Stephanie Lennox - Official Site

From the movie "Uptown girls." - R.I.P. Brittany. 

I'm absolutely sick of the so called charities these days. They honestly make me sick to my stomach. I'll just attack a few and explain what I mean.

STONEWALL.

Ugh. Stonewall is the biggest load of crap i've ever seen. They are famous in my eyes for actually turning away people that want to help them. I mean, I applied to become a Stonewall mentor this year. And do you know why they turned me down? Because I missed their phone calls. How pathetic and childish is that? I answered their emails, stating that i'd absolutely like to do it, and was ready and waiting for the program to start. We had a very good email conversation going on. So why did they even need to call me? I was willing to donate my time and efforts into promoting their cause and they obviously believe they are above my help. Whenever I go onto their site what do I see? Gleaming smiles of celebrities. And despite the fact they are gay or lesbian i'm sure they haven't been through half of the things kids go through these days. What's the second thing I see? Money. Everywhere. "Support this!" and "Donate that!" but nothing i've ever contributed to that site, have i seen help the lives of...anyone at all. Except their own pockets. It's ridiculous. They ask an awful lot of the poor souls who visit the site but never promote what THEY have done as a company.

I really hope this rant will get to them eventually, through some form or other, so they can change their ways.

The next charity i'm sick of is NCLR. In my desperate times of need, while I was writing the book and hardly had enough money to feed myself...I still thought about what charity i'd like to donate money to when the book came out. I contacted NCLR with this romantic email stating that I was so proud of everything they were doing, and they were an amazing charity...I told them that i'd like to set up some kind of system where I could send some proceeds from the book sales, every month or so. I had it all planned out in my head, how amazing they'd see my efforts and be happy- maybe even mention it in their little newsletter and it would be great. But it was a bleak day when I received their emailed reply and it simply and coldly stated, "No."

They said they did not want to be affiliated with it.

They didn't want to be affiliated with a LESBIAN novel? One that depicts lesbians realistically, non-stereotypically, and in a gentle, romantic sense?

This from NCLR. The National Centre For Lesbian Rights.

Are you kidding me.

So there you have it. Why I now hate charities. If you ever find one that you KNOW has helped people from the gay and lesbian community, and would be interested in my book, please let me know.

But i'm done searching for them!

Steph x

"Ford Madox Ford is such an evergreen English writer. The Good Soldier is one of the most remarkable and influential novels of the 20th century. Currently FMF is back in the news for his dictum that you can judge any book by any one of its pages. What he actually said was:

"Open the book to page 99 and read, and the quality of the whole will be revealed to you."

This lit crit nugget was first picked up in the USA by the punk rock band, Pg. 99, but it is now enjoying a vogue as an ideal way to cut through the blizzard of overproduction in books of all sorts.

The p99 test does many things, but it also ruthlessly speeds up the selection process in a crowded marketplace. Some will say it's unfair, random and capricious, but I disagree. As readers we pay a lot of attention to (and love to quote) those striking first lines, for example:

"It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife." Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice

Why not look at a book once it has cleared it throat, and is under way ? A good book should have its theme and qualities running through it like the lettering in a stick of seaside rock. Good writers display their gifts in every line they write. I am always struck, for instance, when reading Tom Stoppard's plays, how elegant, witty and precise his stage directions are. To him, it's as if they are as essential to the printed text as the dialogue. So the p99 test is fine with me, plus it has the virtue of plunging the casual reader deep into the middle of the book. This is often the most treacherous part of a novel. Philip Larkin once observed, having judged the Booker prize, that many British novels were just "a beginning, a muddle and an end". First line, p99, or last line? The truth is that every line of a good book should ring with clarity and authenticity, and have (this is the crucial part) a distinctive voice you want to go on listening to. It's called storytelling." - From The Guardian, somewhere or other.

RIGHT!!! If that's the case, I will now open for criticism, an excerpt from my 99th page. It's quite short to be fair, but i think it does exactly everything it needs to do. You let me know what you think.

"There was a terrible, awkward silence in the room after that, and Archie could just see the frustration and hurt rising up again inside Jasmine. Her head was held low and she seemed to be burning a hole into her bed sheets with her piercing eyes. Archie brushed a hand through his streaky black and grey hair, desperate for something to say, but he came up with nothing. Instead, he grabbed her up into his huge arms and made sure without words that she knew he was right there with her. In case she’d forgotten. “You’re just going to have to fight this, love. If Becca is really everything you want.” She wiped her tears away on his sleeve before he could see, and talked even though his arms almost muffled the words. “I’ve been fighting to be who I am all my life. What’s the point of being who I am, if I can’t have the girl who was worth all the fighting for?”

"I Don't Remember You", by Stephanie Lennox Page 99