Fighting Bisexual Erasure with Elizabeth Broadbent

Elizabeth Broadbent lives with her three sons and husband in the Commonwealth of Virginia. She’s the author of Naked & Famous and Ink Vine, and her speculative fiction has appeared with HyphenPunk, Tales to Terrify, If There’s Anyone Left, Penumbric, The Cafe Irreal, and many others. Elizabeth was also a journalist and her nonfiction made appearances in The Washington Post, Insider, and ADDitude.

Let’s get to know Elizabeth and what her career as an author means to her!

Q: Who has been your biggest supporter(s) throughout your writing career?

A: Definitely my husband. This is a guy who not only helps fill my plot holes – it really helps marrying a literary critic – but who also reads the final product. He puts up with my moods when I’m in between projects and cranky. He literally supports me – like, I homeschool out kids and write. I pick up some freelance work here and there, but it’s all him.

Q: What does it mean to you to be an author?

A: It means being an artist. I’m always really sad when people write to market or write to make money or write to sell books. It’s like, dude, what are you doing? This is about art. It’s about creation – making something only you can add to the world. That’s really special. It’s what you have left when you strip like to bare bones. There should be more reverence for that.

Q: What is your writing process like? Do you listen to certain music, snack, make loads of phone notes when inspiration randomly strikes?

A: I sit down, and I do it. It’s both singularly unmagic and the most magic thing there is.

Q: Is there a genre or subgenre that you want to explore that you haven’t yet? Conversely, are there any that you’ll never write?

A: I want to try to marry a thriller with the magic of great prose. I feel like plot is a weak point of mine and I want to try to explore that some, probably in the place I’m most afraid of, which is the end of the world – bombs flying, nuclear winter. Cormac McCarthy’s The Road is the most beautiful novel I can never read again.

Q: What has been the hardest part of your career as an author so far?

A: Dealing with people. I was singularly unprepared for the human side of this.

Q: What do you consider to be your greatest strength and weakness as an author?

A: I write beautiful words. My mentor was mean as a snake, but she taught me to care about what language sounds like. Despite how psychologically damaging that relationship was – I didn’t write for almost a decade afterward – I’m grateful to her for that.

Q: Who is on your radar as someone you’d love to work with?

A: TJ Price and Jolie Toomajan, both of whom are probably too cool to work with me.

Q: At some point in our lives, we’ve all heard the negative comments: “You’re not good enough.” “You’ll never make it.” “This is the worst thing I’ve ever seen.” “You don’t belong.” How do you move forward when faced with negativity?

A: I didn’t, for a decade (see above). My husband made mem start writing again, and I’m deeply grateful that he did. I wouldn’t let it stop me again, though – I’m confident enough in myself now. Lots of therapy helped. You can stop caring about what people say when you stop writing for someone else.

Q: What advice would you give to women who are wanting to write, especially if it’s something others might perceive as “outside of the norm”?

A: Write for you. Don’t write for anyone else other than yourself. Life is so short – too short to waste on something that isn’t your passion. A brilliant man used to tell me, “No passion, no point.” He was right then, and he’s right now.

The night wore on like any other. The club was a kind of church, one where men came to worship bodies instead of God. Not women – they didn’t particularly like women, and most of them had women at home, anyway. They came to get away from their women. “She doesn’t love me anymore,” they’d say when they got drunk enough. “I stay around for the kids. If I leave, I’ll never see ’em again.” Those were the nice guys. Others would tell you that their woman let herself go, which generally meant she had a baby. “Well, who put that baby there?” I wanted to ask them. Some guys would outright tell you their wife was a bitch. “She treats me like shit,” they’d say, and you’d know there was another side to that story.

You’d think they came in ’cause they were horny. Most of them were, but horniness will only get you in the door. Those guys stuck around to play make-believe. Whether or not they whipped it out, they wanted to pretend they were Hugh Hefner. These were broke-ass men who worked all day at a chicken plant or lumber company or lawn care service, places that paid them minimum wage to shut up and take what their bosses handed them. They wore dirty jeans; they smelled like sweat and cigarette smoke. The type of guy who came into the club, he didn’t have much to offer, or he didn’t think he did. So he paid us to play king for a day, and we made him feel sexy, wanted. We gave him what real life promised and snatched back – call it control, or love, or a sense of self-worth. We traded in lost fantasies and fairy tales. Remember that next time you see a club. They call us sex workers, but we’re not, not really. We don’t sell sex. We hand out dreams.

This honestly sounds soo good, and I’m really excited for Ink Vine to come out! Elizabeth will also be releasing Blood Cypress with Raw Dog Screaming Press next year. Check out Elizabeth’s website and follow her on X and Instagram so you don’t miss all her updates!