Escapism: Retreat or Running Away?

It's the final 24 hours for the Second Chance Charms Kickstarter!

We've unlocked:

  • character art of Charlie and Anton
  • the character art postcard design
  • STICKERS featuring our fave pair
I am so happy about this.
  • A "burrito" recipe that may constitute a food crime (but is tasty)
  • A pristine Bev playlist curated by Dr Erin Harrington aka "the person who played Bev in the Urban Shadows campaign that was my attempt to avoid writing this series" (oops)

And I have MORE TO COME if we get there!

(I am just saying. Chibi Raphael in a chibi business suit. That's all I'm saying.)

24 hours! Get your pledge pledged!

I have been working very hard - on the Kickstarter, on my day job, on a bunch of important marketing that I have commited to (you can follow my accountability vids from my TikTok/Insta, if that's your jam) and I have been taking delighted refuge in the novels of D.E. Stevenson

"Who?" you say (most of you. I'm sure I have some kindred spirits).

Scottish writer D. E. Stevenson! Related to Robert Louis Stevenson! Over 40 romance novels! Seven million copies sold!

To be fair, she's been dead for over 50 years. But not forgotten, at least not any more - Persephone Books and Dean Street Press have both issued reprints.

Stevenson's novels - at least, the eleven1 of them I've chewed through over the past couple of weeks - are mostly post-WWII "light romantic" novels where a nice young woman meets a nice young man and they make appropriate decisions about how much they love each other and get virtuously married. Cads and liars are defeated, the virtues of the country are extolled, and hard work and honesty are much admired.

I like them because Stevenson has an excellent eye for character and a good sense of humour, and because no one has a cellphone.

Quite a few of her female protagonists have to deal with poverty, and interestingly, many of them escape poverty not because of the nice young men, but because they have been left property, or are reclaimed by a long-lost relative, and because some of them--gasp--work.

In fact, almost all of her heroines have some kind of work (and domestic labour is certainly regarded as work, which ought to be compensated) and some of them even continue work after marriage. Part-time, perhaps, or just until the children arrive, but I think Stevenson respects the work of her women - as she should have, being a married working woman herself.

These books are not perfect comfort reads. There is far too much admiration for the Great British Empire and its Glorious Expanse for my post-colonial reader brain to be uncomplicatedly happy. The treatment of the (very few) people of colour is paternalistic at best and horrendously racist often.2

And no one thinks much about politics. There's a vague sense that if everyone is just decent to each other, we'll all rub along all right. This is very nice, but I cannot help wondering what complications have been swept off the spotlessly clean doorstep of Stevenson's tidy homes.

Sometimes people deride "escapist" fiction like romance. I don't have much time for this point of view, because in this year of 2026, lord knows we all need to escape sometimes. But equally, I don't have much use for people who only want escape--the kind of people who complain whenever an author posts in support of sex workers or defends trans children, because they don't want politics in their horny gargoyle fantasy/murders on yachts/steampunk heist/whatever.3

I am happy to stage a retreat to D.E. Stevenson, to soothe my mind and shore up my soul, but I refuse to run away entirely. Indeed, the unexamined shadows of imperialism and white supremacy in the sunny light of her romances ably demonstrate that there's no such thing as politics-free fiction--only politics the reader agrees with or objects to.

And so the other other thing I've been doing is writing submissions opposing the badly conceived and horrible legislation put forward by New Zealand's current governing coalition (surprise! It's capitalism!). I've been relying heavily on Emily Writes' Submission Guide, and if my fellow New Zealanders would like to dip their toes into the submission pool, I recommend you do the same.

That's all from me for this week, and probably for next. Until then, I hope the world treats you well, and that everyone in your vicinity is uncomplicatedly decent. If not, I propose a temporary retreat to whatever fiction comforts you best.

After all, we need to imagine better worlds before we can fight for them.

That Healey Girl is the weeklyish newsletter of Karen (or Kate) Healey, a romance and speculative fiction author who lives in Ōtautahi, New Zealand and shakes plots loose by wandering along the river.

1 You can tell when I'm especially busy because the reading goes up.

2 More than once, Stevenson has a character exclaim they are "working like an [n-slur]" when they mean "working hard".

3 Not to be taken as a condemnation of any of these fine sub-genres, which I would happily write in the drop of a cog-spangled hat.