As much as I read you'd think I could comp better, but I just don't think in that way. Catergories are hard for me anyway because I'm a splitter rather than a lumper, as they say in the sciences, although I also follow the Fortean principle that everything blends into everything else around the edges. Categories are imaginary; individuals are real. Female-centric historical is so overwhelmingly heteronormatively Romantic and I hate that; I don't want comps like that (and a lot of it annoys me because they didn't research to my standards; I'm such a history snob). My favorite queer books are contemporary - most YA is contemporary. (Is Len really YA, though? The question I only recently though to ask) Conventional wisdom at the moment seems to be that young people don't like historical except there's always exceptions, aren't there?

So yeah, I'm agonizing on this because I wasn't prepared and had to enter excuses on a query form. When in doubt, check books out. I probably need to go buy/check out a bunch of recent queer, historical, western-themed, female-centric books and read them critically to see if I can find the commonalities. A project which, though worthwhile, also sounds like a great way to procrastinate and also to frustrate myself. Life is rough.