Straight out of university - a bi novel

There aren’t too many novels with bisexual characters, so when I “met” Rosen Trevithick on Twitter, I was intrigued. Her new book, Straight Out of University, is a comic novel with a bi woman at its centre.

Rosen has been doing a blog tour this week – a blog tour is where writers “visit” different blogs each day to write a guest post, or be interviewed on them. A bit like a book tour from the comfort of your living room. She’s visiting Bisexuality and Beyond today; the other dates are at the bottom of this post.

And this is what I asked her:


Can you tell us a bit about Rosen Trevithick. Who *are* you?

I'm a British writer and woman, who now lives in Devon. I've recently become a passionate reader of indie books, having been given a Kindle as a birthday present.

So what's your book about, what sort of book is it?

Straight Out of University is a comedy about a bisexual woman whose life shifts when she leaves Oxford University and moves back to her hometown in Cornwall. It focuses mainly on her romantic life.

Why did you think Bisexuality and Beyond would be right for your book tour?

There are a lot of blogs about bisexuality, but many of them are... how shall I put it? A little tasteless. Straight Out of University is an honest book, not an erotic-orgy-romp, so I would like to visit blogs with a similar tone.

To what extent is this an autobiographical novel? I mean, both you and the heroine come from Cornwall and went to Oxford....

Obviously I've used personal experiences and the experiences of those around me, to inspire parts of the story, but it's not autobiographical. I am very much single and have never dated a man in a cardigan, or a rock star.

So you interviewed a few bi women when you were researching this novel. What did they tell you about their lives?

There were a wide selection of responses. Some women were single, some were in relationships with men, others were in relationships with women and a handful were polyamorous. There were a very wide variety of stories. However, as I expected, the predominant theme was love and respect - not detached promiscuity, as the stereotypical bisexual woman dictates.

I'm intrigued by the fact that you did a YouTube trailer for your book. What's the thinking behind that? I loved the animation by the way.

I was inspired by Miranda July's trailer for "No one belongs here more than you". It showed me that sometimes the simplest ideas are the best. I'm glad you enjoyed the animation.

Are there any other bi/queer books or authors that you like?

I've just discovered a great, young writer called Sophie Robbins. She's written an indie book called, "A hole in the World" and it's really quite lovely.

You seem to have e-published a few books, Can you tell us a bit more about them...?

I've written two novels. The first is called Footprints and it's a dark mystery set in Cornwall. However, I feel more comfortable writing contemporary comedy such as Straight Out of University. The other eBooks are plays that I'd written in the past, before the days of Kindle, and decided to share.

What are your future plans? Specifically, do you intend to carry on publishing yourself, electronically, or are you after a big publisher with a big advance?

Obviously, it would be fantastic if I could make a living from writing. I would love to be able to afford to buy my own house, with its own cutting patch and sea view - if I could achieve that doing something that I love, that would be great. However, for now, I'm just happy to have the chance to write and be read.

To download Straight Out of University, click here

Rosen’s website is at www.rosentrevithick.co.uk

The blog tour

Monday 7th November - Literature & Fiction - http://shelaghwatkins.wordpress.com/
Tuesday 8th November – Kait at Catz - http://kaitatcatz.blogspot.com/
Wednesday 9th November – Along the Write Lines - http://alongthewritelines.blogspot.com/
Thursday 10th November – Mel Comley Author - http://melcomley.blogspot.com/
Friday 11th November – Bisexuality and Beyond – http://suegeorgewrites.blogspot.com/
Saturday 12th November - Fentonton http://fentonton.blogspot.com/

B-free LGBT history month

Another month, another theme, and February in the British Isles is LGBT History month. Or, to be more accurate, gay history with a few lesbian events, some trans stuff if you’re lucky, and nothing bisexual whatsoever… month.

Still, as the only bisexual blogger with a strong interest in and a reasonable knowledge of history (probably) I can add my two groats’ worth.
So, to start us off, a bisexual novel of the 1920s: Dusty Answer.

Judith is a lonely child (and later woman) whose (rich, by normal standards of our time and hers) parents don’t take much notice of her. She does, however, live next to a house where a group of cousins come to spend summers. In the years leading up to the first world war, she falls in love with this family - Charlie, Mariella, Julian, Roddy and Martin - finding them entrancing. Charlie and Mariella marry very young during the war, but Charlie is killed, leaving Mariella - a widow at the age of 19 - to bring up their son alone.

Judith – and Roddy and Martin – goes to Oxford, where she falls in love with Jennifer. Their relationship is described in very romantic and sensual terms:
“She roused herself at last as Judith bent to kiss her good night.
‘Good night my-darling-darling,’ she said.
They stared at each other with tragic faces. It was too much, this happiness, this beauty.”
And much in similar vein. Jennifer runs off with another woman, however.

Roddy, who Judith falls in love with later, has a constant companion in the shape of Tony. Tony is an artist who spends much time in Paris…

It all ends sadly, this melancholy tale, but not because they have chosen the wrong gender love objects. Everyone is fated to be unhappy in love, and in life for that matter. Absolutely everyone in this novel is miserable.

But while no one actually has sex with anyone – this was published in 1927 after all – I would certainly argue that this is a bisexual novel. The characters seem to moon after individuals and no character cares or indeed seems to notice whether they are men or women. Of course, they all intend to marry. That’s what people did then. But love existed outside that too.

When I was a student in the late 70s, I read and loved this book. It was recommended to me by Kate Millett (not personally, of course, but in her autobiography Flying where she talks about reading it.) Now that I am back at the university I came from, I got the self-same copy out – now rather more tatty than it was 20 whatever years ago – to read again.
Dusty Answer is a rites of passage novel, something that would have appealed to the young woman I was when I first read it. Now I am more struck by how old-fashioned it seems, how snobbish and privileged the characters are. And how sad – the melancholy seeps from every page. All Rosamond Lehmann’s books (that I have read anyway) have this melancholy.

I think it’s almost certain that Rosamond Lehmann knew that parts of her characters’ lives could be construed as homosexual (she was living in bohemian London, where there was rather a lot of it going on at the time!). But, as I have written quite a lot on this blog, the “dichotomous view of sexuality” – you’re either straight or gay – didn’t have a hold over society in quite the way it does now. She wrote some interesting things about the reactions to her writings here.

A fascinating period piece, but a lot harder to "relate to" than I remembered.

On writing...

My partner asked me yesterday what I would write about if I didn't write about bisexuality. [I do write about other things, especially when I am paid to do so, but bear with me here...] He was partly being wistful, because no one ever got rich - or even enough money for a good holiday - by writing seriously about bisexuality. Although I did hear rumours about mega spondulicks going Marjorie Garber's way for the book Bisexuality and the Eroticism of Everyday Life. Still, she is a famous academic I suppose.

My main subject, what preoccupies me in both fiction and non-fiction, is "otherness". I don't mean in the academic sense of The Other, or indeed The Others that Nicole Kidman starred in, but otherness as in being an outsider.

Bisexuals are outsiders to both gay and straight worlds, never entirely accepted in either. I think it's true to say that we - and certainly me - feel that being bisexual gives you a view of the world that is unlike those of people who are only interested in one gender.

I am also interested in all sorts of other "outsiderness" but as bisexuality is the one that affects me most profoundly, it makes sense that I write about it.

But also, this blog is specifically about bisexuality because it is covered so rarely elsewhere. (Indeed, until Mercy (link) started her Bisexuality Revisited site recently, I don't think there was another non-personal bi blog out there at all.) At least, this gives me a way to disperse my ideas to the world at large.

Because of that, though, many readers will not know that I also write fiction - which was what obsessed me through my youth. Indeed I had a novel published by no less than Hutchinson. And may (you never know, fingers crossed) have another published by them. Even in this lifetime.

I write psychological thrillers - maybe slightly literary or experimental, perhaps a bit like Barbara Vine when she started. In my fiction, all my main characters bear the weight of their otherness - by not fitting in, by feeling they are on the borders of sanity, by experiencing the wrong sort of sexual desire or lack of desire at all, or simply by being outsiders. That all sounds very heavy, but I'm not sure it really is, except in the sense that psychological thrillers have to be. These characters are also often bisexual - although none of them ever uses the word - and not usually in a Good Role Model way. Often they are tormented by their desires. My interest is in making them three-dimensional, unique, plausible characters rather than having them as representatives of The Good Bisexual.

Still, bisexuality per se is not the focus of my fiction; distorted perceptions of reality, the harm (and good) people do to each other, a rattling tale - those are what I try to write.



I might post up some fiction here at some point. Otherwise, you can still buy my novel Death of the Family here.