Hello Everyone and welcome. Today I have asked author Gaëlle Cathy to be our guest. She is the author of 9 books including, Three to Tango. She is multilingual, having written her books in both English and French. Let’s meet this amazing storyteller.
Hello everyone,
First I want to thank Lynn for this great opportunity. It is great to connect with readers.
I will introduce myself briefly. I was born in France in the 1900 something J. I have always loved both the English language and the USA in general. All my novels take place in the US.
I started writing, again in that other century, starting with fanfictions set in the Buffyverse (Buffy the Vampire Slayer). Yes, I am a huge fan of the show and of Urban Fantasy TV shows and movies in general.
My main passions are my cats (currently own six), music, writing, and TV shows.
I published my first novel, a F/F mystery-romance, When the River Flows out of its Bed in 2011 and have since published 6 lesbian romances and 2 Urban Fantasy (general pairings).
I’ve only been writing in French since 2016. I now have all my novels in both languages (except my first UF, 500k words, way too long lol).
For this blog I am going to focus on my 2017 novel A Little Bit of Grey and my 2020 novel Three to Tango since these are the ones our great host, Lynn, is going to be reviewing soon.
The idea for A little Bit of Grey came to me between 2013/2014 but I was writing other novels at the time and didn’t get to it until 2016. At the time I was involved in animal protection and I went to several protests against bullfighting (Corrida, here in France). So came the idea of an animal activist protagonist. As a huge fan of Michelle Rodriguez, I named my character Letty (short for Leticia) Rodriguez (Letty is her character in the Fast and Furious saga). This is something I love to do, naming my characters, primary and secondary, with names of actors/actresses I love, or their TV characters. The other protagonist is named Sarah just because this is one of my favorite names, but hey…Sarah Michelle Gellar (Buffy herself), this can work too. J
So this is the meeting of two world., two very different ladies; one outspoken, defined and determined (Letty) and the other one, Sarah, is more secretive, unsure and unhappy with who she is, or mostly with trying to hide who she is. But this would be too easy to say that Letty is going to open Sarah’s eyes because in the end, Sarah might be the one who opens Letty’s eyes. Letty is locked up in a world of her own and Sarah is the one to show her that the world isn’t black or white; there are many shades of grey… (No, this is not a story about BDSM J )
Now Three to Tango is something else, even my writing is different. I want to say it’s perhaps even a bit cruder in the way my characters talk and act, but it actually sounds more true to me. Or it did at the time. This story came to me during a long manic episode. (I am bipolar). I didn’t know I was bipolar at the time. I’d lived my whole life with these up and down phases without treatments, but it had never been like this before (strong and long, 2 years). I was actually so happy and convinced I could do anything. But then you come down to earth and the harder the fall, as they say. And this is when I was diagnosed, but I diverge. However I felt it was important to mention it because I based a lot of my characters and settings on artists I’ve met during this manic phase. I kept following some musicians everywhere they went, all over Europe, then mostly in the US. I exchanged a lot with these young people (20 to 30 yo) and I discovered this whole new world; non-binary, no gender, trans, pansexual etc…). I knew these terms, but now I knew these great people, and who they were, what it meant and how free they were. I even understood that I was asexual. Understood that other people felt the same way I had for like 30+ years without knowing that even was a ‘thing’. Lol. I’m getting a bit personal here but it’s important to understand how this story came out. They inspired me.
As for my characters, I based them, physically at least, on some of these musicians. Sasha was based on my favorite artist in LA at the time. And Riley is based on someone I actually discovered as a ‘she’ on Instagram (via this other artist’s stories), but by the time I met him he went as ‘he’ or ‘they’. So Riley really is based on him, physically and for the guitar skills as well.
When I say that this story sounds truer, it’s also because it’s not always pretty. Love/Sex/desire. And often in romances it’s a bit too adorned. It’s not always love at first sight (don’t get me wrong, I love those. I wrote those, well, some). And in Three to Tango they do have that initial spark as they meet but it’s much more physical than romantic, and it grows from there but it isn’t always easy, or romantic because of their lives, mostly Riley’s. It’s really about how much can love take. When you decide to either give up or take a leap of faith.
This is about it for these two stories without spoiling too much. If you read them I hope you will enjoy them, and hopefully let me know what you think. And I would be more than pleased to answer any of your questions, regarding my cats J, my other novels, France, Buffy, anything, and I’ll try to answer honestly.
Again I want to thank Lynn for the chance to connect with readers. It is really an honor to me. Thank you very much.
GC
Thank you, Gaëlle, for being our guest today! Her books are available on Amazon, including her latest, ‘Endless War.’
Until Next Time,
Lynn
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Lynn Lawler's Creative Artists' Blog 
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