One Thursday per month, I invite my favourite writers to share the inspirations behind their stories. Here’s one from the lusciously literary Shanna Germain.

The Story:

‘Seeds’ is published in print in Subversion: Science Fiction and Fantasy Tales of Challenging the Norm.

An extract:

Last year, one of the men took advantage of Gardin Kaja Kalliara while in her kitchenette, stuffing her mouth with quail bread until she could take no more, holding her against the table and force-feeding her from his own mouth, pieces chewed by his own teeth even after she’d said no and no again. We girls of Kaja’s house do many things in our kitchenettes, things that would embarrass our great mothers if they knew, but to be forced, to eat from the mouth of another? No. Never. Smind Kaja Meira threw the man out, but it was too late. Gardin Kaja Kalliara had eaten her last meal at the hands of a gluttonist, a gorgist, the worst kind of rapist. We mourned her as we should a sister – returning each to our private kitchenettes the hour after her death, grieving for four days and four nights, putting out half our foodstuffs to share with her in a final breadbreak before she left for the aboveworld. But she never came to eat.

The inspiration:

A few years ago, I was sharing a house with two friends of mine for the summer. I had my own room and my own bathroom, and the rest of the house consisted of shared space. While I was in the shower one day, I started thinking about the things we keep private: Mostly bodily functions like self-cleaning, sleep and sex. Yet we eat together, an act that is in some ways a bodily function, and is in many ways far more intimate than self-cleaning or sleep or even sex.

Later that same day, the three of us were eating ripe, perfect peaches in the kitchen, the juice dripping down our arms, wiping our mouths with the back of our hands, moaning in pleasure at the taste of such edible perfection.

So I started thinking what it would mean if eating became the new sex. If eating was considered a thing to do in private, a shamed thing. Would you get embarrassed if you ate in front of someone? Would it be different if you ate a piece of hard candy versus a ripe, juicy, dripping peach? Would people pay for the pleasure of watching you eat? What would the social ramifications be of someone who wantonly ate in front of others, who invited others back to their kitchens, who broke bread with a stranger? Would there be repercussions if someone forced you to eat against your will, essentially raped you will food?

I can have an idea –and god knows, I have a million of them – but a story isn’t a story for me until I have a character, an image, a voice in my head. “Seeds” didn’t come to life until I saw a man buying cherries at the local farmers’ market. I watched as he fed them slowly, one by one, to the woman he was with. And in that instant, I had both the narrator of my story, and the catalyst.

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Shanna Germain claims the titles of leximaven, she-devil, vorpal blonde and Shrodinger’s brat. Her work has appeared in places like Absinthe Literary Review, Best American Erotica, Best Lesbian Romance, Pank, Storyglossia, Subversion and more. Visit her wild world of words at www.shannagermain.com.

Q. What is your process for deciding which stories should be included in Best Lesbian Erotica (BLE)?

First, I read a story entirely on its own, for a sense of its quality, style and fitting the genre; from there, it gets a “yes,” “no,” or “maybe.” As I read, I generally begin to get a sense of recurring themes, kinds of characters, and ideas that seem to be on a lot of peoples’ minds. I read the stories again, and begin to get an idea for how they might go together. I’m looking for a range of style and content: they can’t all be very dark, or very funny, or all hookups, or all long term relationships. There has to be a mix, but it’s good when one story might lead to another in style or theme. And, no matter how well written a story is, it has to fit within the genre: erotica. I’ve had some wonderful stories that could definitely be published that wouldn’t fit in this anthology for one reason or another: usually because someone ends up dead (not erotic), or there is an element of self-loathing that’s not resolved (also not erotic).

I try to get it down to a set of stories that I feel is publishable; then I hand it over to the guest judge, who makes a final selection of about 20 stories, and some alternates. Sometimes I make bets with myself on which stories the judge will choose. I’m never 100% right. The judge gets the stories back to me, I give them an order, and I submit them to Cleis (the publisher). Cleis gives feedback, and may suggest adding or dropping a story, and we go back and forth on it, and that’s how we end up with our final table of contents.

Q. What is your favourite part of editing BLE?

I like emailing authors and saying: “you’re in,” and later, I like sending them money. I love getting the books in the mail! (No, I do not have a Kindle).

Q. Do you regret letting any stories go?

There was one story I loved two years ago, and it ended up getting cut for space reasons, and I contacted the author and urged her to submit it again, and it was a finalist again (amid a crop of completely different stories), and a different guest judge chose it the following year. So “the one that got away” one year, didn’t get away the next.

Q. Are there any common themes/plots/characters that you’d like to never see again?

Well, I’ll give any trope a chance if it’s told in a new or different way, but some of them are hard to pull off. For example: teacher/student stories; badly done domme/sub relationships (usually written by people who are intrigued by the idea, but don’t have a real sense of the scene); relationships where a woman is terribly jealous of a man, and convinces her lover have sex with the man (while some of those stories are actually submitted by male authors, there are some submitted by women as well).

Q. Is there something you’d love to see in a story, but never or rarely do?

Sex with animals! No, I’m just kidding. I really don’t want to see stories that have sex with animals. Or anything coerced/non-consensual, or anything with an underage protagonist being seduced/dominated by a much-older woman. What I would like to see, and in fact, I am seeing more of since I’ve started editing this series, are stories that have some emotional heft to them (well, like yours, Kirsty). I certainly like well written stories that are pretty much just about people fucking, and there will always be a lot of them in BLE, but I also like ones where memorable, real characters go someplace that we want to go with them. I told one of the authors in BLE ’12 that I could see her story published, as is, in a literary magazine, and it fit perfectly in with our anthology. I look forward to your novels, because you’ve got a craft, a way of creating a sense of place, and a fearlessness that characterizes a good writer.

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The deadline for this year’s BLE is April 1, and you can get specific guidelines at www.kathleenwarnock.com

This year’s BLE (selected by Sinclair Sexsmith) is available now, as are BLE ’11, selected by Lea DeLaria, and BLE ’10, selected by the band BETTY.

The Story:

‘Francis Observes How Babies Are Made’ is published in New Writing Scotland #29.

An extract:

Francis is watching the moon. It is white like a bowl of milk and it makes the plain outside the window look black and silver like it’s on television. Francis hopes that if he stays very still then maybe he will see the moon move. Kulowali says that a beautiful woman lives in the moon because she flew there to get away from a man she did not love. The man knows that she is in the moon but although he spends all day looking for her, he can never find her. Francis thinks that the man sounds silly, and is glad that he is clever enough to look at things in the nighttime as well as the daytime. He likes the story of the beautiful woman in the moon but he is not sure that that is Science. A thing is only Science if it is observable and repeatable.

The Inspiration:

Dad is the wee blonde boy at the back.

My dad spent a few years of his childhood in Nigeria with his two brothers. It was the years of the Empire and my granddad had a job that was something to do with the British government, though I don’t really know what.

Lately I’ve been thinking about my parents and grandparents a lot. This is largely because my dad recently died, and of course that brings up all sorts of memories and thoughts about opportunities missed.

My gran, Margot Logan.

I’m 27, and that seems to be the age when you finally realise that the older generation are actually humans with lives and desires and opinions, rather than just grumpy creatures who exist to make your dinner and pay your rent when you’ve spent it all on Jaegarbombs and sushi. Okay, I haven’t actually done that last thing, but you get the point. My grandmother was a Proper Lady, the type who wore skirt-suits and powdered her nose. I know I can never be a lady like that because I have tattooed wrists and a tendency to mumble. But she raised three boys and had perfect pitch and ate dinner with the Queen (though she wasn’t the Queen at the time) and taught me to play the piano even though I was utterly rubbish. And I’m sad that I didn’t get a chance to really know her as a fellow adult, rather than just as my granny.

My dad, however, I knew very well. Like all families we had our differences, but I’d meet him for lunch at least once a fortnight, and we talked on the phone every week.

Dad is in the middle.

So although the story is about Frances (or rather, about the child version of my dad, Ewan), it’s really about my grandparents and the life they created for my dad – and for me, too.

NOTE: My dad was always a science nerd. I don’t know if he asked for a calculator for Christmas, but I like to think that he did.

One Thursday per month, I invite my favourite writers to share the inspirations behind their stories. Here’s one from Lynsey May.

The Story:

‘Nesting’ is published online at Imagining Scotland.

An extract:

Declan doesn’t want to find out what is stashed under the stairs, he’d rather run back up them and drink his post-work beer and talk about the sad, far away things happening on the news. But now he’s here he must finish looking, and even though the blanket doesn’t look as though it’s big enough to cover anything but a child, he is finding it hard to bend over and lift it. He wishes he’d brought something down with him and casts an eye around the dusty leaves and scraps of paper littering the floor, looking for a stick or something similar. There’s nothing to help him.

The inspiration:

Wee Lynsey

I suppose all of my stories are stolen from somewhere, somehow, but I’d say the majority of them are made up of so many fragments of here and there, it’s hard for me to work out which actual event inspired what. Not so for Nesting. There are parts of it that came from nowhere, but at its heart is a very clearly defined memory.

When I was small, holidays to my grandma’s house were a proper treat. As well as living right next to the beach in Cellardyke, as writer and English teacher, Alison Thirkell (grandma to me) always told the most amazing bedtime stories. Hearing her homespun tales, making strawberry tarts together and running down to the beach to play are some of the kind of childhood memories that feel so idyllic I can barely believe they are true. Lucky for me they are, I have photographs to prove it.

The holidays are mainly light in my mind, sunlight on the sand, the glow from the fireplace, but there’s smudge of grey on the lens, a child’s clumsy fingerprints. Closer, the smudge is a moment, a fact. I remember very vividly having a tantrum under the dining room table, refusing to eat the soup that had been put in front of me.

Alison Thirkell, Lynsey's grandmother

My grandmother’s head swung down, visiting me among the legs of the adults, a place I thought wholly mine, and gave me what for. She asked me how I thought I would feel if I’d spent a long time making something, and an ungrateful little girl said she hated it without even trying it. I can’t remember whether I stopped crying, whether I ate my soup like I was supposed to or whether I stayed there sulking for a while longer. I do know something sank in, and it never really left me.

I suspect I’d never so succinctly understood that other people had feelings before, certainly not people who had only one function in my mind, for example, to be my grandmother. In a way, it doesn’t matter why I remember it, only that I do. And smudges like that are destined to end up in stories, blighting the lightness of a page.

I’d like to think I ended up a more likable character than my protagonist is, but I was interested in looking at the ways a momentary experience in childhood can stay with you, transforming your perception of yourself and your place in the world, while the grown ups around you go on with their own lives, feckless, unaware or temporarily forgetful of their power.

—

BIO: Lynsey lives, loves and writes in Edinburgh, where she’s very happily surrounded by cafes, bookshops and the mix of Scottish sweetness and inherent bleakness she’s always trying to capture on paper. You’ll generally find her immersed in a book or procrastinating online, come and help her out on the latter at www.lynseymay.com

My ambitions are not grand, I know. I’m happy with the way my life is at the moment, so I don’t feel the need to try for any huge changes – but there are always things that can be worked on! Here are my resolutions:

1. Stand up straight.
2. Spend one Sunday per month lying in bed, reading books and watching films.
3. Practise grace, kindness, and passion in all things.

What would you like to do differently in 2012?

Just so she doesn’t think I’m hopeless, I run my fingertip along her neck: a raised white scar, soft as fog, the width of a match.

‘My father,’ she says. ‘He was hit by lightning.’

Francesca Barrie at Johnson & Alcock will be representing my first novel, Rust and Stardust, as well as (hopefully) whatever comes next. Short story collection? Novella? Genderqueer burlesque mime show? Watch this space…

He says: You want a prince’s esteem, you want gallantry and grace.

She says: Princessing is not a process. I have skirts to be lifted.

He says: You have not checked under mine.

She says: Oh, now you complicate.

S/he says: Kings in tiaras, queens in the mud. We drew the line ourselves.

S/he says: I do not want to cut my hair.

S/he says: So don’t. We’ll make bridges of it.

S/he says: Skin can still cover secrets. You, I, we.

Saying: Unprincessed, unkinged.

Saying: Unmaidened, unmanned.

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This is an entry for the Mookychick blogging competition, FEMINIST FLASH FICTION 2011. Enter now.