Author Archives: Gabriella West

About Gabriella West

Author of LGBT historical fiction and contemporary queer romance. Copyeditor/proofreader.

Happy Pride 2021

Posted on June 5, 2021 by Gabriella West

Pride comes but once a year! This month we are emerging from a pandemic. It feels like we ought to be joyous and yet there is more anxiety in the air than joyousness, for the most part. (Although on June … Continue reading →

Posted in creativity and its discontents, LGBT, Personal | Tagged ADHD, Apple, audiobook, Barnes & Noble, connecting the dots, Covid, Daniela Acitelli, Gay Pride Month, Google play, June, passings, Pride, Smashwords, time of grace, women's lives | Leave a comment

A Final Word on Blake Bailey

Posted on May 29, 2021 by Gabriella West

You can’t keep a bad man down. That’s what sprang to mind when I read on Twitter yesterday that Blake Bailey’s infamous biography of Philip Roth, unpublished by Norton, had been picked up by Skyhorse Publishing and will be rushed … Continue reading →

Posted in creativity and its discontents, News, Personal, Writing | Tagged academics, alcoholism, biography, bisexuality, Blake Bailey, decline and fall, double lives, Eve Crawford Peyton, fathers, Lusher, Philip Roth, publishing, Rape, Scandal, Skyhorse Publishing, sons, The Splendid Things We Planned, Valentina Rice, W.W. Norton | Leave a comment

Review: Summer Will Show by Sylvia Townsend Warner

Posted on May 23, 2021 by Gabriella West

Occasionally, I will pick up a library book (and I vow to do this more, post-pandemic). I wanted to review a striking, mostly forgotten novel by 20th-century English author Sylvia Townsend Warner (1893-1978), whose long life spanned almost a century … Continue reading →

Posted in creativity and its discontents, LGBT, Reviews, Writing | Tagged 20th-century women writers, bisexuality, Communism, feminism, historical fiction, Jewish fiction, lesbian fiction, NYRB, Penguin, relationships between women, revolutionaries, Summer Will Show, Sylvia Townsend Warner, Valentine Ackland, women in love | Leave a comment

A Note on Overdrive for Library Users

Posted on May 11, 2021 by Gabriella West

I was thrilled to see on Smashwords that three of my ebooks had sold to the Sacramento Public Library via OverDrive. OverDrive has been around since at least 2014 and is a distributor for libraries to purchase ebooks. As far … Continue reading →

Posted in News, Self-publishing | Tagged ADHD, Audible, audiobooks, Bookbub, Bookmate, borrow, connecting the dots, ebooks, libraries, mobile apps, overdrive, Sacramento Public Library, San Francisco Public Library, time of grace | Leave a comment

It’s Spring!

Posted on May 2, 2021 by Gabriella West

And that’s always exciting. This was what my kitchen looked like last month, with the fruit trees outside in the terraced back yard pressing in at the window. Things are greener now. The cedar waxwings are taking their last bites … Continue reading →

Posted in creativity and its discontents, Personal | Tagged abuse, billie eilish, Blake Bailey, British Vogue, fashion, feminism, Matt Gaetz, sexuality, spring, teen girls, women | Leave a comment

Once You Are Mine by Gabriella West ~ Book Review

Posted on March 29, 2021 by Gabriella West

Originally posted on Lily Michaels:
In this pandemic love story set in the tense, unpredictable summer of 2020, 21-year-old Alex Martinez gets out of San Quentin after serving three years for a nonviolent crime. He’s hardened by his time inside…

Posted in LGBT, Reviews, Writing | Tagged Alex, Bookbub, Lily Michaels, MMRomance, Northern California, once you are mine, pain, pandemic, real, Terry | 1 Comment

Read an Ebook Week 2021 Starts Today!

Posted on March 7, 2021 by Gabriella West

It’s that time again… The Smashwords annual weekly sale starts today and runs through next Saturday. I have two ebooks on sale, A Knight’s Tale: Kenilworth, my medieval romance novel, and my latest contemporary M/M romance, Once You are Mine. … Continue reading →

Posted in Abuse & Recovery, LGBT, Self-publishing, Writing | Tagged 2021, A Knight's Tale: Kenilworth, bisexual romance, Bookbub, dystopian, gay romance, healing, MMRomance, once you are mine, Read an Ebook Week, Smashwords | Leave a comment

Coronavirus Dispatch #4: No More Heroes

Posted on February 20, 2021 by Gabriella West

The big news is that we have passed 500,000 Covid deaths in the U.S. The shocking thing is that I have not written about Covid since sometime last March. But that’s not too surprising. While the disease has not carried … Continue reading →

Posted in News | Tagged Andrew Cuomo, California, Charlotte Bennett, Chris Murray, Covid, deaths, EDD, Gavin Newsom, nursing homes, pandemic, politicians, recall Newsom, sexual harassment, surge, unemployment, vaccine rollout | Leave a comment

Review: H Is for Hawk

Posted on January 28, 2021 by Gabriella West

I wanted to do a belated review of a memoir I bought last summer and finished late last year, Helen Macdonald’s H Is for Hawk (Grove, currently $4.96 on Kindle). Hard to write a short review of this gorgeous book. … Continue reading →

Posted in Reviews | Tagged England, grief, hawks, healing, Helen Macdonald, memoir, naturalist, nature, outsiders, power, T.H. White, wildness | Leave a comment

New Book Out Now: Cover Reveal

Posted on December 26, 2020 by Gabriella West

Hope everyone is having a Happy New Year, or as close as we can get in these bleak times. I wanted to give blog readers a look at the cover of my new MM romance novel, Once You Are Mine, … Continue reading →