trans – Page 3 – A. L. Lester

Interview: Chace Verity

Chace Verity joins us this morning to tell us a bit about themselves and their upcoming sexy Snow White retelling, Illusive Wishes! Welcome, Chace!

First questions… why are you doing this interview?

Hello! I’m Chace Verity (they/them), author of romances across multiple subgenres and gender pairings/more-ings. I have a nonbinary/nonbinary dark, sexy Snow White retelling releasing soon called Illusive Wishes. Discover a new kind of Prince Charming on October 15!

What started you writing?

I’ve been writing freely ever since I was a very small child, always looking to discover new worlds. I’ve taken writing more seriously in the last six or seven years. More recently than that, I discovered why I was looking for new worlds. As a very queer person, the vast majority of media around me didn’t resemble my own lived experiences and feelings. Since joining the online writing community, I’ve approached my own writing with more purpose, and I’ve had the extreme joy of discovering new worlds written by other queer authors.

What do you like to read?

These days, I read mostly adult romances spread out through many subgenres. Contemporary, fantasy, paranormal, sci-fi, historical, etc. Some of my favorite authors write in multiple subgenres as well, so I get excited following their publishing journey and seeing what’s new from Alyssa Cole, Katrina Jackson, Skye Kilaen, J. Emery, etc. I also have gotten back into reading graphic novels and manga since the pandemic started, and those can be in wildly varying genres. The recent paperback shortage has made it difficult to read those in my preferred format, but I was gifted Mooncakes by Suzanne Walker and Wendy Xu recently, and I bought a big beautiful volume of Codename: Sailor V by Naoko Takeuchi for my birthday and have enjoyed rereading the manga that compelled me so much as a teenager.

Writing is an intrinsically solo occupation. Do you belong to any groups or associations, either online or in the ‘real’ world? How does that work for you?

I used to belong to many different dedicated writing groups, but I’ve had to step away from all of them for one reason or the other in the last couple of years. Not because I think groups are inherently bad, but just because I had personal stuff going on. I’m slowly stepping back into joining groups with people I don’t know, but I’m trying to keep it low pressure. Large groups, in general, may not be for me.

Right now, I want to focus on building friendships one-on-one with mutuals I admire on social media like Twitter, and I am dedicated to protecting my friendships with the writing partners I’ve had for several years. Writing is very solitary, but I value my writing friendships tremendously. It’s nice to have a safe space where I can cry because a book release flopped or because I’m stuck mid-draft. And it’s equally nice to be able to offer an ear when a friend is going through similar troubles.

When I look at my books on my shelf, I don’t see word counts or sales or rankings. I see the friends who were with me on those journeys. Sometimes it’s a bittersweet reflection because some friendships change and dissolve. But overall, I don’t regret any of it.

What do you like to do when you’re not writing?

I play a lot of video games and listen to K-pop while playing with my cats. I don’t talk a whole lot about my hobbies because I grew up with people gatekeeping everything I liked, but I’ve realized during this pandemic that people are going to shit on everything I do, no matter how much I try to present myself as worthy. So since the pandemic has started, I have found myself enjoying my hobbies with much more enthusiasm and not caring at all about what others think. When I tweet that I’m playing through the Yakuza series or that I’m excited for BTS’s upcoming online concert, I don’t give one flying fuck who might come into my mentions to fight me or what “friend” decides they don’t want to associate with me anymore. Hobbies refuel my creative vehicle, allowing me to write all the weird books I want. Speaking of weird…

Tell me a little bit about your most recent release. What gave you the idea for it? How long did it take to write? What did you enjoy about writing it? What did you hate?

Illusive Wishes is my favorite book I’ve written thus far, and I think it’s because it’s the first one where I wrote without worrying about making it appeal to a broad audience. This queer Snow White retelling is very niche. Even in contemporary genres, books with trans/nonbinary protagonists still aren’t hitting best-seller lists to the same degree as cisgender leads. So add in fantasy + romance + a hefty list of content notes…

Yeah, I probably spent two years writing a book that maybe thirty people will read. But it’s what I wanted to write. I have a note on my whiteboard from an interview with Alyssa Cole that says, “If it makes me happy, it can make others happy.” Next to it is another note from the famed violinist Stuart Canin. I had asked him during an online event what advice he could give for struggling creatives, and he simply said, “If you don’t love it, don’t do it.”

I love writing. And I very much loved writing Illusive Wishes. It probably won’t pay the bills, but it filled my heart with a lot of excitement and happiness.

Illusive Wishes

Ever since becoming disowned by his family, the person who matters most to Isaac is his best friend. Unfortunately, said best friend is trapped inside a mirror. For two years, Isaac has traveled various kingdoms with Penn at his side, searching for clues to break the curse and earning money however he can. When offered a job as an escort for a lavish party at the Embedded Palace—a place teeming with wealth and potential magic—Isaac is quick to accept. For the friend he’s fallen in love with, he’ll do anything.

Being stuck in a mirror is one thing, but for Penn, it’s even more humiliating because they’re a fairy who should have been able to avoid the curse. Whatever the curse is. They can’t quite remember. If only they had been a storybook Prince Charming instead of a useless fairy, life would have been better. But with a sweet, kind, and alluring friend like Isaac helping them, they refuse to give up.

As soon as the pair arrive at the Embedded Palace, buried memories start surfacing, darker than either of them ever imagined. With a misanthropic knight who has ties to fairies, cursed apples, a queen seeking an enchanted mirror, and a hunter obsessed with Isaac, the inseparable best friends find themselves being pulled apart. Maybe not even a Prince Charming can save the day, but Penn and Isaac will do anything to make their deepest wish come true—to be with each other.

Content notes : Buy on Amazon : Buy on Gumroad

About Chace

Chace Verity (they/them) is publishing queer as heck stories with a strong romantic focus, although queer friendships and found families are important too. Chace prefers to write fantasy but dabbles in contemporary and historical fiction as well. An American citizen & Canadian permanent resident, Chace will probably never be able to call a gallon of milk a “four-litre.”

Website : Newsletter : Bookbub : Twitter : Instagram

Guest Interview: SI CLARKE

This week, SI CLARKE pops in for a chat about her new release The Left Hand of Dog!

Morning, Si! Why are you doing this interview?

I have a new book that just came out a few weeks ago: The Left Hand of Dog. It’s the first in a new series called Starship Teapot.

What started you writing?

I’d dabbled in writing at various points in my life. I’d written the odd article. At one point, I was an avid blogger. And through most of my life, I had certain story ideas I always said I’d turn into a book … eventually. I’d even tried writing a book a few times. But it never went anywhere.

Late in 2017, I was made redundant from my job. I felt myself beginning to slide into a depression. I’d get up in the morning, walk the dogs – and then lie down on the sofa. And I wouldn’t really move again until my partner got home at dinnertime.

I did that for a week. On the Monday of the next week, I lay down on the sofa – and then promptly stood back up again. ‘No, I’m not going to do this.’ Whether I was talking to myself or to my dogs or just to no one, I still don’t really know.

But I walked over to my desk and sat down to start planning my first novel. And even though I have a full-time job now, I haven’t looked back since.

Where do you write?

I’ve been working from home on a full-time basis since the start of the pandemic and I’ve got a really cushy setup with my funky ergonomic kneeling chair and two large, curved monitors. It’s sad, but I spend each work day facing one screen – and then at dinnertime, I turn my chair a few degrees to the right and work on my writing.

But I’ve also been known to write in unconventional locations. I finished the first draft of my first novel on my phone, while weaving and dodging through the underground shopping centre in Canary Wharf. I started the first draft of a book I still haven’t written while weaving and dodging through the pedestrians in Deptford Market on a Saturday. Honestly, it’s a miracle I don’t walk into more stationary objects than I already do.

What do you like to read?

I mainly read science fiction. But occasionally venture into fantasy, mysteries, historical fiction, and thrillers. Once I read a thriller novel set in London. The main character went to investigate the second murder in the story. He named where the house was in relation to the train station and what he saw looking out the window of the main bedroom, where the corpse was still lying. And I realised – he was standing in my house, in my bedroom. Maybe I should stay away from thriller novels.

But really what I love are books that dig deep into characters. And I love characters that aren’t stale, male, pale, cis-het, neurotypical.

What do you like to do when you’re not writing?

I have two dogs, both rescues. Ozzy will be nine next month. I met him in 2015 when I spent my holiday volunteering at a bear sanctuary in Romania. The sanctuary is an amazing place. They rescue and rehabilitate bears from all across Central and Eastern Europe – mainly from captivity, but sometimes wild bear cubs that have been abandoned and wouldn’t survive on their own.

My experience at LiBEARty was incredible – but I quickly realised they had all the help they needed already. So I spoke to the organiser and asked if we could be of more use at the dog shelter run by the same team.

We arrived at the shelter during a thunderstorm when 499 dogs were howling at the top of their lungs. And one dog stood on top of his house, smiling and begging for my attention. Three weeks later, he was lying on my sofa.

Lemmy came from the same rescue group three years later.

Tell me a little bit about your most recent release. What gave you the idea for it? How long did it take to write? What did you enjoy about writing it? What did you hate?

In October 2020, I sat down to write something silly. Something that would make me feel better about life, the universe, and everything.

So many of the early reviews have said something along the lines of ‘this was exactly what I needed right now.’ It was so much fun to write. I loved every second of it and I hope readers do too.

The Left Hand of Dog features an aro-ace agender main character, Lem. Together with her dog, she’s kidnapped by incompetent bounty hunters from outer space. It features a talkative horse, an unswearing robot, an overly anxious giant parrot, and a cloud of sentient glitter gas. All on the run from the bunnyboos.

The Left Hand of Dog

Escaping intergalactic kidnappers has never been quite so ridiculous.

When Lem and her faithful dog, Spock, retreat from the city for a few days of hiking in Algonquin Park, the last thing they expect is to be kidnapped by aliens. No, scratch that. The last thing they expect is to be kidnapped by a bunch of strangely adorable intergalactic bounty hunters aboard a ship called the Teapot.

After Lem falls in with an unlikely group of allies – including a talking horse, a sarcastic robot, an overly anxious giant parrot, and a cloud of sentient glitter gas – the gang must devise a cunning plan to escape their captors and make it back home safely.

But things won’t be as easy as they first seem. Lost in deep space and running out of fuel, this chaotic crew are faced with the daunting task of navigating an alien planet, breaking into a space station, and discovering the real reason they’re all there…

Packed with preposterous scenarios, quirky characters, and oodles of humour, The Left Hand of Dog tackles complex subjects such as gender, the need to belong, and the importance of honest communication. Perfect for fans of Charlie Jane Anders’ Victories Greater than Death – especially ones who enjoy endless references to Red Dwarf, Star Trek, and Doctor Who. This book will show you that the universe is a very strange place indeed.

Buy Left Hand of Dog! If you opt to buy it direct from me, you’ll get 20% off with code LIMFIC2021.

Meet SI CLARKE

SI CLARKE is a Canadian misanthrope who lives in Deptford, sarf ees London. She shares her home with her partner and an assortment of waifs and strays. When not writing convoluted, inefficient stories, she spends her time telling financial services firms to behave more efficiently. When not doing either of those things, she can be found in the pub or shouting at people online – occasionally practising efficiency by doing both at once.  

As someone who’s neurodivergent, an immigrant, and the proud owner of an invisible disability, she strives to present a diverse array of characters in her stories.

Website : Goodreads : Readerly : Twitter

Skye Kilaen: Queer M/F Romance

Today, Skye Kilaen is visiting to talk about queer m/f romances! Please give her a warm welcome!

I’m so excited to be here today talking about one of my favorite topics, queer M/F romances!

As a queer reader, LGBTQIA+ romances have a special place in my heart. When I first started reading romance by checking out books from my local library, I could easily find books that paired two allo cis men, and somewhat less easily books that paired two allo cis women. I was delighted when I started to discover romances beyond those two categories. Trans characters! Ace and aro characters! And also books that reflected my own experience being a bi/pan woman who has often dated men: M/F romances where one or both characters are queer.

(I’ve tried hard to start mixing it up by sometimes calling this category queer F/M. After all, why should the M be first all the time? But unfortunately my brain sees “F/M” and immediately thinks “radio.”)

Without further ado, here are four of my favorite queer M/F romances, and four that are on my radar.

Something Like Love is a contemporary by Black romance powerhouse Christina C. Jones, who is one of the funniest romance writers around in my opinion. Both leads are bi and I love them so much.

“Eddie is arrogant, quite vain and slick at the mouth – or simply confident, discerning, and unafraid to speak his mind, if you ask him. Astrid is annoyingly perky, unpolished, and a little delusional about Eddie’s attraction to her – or, according to her, energetic, authentic, and absolutely spot on about the driving factor of a certain local tattoo artist’s ‘hatred’ of her.

Undeniable attraction.

They may think they’re opposite, but have more in common than they think.”

Jules Kelley’s Edge of the Woods is a contemporary paranormal with a strong romance subplot that this romance reader found extremely satisfying. Haley, the female MC, is bi.

“Haley Fern has been the alpha of her local werewolf pack for less than a year when their law enforcement liaison retires, and Leland Sommers, a man who knows nothing about werewolves or their world, is hired in his place. What could be an awkward situation turns complicated when the man shows up his first day on the job with an injured teenage boy he found on the road–a boy Haley knows has just been bitten.”

Disclosure: Kelley is an online friend, who became a friend because I loved their writing so much that I reached out to say hi.

Caroline’s Heart by Austin Chant is a historical paranormal/fantasy romance that pairs a grieving witch and a gentle cowboy. Both are trans and bi. The blurb for this book centers Cecily, but Roy’s the emotional heart (no pun intended) of the story, the one who coaxes Cecily alive and holds her up when she needs it. Love this book.

“Cecily lost her soulmate years ago, leaving her with nothing but the clockwork heart that once beat in Caroline’s chest. They say it’s impossible to bring back the dead, yet Cecily’s resurrection spell is nearly complete and grows more powerful by the day.

But when a cowboy she barely knows is fatally injured, the only way to save him is by sacrificing an essential piece of the resurrection spell—and all possibility of seeing her lover again.”

Help Wanted by J. Emery is a gender and sexuality questioning F/M romance. I love this little novella about students at a magical college.

“Em is confused about a lot of things: who she is, what she wants, how she’s going to pass Alchemy when she’s awful at it. The one thing she’s not confused about is how much she wants to buy her best friend (and college roommate) the best birthday present ever. Luckily the local magic supply shop is hiring.

Her plan to get a job there would be working perfectly if not for her coworker Phineas who is in turns aggravating and endearingly awkward. She’s not sure if she wants to date him or wants to be him. The more time they spend together the more she thinks it may be both.”

Disclosure: Emery is an online friend, who became a friend after I volunteered to beta read for them because I enjoyed their published work so much.

Erin Kinsella’s Heart and Seoul stars a demisexual, panromantic heroine paired with a bisexual hero. Tessa’s an author who flies to Seoul, South Korea where her book is being adapted to film. Eun Gi, a K-pop superstar, has been cast as the lead actor. So of course they end up in a marriage of convenience. What else could possibly happen? 🙂

I was lucky enough to beta read the second book in this series, which isn’t out yet, and I fell in love with the entire cast. So I’m excited to go back to this first book and find out more about how Tessa and Eun Gi got together.

Disclosure: Kinsella is an online friend, who became a friend because I had such a great time beta reading her work.

Penny Aimes has just released For The Love of April French, a contemporary BDSM romance. The title character is a trans woman. This is waiting for me on my e-reader once I get out from under this pile of library books, and I’m so excited!

“April French doesn’t do relationships and she never asks for more. A long-standing regular at kink club Frankie’s, she’s kind of seen it all. As a trans woman, she’s used to being the scenic rest stop for others on their way to a happily-ever-after. She knows how desire works, and she keeps hers carefully boxed up to take out on weekends only. After all, you can’t be let down if you never ask.

Then Dennis Martin walks into Frankie’s.”

May Peterson’s The Calyx Charm is the third in her series The Sacred Dark. From the sample I’ve read, I suspect it works as a standalone if you’re okay with jumping right in to the lush magical worldbuilding (which is her signature!) and hanging on for the ride.

“Violetta Benedetti knows how to hide things. She spent years concealing herself behind the persona her father expected of her. Now she hides in the dark corners of Vermagna’s underworld, lying low to keep her father from using her magic in his unending quest for power.

But her biggest secret is her love for her best friend, who only knew her as Mercurio Benedetti, not the woman she is today. Now he’s dead, and she’ll never be able to tell him the truth.”

Except that her best friend Tibario DID die… and then got better. So that creates some possibilities. 🙂

The cover for Rosalie Jardin’s Prescription for a Lonely Heart cracks me up in such a good way. His expression is “Heyyyyy!” and hers is so very “I’m not so sure about all this…” That’s because in high school, nerdy Kay and athlete Adrian made a pact that if they were both still single at thirty, they’d get married. Kay, who is demisexual, thought it was a joke.

But now they’re both twenty-eight and still single, and Adrian doesn’t see why they should wait.

Tell me Anything by Skye Kilaen

Content warnings

Isabel meets Derek at exactly the wrong time… or is it exactly right?

Can Isabel return this year for a refund? Because it sucks. Her editing business would be paying her bills just fine… if her ex-boyfriend wasn’t blackmailing her. Of course, if her conservative family wouldn’t disown her for being bisexual, her ex couldn’t blackmail her in the first place. Sadly, she hasn’t invented time travel to un-make the mistake that created this mess.

Derek has a good life. Mostly. He’s an out bisexual man with a successful business and a loving queer found family. But he’s almost forty, living alone is getting stale, and yet dating seems pointless since nobody’s ever found him exciting enough to build a life with. Given he’s now doing zero-creativity craft kits to pass the time, he suspects they’re right. Maybe he should get a dog.

Isabel isn’t holding auditions for a rescuer, and she wouldn’t have expected Derek, a gorgeous, gentle man with his own history of family rejection, to fill the role. But Derek’s “boring” life is the calm harbor Isabel needs, and her affection helps Derek see himself in a new light. Their tentative connection might become the happily ever after they both deserve—if they can hold onto it through the fallout from Isabel’s recent romantic disaster.

Meet Skye

Skye Kilaen writes queer romance, both contemporary and science fiction, that’s sometimes about polyamorous relationships. Even her contemporaries are usually at least a bit geeky. After all, she does some of her writing in her local comic book shop.

Skye started writing fiction in elementary school on a Smith Corona electric typewriter because that’s all people had back in the early 1980s. She didn’t realize she wanted to read and write romance until much later, when it finally dawned on her that she adored X-Men comics for the soap opera aspect as much as for the superpowers.

She’s bi/pan and she currently lives in Austin, Texas because of all the libraries and breakfast tacos.

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#TheWeekThatWas: don’t punch down

It only occurred to me a few weeks ago that Gwyn in Taking Flight is a bit out of the ordinary, because he’s trans. And some people still find that edgy, or unusual or something to be looked down on.

And this post is to say, I am so sick of that. Of all of it. I’m sick of it from the wider world and I’m sick of it on a smaller, punching-down scale from within the LGBTQIA+ community.

I came across a post on a facebook group the other day where someone was bemoaning all these new genders and sexualities people can identify with. It really, really upset me. It was from someone within the community, who I would therefore hope would have know better. How dare that person imply that identifying as an even more marginalised identity than their own was somehow unacceptable?

We’ve always been here. The fact that there are words now when there weren’t before doesn’t mean we’re new.

Homosexual can only be traced back to 1880. Lesbian has an earlier origin but was only used commonly as a noun to describe same-sex attracted women from about then as well. Transgender dates from the early seventies. These are all labels that are now in common use and have a common cultural meaning to most of us. Labels are helpful for our understanding of ourselves and our understanding of those around us. They’re not cast-iron boxes we’re locked in, they’re a starting point for dialogue and exploration.

Just because you don’t understand the label doesn’t make it any less real.

That goes for those people out there who don’t understand how people can be lesbian, gay or trans, as well as those within the community who can’t understand how one can be non-binary, or bi, or pan, or demi, or use neo-pronouns, or identify however one bloody well wants to.

Don’t punch down, basically. I’m sick of it. I’m sick of living in a racist, ableist, transphobic, discriminatory-on-all-levels society where it’s okay to say these things. I’m sick at myself for not calling this person on their comment. I feel stupid for writing a story about someone very marginalised and not realising what I was doing because to me, being trans is just as normal as not being trans. About the first four iterations of the blurb didn’t mention it, for fuck’s sake! And then I thought… Oh! that might be something readers might like to know about! How stupid is that? There’s a major drama in there, where a prospective lover discovers he’s trans…and it initially didn’t occur to me to put that in the blurb.

Was that because being outed is such an everyday worry to a load of people I know that it was another normal thing for me? Probably. Who knows?

I’m so tired of all of it. Everything is a fight, a fight to force people to be kind. And it shouldn’t be.

Writing and Allyship Around Non-Binary Gender

This was first published in Romance Matters, the magazine for members of the (UK) Romantic Novelist’s Association, Autumn 2020. It was intended as a very brief guide to introduce writers to the subject, but I think it also stands as a good introduction to people wanting to understand more about the gender spectrum, regardless of whether they’re writers or not.

@cogenthippo
#NonBinary #TransDayOfVisibility #RainbowMafia #PanSexual #LGBTQ #ComingOut #QueerBookTok #Writertok #authortok #over50 #over40
♬ Steven Universe – L.Dre

Non-binary, genderfluid, genderqueer, agender and bigender are all descriptions of the fuzzy middle of the gender spectrum and people who sit there may choose any of those labels.

The main thing to remember about all types of gender diversity (transgenderness) is that it is about how you feel inside, not about how you present to the outside world.

I generally present as a short, round, grumpy middle-aged lady with purple hair, however I am feeling. This is probably because I only worked out what was going on for me in my mid-forties and I’m used to bottling it all up. Other people feel more comfortable presenting as masculine one day and feminine another. Some people present as androgynous all the time. It’s about where you need to be for mental comfort, not a fashion choice.

Good Allyship

There are no standard pronouns to use for non-binary people. As a good ally, what matters is using the pronoun people ask you to and not making them feel excluded by using gendered language. Some non-binary or gender neutral people like to be called he or she. Some prefer they. Some use zie or xe or per. A few people use ‘it’ and lots of people find ‘it’ offensive. Apart from that, the other way to make gender diverse people feel less uncomfortable is to try to use non-gendered language. ‘Children’ instead of boys and girls. ‘Parent’ rather than mother or father. ‘People’ or ‘folks’ rather than ‘ladies and gentlemen’.

Writing

Obviously then, given all the fuzziness, there are no absolutes for fictional characters. I’ve written three books now with non-binary protagonists. In first one (Shadows on the Border) I experimented with all the pronouns under the rainbow and in the end I changed pronoun depending on POV. Some characters saw my MC as male, some as female and some as neutral. The character sees themselves as ‘they’ and uses ‘they’ for everyone, because they come from a gender-neutral culture. My 1780s historical romance with a non-binary character (The Flowers of Time) was more difficult. Although my character is born female, she definitely feels herself to be gender-neutral. I decided in the end to work within the historical framework and stick to she and he pronouns.

If you create your character and you aren’t sure you’ve got it right, think about finding a sensitivity reader to give you some feedback.

Finally…please ask if you are unsure what pronouns to use for someone. Very few people will mind a good-faith question!

Category: trans