Five reasons to read Carving a New Shape

Why should you read my new novel, Carving a New Shape? Here are five possible reasons.

1. Lesbian and bisexual representation. One of the main reasons I started writing novels featuring women who fall in love with women is that those are the stories I wanted to read. I wanted to read novels where women took all the roles – loving and loved, desired and desiring, dashing and dramatic and scared and excited and maverick and everything else. That doesn’t mean that aren’t men and nonbinary people in the story (there definitely are) but that we see women front and centre, and centering other women in their lives.

The cover of Carving a New Shape, which shows a pebble beach and blue sky.

2. Happily ever after. If you prefer not to know the ending of a story, maybe you should skip this point – but perhaps romance genre books aren’t for you in the first place. One of the aims of the genre is to be uplifting and supporting; the interest is in how the ending is reached, rather than what the ending will be. The couple will get together. In this case, that also means that no women will be refrigerated. 

3. Explore ancient Orkney and prehistoric society. I once read in a writing manual that an ‘exotic setting’ was key to a romance novel, and although I don’t think that was good advice on the whole, there is a pleasure in exploring a very different setting. In Carving a New Shape we visit two very different villages – both actually based on the archaeology of Skara Brae and Barnhouse, places where prehistoric houses have survived because they were built with Orkney’s distinctive flagstone. 

4. Characters building a new lifestyle for themselves. In my previous novel, Between Boat & Shore, one of the main themes is finding your place in a community. In particular, Trebbi’s development takes her right to the centre of her community as she accepts and starts to grow into a leadership role. In Carving a New Shape, Laki and Bokka also need to find their place, but for them it isn’t about coming into the centre of the community. Instead, it’s about creating a role which didn’t exist before, dreaming up and then making real a new option. (And we get a little update about Trebbi and Aleuks, for readers of the previous book who are interested in that.)

5. It’s fun! This isn’t a book which exists to make a serious point. (I write nonfiction for that.) It’s there to entertain, and if it’s a bit silly in places and nothing more than a quick, light read, it’s done what it was meant to do. So if you’re looking for something to read for fun, something which is a little different in setting but nothing too serious, try Carving a New Shape. 

Carving a New Shape can be bought on Amazon as a paperback or ebook (and it’s also in Kindle Unlimited). If you review books and would like a free advance copy, or if you’d like to buy a signed paperback, comment or message me.