September 24th, 1997 to September 30th, 1997

That's No 'Apparition':

Author Katherine Forrest Swimming in the Mainstream

by Andrea L.T. Peterson
Lesbian mystery writer Katherine Forrest's newest Kate Delafield detective story, Apparition Alley, has just been published by Berkley Prime Crime. Forrest, who captured the attention and won the respect of the lesbian community with her novel Curious Wine in 1983 has amassed quite an impressive following-straight and gay-for her gutsy, no-nonsense lesbian detective, Kate Delafield.

Delafield first found her way into readers' hearts in 1984. "She had lost her partner of 12 years. She had completely lost herself. She was frozen in her grief," says author Katherine Forrest of Delafield in Amateur City. "And she was completely isolated. Her development mirrors the [development of] the gay and lesbian community," says Forrest, who sought to connect Delafield "with her community" in her next Delafield mystery, Murder at the Nightwood Bar. That bar, its proprietress, and its regulars figure prominently throughout the Kate Delafield mysteries.

Murder at the Nightwood Bar, once again close to becoming a major motion picture, is a mystery novel, acknowledges Forrest, but it is also the "story of a woman's journey to community." By the book's end, Kate is still closeted, and she remains closeted in the next book, Beverly Malibu-when she meets the woman she is still (in the current book) with. In fact, six books into the development of LAPD detective Kate Delafield, the character is still in the closet.

"The closet kills," says Forrest, "absolutely. Physically, spiritually. That is Kate's great flaw. She can't see it. She's just living the way she perceives she has to live-in the closet." She doesn't realize-as so many gay men and lesbians don't realize-that living in the closet "effects her relationship"-all of her relationships.

"She maddens me," adds Forrest, "but I do understand it. It is a different process [coming out] for different people." But coming out is still, for Forrest, the most empowering step and gay man or lesbian can take. "It is the most freeing, liberating exhilarating act a gay person can do. A total act of courage," she says with absolute conviction. If we could just get that across as writers."

In fact, she thinks all gay and lesbian writers should be writing about coming out. "It is our great unfinished business," she argues, explaining that our goal should be to "leave the world a safer place" for the next generation of gays and lesbians.

Coming out is one of two major themes in Forrest's work-and one of two major concerns to her personally. The other is the "abuse of power by those who have complete economic power over other people." Her first Delafield mystery, Amateur City, came on the heels of her leaving the "business world" where this abuse of power was so apparent. "It grew out of my experience as a manager," she says. That awareness, that concern, is as much a "part of the fabric" of Forrest and her novels as her concern about coming out.

In addition to incorporating such themes into her work, Forrest has other major concerns-about writing and writers. Her own experience as a writer and as an editor of more books than most people read in a lifetime had made clear to her "just how hard it is" to write a book. She has learned "so much about the craft" that she believes that she can help young writers.

If she could think of any art form which writing resembles, she says it would be ballet. Writers need to "keeps those muscles stretched," and exercise them "every day."

And, she argues, "there is no reason we all have to make all of those mistakes. I can't make a person a writer in ten easy steps," but she does feel that she can help serious writers avoid wasting time and energy taking dozens of unnecessary steps.

That is why she and fellow mystery writer and friend Michael Nava have teamed up to teach a writing class at the San Francisco Bay Area's "most respected independent bookstore," Book Passage.

"We are beginning to get writers of quality," she says. "But they are developing with agonizing slowness," and whereas a single writer can be lost within the halls of mainstream publishing, it falls to the small presses to encourage and implement "the development of writers, to build confidence in their potential as writers." And "good editors," she laments, "are in extremely short supply," in independent and mainstream publishing houses alike.

Her work continues to be her primary focus. And while she thinks she did her best to "keep her personal politics out of" her early work, she is now more committed to "write books about issues that concern the women she loves," that are "her world. The next Kate Delafield mystery is well underway, as is the long-awaited sequel to her sci-fi, near-cult classic, Daughters of the Coral Dawn. She continues to edit, but "only select books from selected people."

"Our books," she says of the existing body of lesbian literature, "haven't begun to touch our lives. We have invented our lives, and they are amazing inventions." So she will continue in her own writing "to portray the world I know and love. The world that all of my hopes are involved with." What drives her, she says, what she claims is "so parental" about our community-"we want a different world for our gay and lesbian children."

Her wonder at how incredible our community is fills her with "such hope and such pride." Pride simply because she sees so many "marvelous women" within our community; and hope that gay men and lesbians will heed the call to "come out, come out, wherever and whoever you are," so that we can pave a more welcoming and safer way for those who follow.

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