Downloading Woman in Red (Short Story) (PDF)

From Eliza Andrews' Newsletter.

Author's Note: The following story is a semi-autobiographical piece of creative non-fiction that I wrote at the tender age of twenty-three for an anthology of erotic lesbian adventures called Up All Night: Adventures in Lesbian Sex, put together by Alyson Books and edited by Stacy Bias and Rachel Kramer Bussel. Alyson Books / Alyson Media isn’t in business anymore, the book’s no longer in print, and frankly I’d forgotten all about this very personal piece I’d written until a chat with my girlfriend about older pieces I’d published.

Leave it to my [ insert your favorite should-be-hyperbolic-but-isn’t adjective here — “wonderful,” “amazing,” “extraordinary” ] girlfriend to immediately track down the old book, buy it in paperback (because there is no electronic version of this old thing) and send my story to me in a series of cell phone photographs.

Between many moves and several dead laptops, I haven’t had a copy of this story in a really long time. In fact, I hadn’t seen it since I sent it off to Alyson Books almost fifteen years ago. I didn’t even remember most of it. It made me laugh to read it — I simultaneously enjoyed, cringed, was embarrassed for, and wanted to shake some sense into the twenty-three year-old who’d originally penned it.

What follows is an edited version of my original Up All Night story, which was published in 2004 with a different title and a different pen name. Reproducing it here might actually be a copyright violation; all I can say is that I tried to reach out to the publisher to see if I could get my rights back, but they no longer exist and I doubt they really care anymore, anyway.

Here it is. Hope you enjoy.

About Eliza Andrews

When I started thinking of a new pen name to write fiction featuring lesbian protagonists, I commandeered the name of an ancestor. Eliza Frances Andrews was a southern belle who lived through the Civil War as the privileged daughter of a prominent plantation owner. She became a relatively well-known novelist, essayist, and -- get this -- botanist.

Borrowing her name is somewhat tongue-in-cheek; Eliza was a hard-core racist and I can only imagine what she would have to say about LGBTQ people. This is my reimagining of Eliza, therefore -- an Eliza 2.0, a GenX / Millenial version who grew up after women's lib and the Civil Rights movement and Stonewall. Perhaps a 21st-century Eliza would grin at me and say, "Right on." Perhaps the 19th-century Eliza is rolling over in her grave -- if she is, call it karmic justice.

PS, I also write young adult science fiction / fantasy under the name R. A. Marshall (another borrowed name). LGBTQ readers might enjoy the Lost Children trilogy.