Hi, S.W.! Welcome to Fresh Fiction. Please introduce yourself and tell us a little bit about your new book, PATIENCE & ESTHER.  Hello! I’ve been making comics for ages and started writing/drawing erotica when Spike of Iron Circus hired me to create a story for the 2014 Smut Peddler anthology. Since then, I’ve been an ongoing contributor to Filthy Figments, plus my erotic work has appeared in other places like the French magazine L’Immanquable. I’ve been so freaking fortunate to find publishers who support me in making some of the most fun, indulgent stuff. Working in this genre is a really nice emotional break from the other more serious books I make for other audiences. Patience & Esther: An Edwardian Romance is Iron Circus Comics’ collected edition of my Sparks series that ran on Filthy Figments from 2015-2019. It’s about two women who fall in love while working in service on a country estate, and their subsequent journey toward independence as they make a life together. It’s a quiet story about the experience of being in love and growth, both as individuals and a couple. The Edwardian period was a very interesting time of transition in England’s history. What sort…

He was handsome. Lucia had noticed that from the outset. It was difficult to tell beneath all of that grime and hair, but once she got a good look at his face, she could see just how handsome he was. And young; he wasn’t old at all. Well, relatively old. At ten or more years than her twenty and one. He was a man in his prime. But he was also living on the streets, and in addition to the smell of piss from the pot she’d slung at him, she thought she could smell ale. After the chaos of the sausages had died down and she realized he was injured, she still couldn’t explain what made her go back to see how badly he was hurt. Perhaps it was the fact that something in his eyes conveyed utter defeat. He was a man who had given up. Perhaps that was why she’d insisted he come back with her to Meadowbank. All she knew was that something in his eyes had pulled at her, something that captured her curiosity and natural empathy. Certainly, she’d seen her share of the destitute in Edinburgh. But what made this man different, she didn’t…

As we turn the page from a miserable 2020 into what everyone hopes will be a much better 2021, we’ll look at fiction that involves people trying to rebuild their lives after the even-greater tragedy of World War I—which traumatized the world by adding the first global pandemic on top of an already-horrific war.  In settings varying from England to France to Italy, this month’s collection of stories demonstrates that nothing is stronger than the human spirit’s will to survive. We’ll begin in England with THE POPPY WIFE by Caroline Scott.  Three brothers, Harry, Will and Francis, head off to war, leaving behind family and Francis’s wife Edie.  Only Harry returns.  But while Will’s death is confirmed and Harry was present when Francis was wounded and was convinced the wound was mortal, Francis is only “presumed” to have been killed in action.  When Edie receives a photo of Francis that appears to have been recently taken, she’s convinced he must still be alive.  She enlists Harry, who is working in France for grieving families who hire him to photograph the gravestones of the men they’ve lost, to help her look for Francis. As the story moves back and forth between…