Hello Katherine! Thank you so much for visiting Written
Butterfly with me today! It’s such a
pleasure to chat with you. So tell me…
Q)
How did you dream up the dynamics of your characters?
I literally dreamed it. The first spark for
the story was a dream I had one night, of a Victorian painter who was in love
with his model, who also happened to be a prostitute (I do have weird dreams, I
know). Of course the story grew in the telling, and borrowed some things from
my own real life, and became a lot more complex, but the core remained almost
unchanged.
Q)
Is this book part of a series? If so,
can you tell us about it?
Not exactly a series, but it is part of
what I call a “loosely interconnected trilogy”. This is three books (duh!
Wyvern can count to three!) all featuring transgender characters, more exactly
MtoF crossdressers. The first two books (Woman as a Foreign Language and Spice
&Vanilla) are contemporary, and have two characters in common, although
they can perfectly be read as stand alones. The connection to the third book is
more tenuous… and it’s a bit of a game I play with the readers, to find those
thin threads, so I will say no more. 😊
Q)
Can you give a fun or interesting fact about your book?
When I was writing this story I began
making some more detailed research about the life of one of my all-time
favorite painters, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, and was blown over to find some
really strange coincidences between things from his real life, and things I had
already written in my story, culminating with a sentence we both used to
describe our muse’s absence… it was wonderful, and a little bit creepy.
Q)
What do you think is your strongest asset as a writer? …what is your weakest
factor as a writer?
My strongest asset? Possibly my voice,
which is very lyrical in parts, and very… well, very “voicey”. It’s the thing
people immediately remark upon. My weakest factor? My voice, again. It’s a love
or hate thing. Some readers find it vivid and engulfing and are enchanted with it. Others find it
antiquated and distracting. You can’t please everybody.
Also, I write densely descriptive, highly
emotional stories, and that too tends to polarize the readers.
Q)
Do you try more to be original or to deliver to readers what they want?
I really have no clue what readers want,
and most popular Romance trends do not interest me much, so I am not much of a
people-pleaser in that sense. But I don’t actively strike for originality
either. I write stories and characters that are attractive to me, and since I
am a bit of an oddball, I guess they ultimately come across as original. But I
am happy to weave old tropes in my stories to if they are relevant to the plot
or the characters. Good stories always bear retelling, as long as the telling
is fresh, and brings something new to the theme.
Q)
Do you plan all your characters out before you start a story or do they develop
as you write?
I am really crap at planning anything,
really, especially where writing is concerned. When I began writing Muse (which
took a very long time to finish) I didn’t even know if Nathaniel, the main
character, was male or female. Although the original concept was that of a male
painter and a female muse, once the transgender angle came in I seriously
considered making Nathaniel a woman. It would have made for a very interesting
story, but very different of course. Imagine a female artist painting a male
model, before the days of feminist emancipation, and at the same time a
partnership that could have been seen as a lesbian relationship… unless this
female artist was also a crossdresser, a FtoM crossdresser... It was quite a
while before Nathaniel crystalized in his final form.
There were so many possibilities for
bending gender roles and expectations, and setting up really unusual
plot-twists . It was really hard to settle on one set of identities.
It might be worth rewriting the whole thing
just to see the fireworks!
Q) What are your upcoming projects?
I am a little burnt-out to be honest, right
now, but I hope to get to work on a very thrilling sci/fi story I conceived
last year (and wrote a few pages of). It was supposed to be a cooperation with
my husband, but he chickened out and I am on my own now. It is a time-traveling
story with a slightly heart-breaking twist on the concept of fated mate. If the
muse helps I’ll try to get to work on it in the next few weeks.
Thank you so much for hosting me!!
~Editor's
Pick~
"This
is one of the most beautiful romances I've ever read."
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
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.
Find A Muse to Live For at Evernight:
Bio:
I have entered that age when looking at
beautiful male models in their prime makes me a cougar, ahem.
Almost all my heroines are short: that’s
because I look at the world from hobbit level. Being so small I am three times
more concentrated (read: obsessive) than anybody I know. I am exhaustingly
creative in writing, arts, crafts... Sometimes my brain gets friction burns
from hurtling at such speed from one universe to the next.
I love animals, plants, and occasionally
even people.
Like the Highlander I come from a lot of
different places. I was born in Italy but lived here and there and consider
myself simply and deeply European. I love Europe passionately, its antiquity,
its diversity, its quirkiness. All my books are set in Europe, or alternate
versions of it.
I have been writing since I can remember.
Links:
Katherine’s
Blog:
Katherine’s
Website:
Facebook:
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Author/artist Group:
Twitter:
Or
follow her on Instagram @katherinewyvern
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