Well, whoever thought I’d be writing another monthly post for Love Bytes and we’d all still reeling under the impact of Covid-19? Yes, the most severe restrictions are being lifted, but many of us are still isolating, or social distancing, or worrying that you might go out for a pint of milk and come back with the milk plus a viral load that could literally stop your breath. When you have vulnerable people in your care, it ain’t over yet!

So here we all are. The fourth month since one microscopically tiny virus brought all humanity’s pretensions crashing into the dust. Given I’m a primarily a spec-fic writer, you’d think this would resonate, wouldn’t you? Society is imploding just about everywhere, shaken to its rotten core by disease, unrest and riots, the latter an explosive symptom of its own underlying sickness brought sharply into focus following the murder of George Floyd. This is disintegration, fuelled by frustration and rage and despair.

And yet I can’t imagine writing about it. I should. I know that. But dystopian fiction isn’t that entertaining when you’re living through it, and it seems to me that charting our miserable failure to create a sustainable, resilient, equal and just society isn’t likely to improve my mood. Besides, better writers than me have done it.

I am writing, which is a great improvement on where I was a couple of months ago when the stress of all this had the words drying up like the Sahara on a very hot day. But I’m not writing m/m. Of the two stories I have on the go, one has an ace protagonist, and the other is… well, a mainstream regency romance.

I don’t know if I’ll ever write m/m fiction again. While I’m proud of my books, I’ve spoken before about my concerns about appropriation, as I’m neither male nor gay. It’s become something of a moral dilemma, and every time I open up my PC and look at the folders of story outlines, I find I am less and less convinced that I should write in the genre again. To coin a dreadful pun, I’ve lost the plot.

I don’t have concerns about writing the ace story since that is part of my own experience. I will write other kinds of LGBTQ characters again, I’m sure, because if I’m to reflect society at all, then, of course, it should be all of its richness. So I’m not despondent about this decision. Actually, it gives me a sliver of hope. This isn’t a narrowing down of my options—which it felt like, at first—but an opening up, and one that comes after much thought and with much love for the genre.

We’re living through some profound changes. Covid will be with us, I suspect, for a long time. It will become a part of our landscape the way that the flu virus has, embedding itself into our lives. It will be some time, I think, before we don’t do the calculation every time we open up our front doors to step outside: is this worth the risks to ourselves and our loved ones? That’s a massive, massive change to the way we live. Other changes will be more welcome. If George Floyd’s death, the deaths of hundreds like him, is to mean anything at all, then we have to change deep within ourselves, challenge ourselves, face up to all our prejudices and privileges and say, “You know what? This shit isn’t good enough. It has to stop. Right now.” That’s a change which, to quote Hamlet, is ‘devoutly to be wished’.

The world will never be the same for any of us after the last four months. And that maybe isn’t a bad thing, if its new form is better, more equitable, greener, less driven by money and more by more human concerns. And that’s true for us on a personal level, as well as for our communities. The new world is going to be what we make it for ourselves.

Clear blue skies.

Potential, change, and maybe a better future… I couldn’t wish you anything better.  I couldn’t wish any of us anything better.

About Anna

Anna was a communications specialist for many years, working in various UK government departments. These days, though, she is writing full time. She lives with her husband in a quiet village tucked deep in the Nottinghamshire countryside. She’s supported there by the Deputy Editor, aka Molly the cockerpoo, who is assisted by the lovely Mavis, a Yorkie-Bichon cross with a bark several sizes larger than she is but no opinion whatsoever on the placement of semi-colons.

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