Ellen Hoil

Hello all! I’ve been a bit under the weather for the beginning of this year, and have been quite neglectful of my website and keeping up with bringing you thoughts and words from other authors. I hope to remedy this through the rest of the year. I’m back to working on my next story, and hope to have it for you as soon as possible. For now, I hope you will enjoy meeting the author of my first guest blog of the year, Ellen Hoil, a fellow Desert Palm Press author.

Recently, I had the pleasure of meeting Ellen at the GCLS convention in Pittsburgh. We spent a pleasant evening chatting with other authors and their partners at a Desert Palm Press social gathering, courtesy of our publisher, Lee Fitzsimmons. Afterwards, we continued our discussion at dinner.

It was fun to meet Ellen and the other authors in person. As DPP family, we often chat, support, and promote each other. This get together allowed us to put faces to names and to meet everyone we’ve been chatting with on Facebook and e-mail over the past several years. I hope you will enjoy reading this new DPP author, Ellen Hoil, and learning about how she came to write her first novel which is due out this fall.

                                                  AJ Adaire

Most of the information you are about to read comes from my own memory and experiences. Both from a reader’s and writer’s point of view. I guess you could say it’s a story of the birth of a lesbian romance writer. 

On April 1st, 2000 a new website came into being. I was there and saw a wondrous thing come into the world. The webmasters announced they had twenty stories ready for posting. Why all the excitement though? There existed real paper books for people, even the occasional lesbian fiction. So why was this moment so different from any other, you may wonder?

Two diverse occurrences happened around the time. First, came the birth of the Internet, and second a small television show. The result: a modern, widespread, popular lesbian fiction reader’s and writer’s dream. We all fangirl over many of the same writers today. A new vehicle was created for people who never thought their voices would be heard. At the same time, lesbians were finding stories that spoke to them and their lives.

In September 1995, the first episode of Xena: Warrior Princess aired. It was a show where for the first time women were being portrayed as strong and independent individuals in their own right. Men were relegated to supporting roles, and comedic relief. Xena and her friend Gabrielle traveled Ancient Greece and Macedonia, and eventually the ends of the known world together. They were equals. They didn’t compete against each other. Rather they displayed friendship and affection for each other. As a pair, they would live and die for each other.

As a result, women had a widespread, mainstream show they could claim as all their own. A side consequence was the lesbian sub-text created by the TV show’s producers and writers that grew out of the feedback from their fanbase. In 2001, the show ended in a two part episode, where Xena professes her love for Gabrielle. She dies. The End.

Wait? What? Was that all? The typical “death of the lesbians scene” we had all come to know so well. 

Not by a long shot. For 1991 had seen the birth of AOL. By 1995, when Xena started, it was the largest internet provider. Well over three million subscribed. During that period, it had launched AOL Search and subscription access. Now we were brought the world. Chat rooms and websites popped up overnight.  Include Yahoo and Netscape, and the numbers stagger higher.

This gave rise to fanfiction, uberfiction built around the characters and/or characteristics of Xena. A whole new universe opened up to readers and, most importantly, writers. By the following year names such as SX Meagher, LJ Maas, and Lori L. Lake were becoming well know favorites. Over the next several years, common names would be Radclyffe, Karen Kallmaker, KG McGregor. However, many would never be known, since they worked under cover of pseudonyms.  

But they all had one thing in common, the desire to write about things they knew, the love of women for women. 

Now there was the ability to have your story made public and readily available to readers far and wide. There was no need for dealing with agents, or the lack of interest by mainstream publishing houses. Anyone could publish, and the only judgements made were by the readers, who before the days of Amazon had the ability to leave reviews and feedback. They could easily email the authors and give feedback. 

Soon, small groups and individuals were starting publishing houses devoted entirely to original lesbian fiction. Some survive today, others don’t. But they all gave an opportunity for any author willing to submit their work for consideration. 

Now you may be asking how this relates to the person writing to you today. When I found the site above and others similar ones, I swallowed up as much of the offered words as possible. I became a daily visitor and reader. 

In October of 2007, I did something I never dreamed possible. I wrote a story. It wasn’t the best story ever written. Far from it. Today I would consider the grammar cringe worthy. But I did it. Then, due to the encouragement of others in the online community, I wrote a full length novel and posted it online for all the world to see…out there in the big wide world. The feedback was amazing. The world of online authorship and readers was welcoming and warm.

Now years later that same story is being released for publication. After thirteen years of having it sit on my shelf, editing, re-editing, and re-re-editing, Safe Haven is now accepted for publication by Desert Palm Press and will be released in a matter of a month or two from now.

Lee Fitzsimmons, the owner, had encouraged my writing before she started Desert Palm. I found her name from another site. She was listed as a beta reader. I sent an email. We teamed up on a newer story I was working on. But, that is a tale for another day. 

Last year, I got up the courage to send my original story to her. I felt it would be in safe hands, and any feedback would be to the point. So now, the culmination of years of work is being released in less than two months. 

Safe Haven is the story of two strangers finding each other. One has lost the love of her life to tragedy. The other is a lost soul. Each will be touched in her heart and mind by the other. Every day millions upon millions of people around the word suffer from illnesses that are invisible. How one such illness impacts one person, and those around her, will play out around Sam and Brigid and a small town bookshop. A bond is formed when one woman, who has lost everything in her heart, meets a stranger who is lost herself.  Is their growing bond strong enough to withstand everything society throws at them? Can they handle the love they find and make it withstand the times ahead? Time will tell if they have found their own Safe Haven.


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© JEN 2014