Reddit reviews The Conquest

Oh buddy, I just ready the synopsis for Daugher of Mystery, and it's wild! If you haven't read it, you should check out The Conquest by Yxta Maya Murray. It tells a modern day story of a rare book restorer in Los Angeles while also telling the story in the book she's restoring. Historical romance usually isn't my jam and I write strictly contemporary f/f romance, but this book's stuck with me for a long time.

I was just talking on another post about how different the tropes can be and that f/f tend to be way more sensitive (i.e. cheating is a HUGE dealbreaker, power dynamics, etc.) which can be good and bad. I think due to the problematic nature of past lesbian pulp fiction and the shit show that is lesbian representation on television currently, and lack of lesbian movies (seriously, Marie Claire just published a piece about the lack of queer rom-coms), f/f readers (of whom the majority tend to actually be queer women) still don't have enough of the HEA (happily ever after) or just easy, fun reads that they can come back to again and again without getting lost in drama and angst, especially if you're stuck in a tiny, less than progressive town and don't know a ton of lesbians IRL. I'm going to stop there, but I could write a book about my thoughts on lesbian romance novels.

This was my comment from the other post re: lesbian pulp fiction and what a fucked up world it's been:

> There are few books with happy endings written in the 1950's and 1960's (considered lesbian pulp fiction) because although they weren't censored, the fairly explicit rule was that there could be lesbian sex/romance, but the characters couldn't end up happily ever after, usually one of them killing themselves or deciding to stay in their old life. On top of that, because of the cheaply printed (pulp) paper and the deviant nature of the works, a lot of them were thrown away or burned after reading so as to not be discovered by > anyone.

Regarding the m/m, I 100% agree. Once my books started doing well, I'd creep on the Top LGBT Fiction lists where I was ranked with them. M/M romances were 95% of the top 100 LGBT books (like seriously, outselling the top f/f stories by 10x at least), and I was so surprised at how many were written by women and how most of the reviewers seemed to be (straight) women.

This is the entrepreneur in me, but I'm so shocked when I read amazing fanfic and wonder why the writer doesn't repurpose the story and publish as an original piece. There's some really, really great stuff out there, and I didn't even consider that others probably steal it and profit.

Edit: formatting