Fiction Monday – The Lesbian Oriented Works of Melissa Good

There are lesbian writers who write primarily straight oriented fiction like Patricia Cornwell, for example, and then there are straight writers who attempt to write lesbian fiction. Some do a good job of it, others – not so much. It’s truly a good thing to find a lesbian author who writes good lesbian fiction! Melissa Good is just such an author.

I mentioned in a previous blog post that I’m a “secret” fan of fan fiction and, more accurately, of femslash. Melissa Good cut her teeth with femslash and is now considered one of the pre-eminent writers of the genre. Although femslash existed prior to Good, it was her fan fiction focused on the undertones in the Xena Warrior Princess television series that brought her to prominence in the fanverse.

For the uninitiated, fan fiction is short story or book length fiction written by fans, for fans that focuses on fictional characters, typically from popular TV shows or movies. While it may involve a story line that strays moderately to drastically from an episode of a show, it is typically “canon” in that it stays true to the nature of the characters. Femslash, on the other hand, is fan fiction that focuses on romantic and/or sexual relationships between fictional female characters were none actually existed (or may have only been vaguely hinted at) in the original television series or movie(s). Melissa Good made quite a name for herself writing femslash that focused on a romantic relationship between Xena and Gabrielle from the Xena: Warrior Princess series.

Good parlayed her internet success with fan fiction and later femslash into an Uber novel, Tropical Storm, that played off of a Xena and Gabrielle type of theme. She renamed her characters, Dar and Kerry and set the scene in the modern day, but they both retain many of the characteristics of their Xena counterparts. First published in 1999/2000, it was republished in 2006 and again for the Kindle in 2010. Both later versions contain updates and are termed the “authors cut”. Several other novels followed featuring Dar and Kerry making Good’s books a bonafide series in their own right. All do stand alone but it’s certainly more fun to read them in order!

Melissa Good has a talent for developing characters and drawing you into the story much the same way other authors do it with the setting and imagery. You’ll feel like you really know her characters personally and you’ll feel their emotions along with them as they wind their way through her stories.

Good maintains a website and blog that can be found at Merwolf’s Cave.

Her novels, from oldest, Tropical Storm, to newest, Hurricane Watch: