Lesbian Romance Novel is "Exception to the Rule"

I've known Cindy Rizzo since our freshman year at the University of Rochester, and then we both landed in Boston to attend law school. She practiced a bit longer than I did, and was one of the founding board members of Gay & Lesbian Advocates and Defenders (GLAD), but we both veered off into other careers, with her focus being philanthropic foundations.

What I didn't know was that inside was a writer looking to burst out. In 1995 she had a short story in "All the Ways Home: Parenting and Children in the Lesbian and Gay Communities," which she also helped co-edit. Publishers of lesbian-themed anthologies at the time had little interest in a story of lesbians with sons, and mainstream editors felt much the same way.

Rather than accept the status quo, Rizzo helped break down the barrier with her collaborative anthology. At the time she also stated working on a novel, but then put it aside because, as she put it, "I wasn't sure what the arc of the story should be."

Flash forward to the present. Cindy has returned to her native New York. Her two sons are grown, and she is engaged to her partner Jennifer, and they live with -- as her bio puts it -- "the requisite two cats issued to every lesbian household (well, most)." She was ready to tackle her novel again.

"Exception to the Rule" is the first in what she hopes will be a series of stories capturing different characters at different ages and in different times. She focuses here on three women at a suburban Boston college in the '90s and how they find friendship and romance.

Robin is a rebellious young woman who grew up on Long Island but prefers hanging out in New York, where she has befriended some homeless LGBT kids. Tracy is a closeted Southern belle who is only slowly coming out. The story follows their romance, as well as a friend Angie who will be the focus of her next book. Why the '90s? Cindy was interested in that period between the '70s, when she came out, and the present, which is a different world altogether.

"The college experience of young queer kids is different now," said Rizzo. The attitude of many of today's teens and twenty-somethings is, "So what that I'm gay?" (She's well aware that there are parts of the country where that still isn't the case, hence her character from North Carolina who puts on a public show of being straight while quietly seeking out older women.)

Back in the '90s it was somewhat more complicated, but her story is less about the process of accepting one's sexual orientation than simply growing into adulthood. "It's a coming of age story. It's not a coming out story. They're already out [more or less]," she said.

In researching the market she learned that marketing books for the LGBT audience had become much more sophisticated since the '90s. There's lesbian erotica, lesbian science fiction and fantasy, lesbian authors writing male/male romances... "Exception to the Rule" turns out not to be an exception in that regard.

"You have to be true to the genre," she explained. "It's not erotica... The sex in my book is appropriate for the genre." While she was well aware of the body of lesbian romances, she hadn't read any straight ones. She added that she ought to read some if only to explore the conventions of the genre.

But what she found is that her book also overlaps with the hot marketing niche of "Young Adult" books, and even the subgrouping "New Adult," which explores stories of characters breaking into the adult world.

"I think people like romance," she said. "If you're a lesbian reading about women living happily ever after it's an escape. People want to know that people like themselves can be happy and find love."

As a self-published author targeting a niche audience, Cindy has been gratified by the positive response she has received. And the book is number five among Amazon's lesbian fiction, and even if it's not exactly the New York Times best seller list, she'll take it. Not one to rest on her laurels she's already working on the next book in the series, in which Robin and Tracy will be secondary characters, and is planning a third book set during the Civil Rights struggles of the 1960s.

"It's going to take a lot of research," said Rizzo. Hard work won't stop her, any more than any of the other barriers did along the way. No doubt Cindy Rizzo will once again prove herself the exception to the rule.