring me.

The heat of his skin is like a deep current, and it draws me to him.

We stand here mute, the only sounds the drumming of the rain and the swish of falling clothes, and gently kissing lips.

When I push him to lie on the bed, I have a moment of dread that he might want to do that to me. I cannot have it. I will not be taken that way ever again.

I’ll make my living giving blowjobs for the rest of my days, I guess.

But I am not afraid of him. I do not believe he’d be capable of hurting a fly, let alone me.

“So, do you fancy that blowjob, finally?” I whisper in his ear, smiling, but he holds me close, too close for me to slide down along his body.

“I love you,” he whispers, his lips on my ear, so that words are made into a caress, “I love you, I love you.”

“Hush,” I whisper back, bearing down on him, grinding my cock on his. “Don’t say such things. It cannot be. It can’t.”

“This night, this once, please, let me say it. I love you, I love you, I love you.” His body rises to meet mine, and I feel those tears spilling now, with joy, and grief, and pity. Pity for him, for me, for both of us, lost in this narrow garret under the drumming rain, orphans in this storm, desperately naked in this terrible iron city.

“Only this once, then,” I whisper. “Tomorrow, you must forget.”

And before he can answer or kiss me again, I slip out of his arms, and down, along his chest and belly, so he cannot see me cry.

I have pleasured so many men this way, but never one I loved, and maybe it’s the same thing, and yet it’s something altogether different. He’s all silk and warmth and heaving life and fire pulsing, and his flesh matters to mine, so that my whole body loves his.

“You—don’t—have—to do this,” he whispers at first, but then he surrenders finally, and lets the pleasure take him.

I told him, the first time we met, that I’d do him for free. Who would have guessed, then, that I would end up doing him for love?

And I don’t know if he’s a virgin—but he is indeed quick. His cock grows even tauter on my tongue, and he breathes in short, hard gasps a few times. When his body arches and heaves and his hand fumbles at my cheek, I hold him, and hold him, and hold him… He comes with a broken moan, hotly. I swallow it all.

On the street I never do. But here, now, with him, I could not bring myself to spit.

You can also read the beginning of the first chapter here.