Nothing much to report, except that I have a little earworm which has been tunneling it’s way through my brain over the last few days. I listen to it on repeat when I write, when I go to the store, when I take breaks . . . you get the idea. The song is “GOOD” by Erin McCarley, and you can listen to it here:
What sorts of earworms have you had? Tell me in the comments.
Yesterday marked the publication of His Aura: A Collection of Transmasculine Erotica, which features, among many awesome pieces, two of my short stories, “Maddeningly Wonderful” and “A Honeycomb of Nerves”.
You can read more about the stories and their background in this blog post.
While there is an excerpt on the book’s page of my story “Maddeningly Wonderful”, I thought I’d offer another excerpt from that same story. This excerpt is right from the beginning. I hope you enjoy it. Also, please consider buying a copy of the anthology if well written erotica and trans men is your jam.
Lately, I’ve become dissatisfied with sex scenes in fiction. More specifically, the types featured in romance novels and fanfiction. I have to say there is nothing wrong with the sex scenes in these stories. They have a purpose and fulfill that particular purpose. I have just found the sex scenes in some of these stories to be so graphic and over the top they turned me off. One scene in particular was so graphic that it was gross to me.
I write a lot of sex scenes myself. One of my novellas is very explicit because it details a man’s particular sexual journey. I write sex scenes because it is very much a part of the characters and the story. But along the way, I’ve found myself being overly graphic. I think it’s easy to fall into that trap. I’m going to work on improving my approach to sex scenes and be more impressionistic, rather than overly realist and graphic and writing in every last detail.
To that end, I rewrote a sex scene in my current novella to be a little less graphic. In the process, I found myself writing more about the characters, which, I think, lends a nice human touch which further keeps this from being gross or overly graphic.
I have a long way to go to be where I want to be with this particular aspect of my writing, but it’s a start.
I’ve decided to share the drafts of both scenes so you can compare and contrast the original and the rewritten scene. Below the cut, you can find both of those.
Some context: this story is about a May-December romance. Ren is nineteen and Paul is forty-two. In this segment, Ren has told Paul he loves him. Paul is very ambivalent about this. He doesn’t think Ren is old enough/mature enough to really understand what that means.
Apparently I have sold two other stories. The ink has maybe kind of dried on the contract, so I’ll just babble about them.
I originally wrote the two stories for a colleague. He wanted to start some kind of electronic zine, and I said I’d write some stories for him. I wrote the pieces but he never got around to making his zine. So I said “screw it” and submitted the stories elsewhere. (For the record, those stories sat on the back burner for TWO YEARS. So it’s not like I waited, like, three months before deciding to move on.)
I’d also had a string of rejections. I was feeling particularly low and a little bitter. While I didn’t think anything would come of my submission (market I usually didn’t submit to, the stories being exceedingly short for the genre) I said “screw it” and submitted anyways.
The two stories in question are also erotica. Yup. But they’re trans erotica, written about trans men, for trans men (primarily), by a trans man. There is just not a lot of erotica (none? approaching that?) for and about trans men. There’s not a lot of erotica for trans people period. At least, not the type which doesn’t fetishize us.
So. There is that. I also like to think that erotica is not incompatible with literary fiction. Well written, enjoyable, hot sex has its place in fiction just as much as crap sex (which is what I see far too much of). And I much prefer reading and writing the former.
Even if it’s just smut for the sake of smut, that in itself can be powerful and moving, and just plain fun. And there is nothing wrong with writing sexy sex for the sake of fun.
So yes. A little smut. And welcome additions to my publication list.
I’ve been writing shorter fiction this summer, while I’m on a break from my main manuscript. This excerpt is from one of those pieces of shorter fiction, titled Queer as Love. The story follows a married couple as one of them transitions from female to male. This part comes after the narrator, who is the cisgender spouse, has begun to seriously contemplate divorce. This is a rough draft, so it’s not finished, but the idea is there.
But these fantasies dispersed, like ash. And then I thought of you. As you were, as you had been. I saw you in all your beauty. I saw your strength, and my pride in that. I remembered our first time, in that little hotel room, when you abandoned your towel and clambered right in my lap, straddling me, sinking down onto me while our breathing roared like an avalanche. I thought of our wedding at the courthouse, and how you said “fuck” and made the clerk blush. I remembered our first fight, bitter and spiteful and wounding because we didn’t know how to fight, and how you came running for me and threw your arms around me, and through tears, kissed me and said you loved me over and over. I remembered when Ash was born and there were three of us in the room. There was a new life between us and we were so in awe we were silent. I saw how mean you could be, how cutting and cruel with your words. You were good at that. I saw your childishness, the adult tantrums of pouting and sulking when you didn’t get what you wanted. They way you could and would emotionally manipulate me. How you hated to compromise. The way you didn’t put your shoes away but just let them lay all around where I could trip on them.
You told me once, when you were trying to explain a painting to me, that sometimes what was beautiful was also ugly, sometimes gross or scary.
I saw you in all your beauty.
Today my short story, “The Blind Tattooist”, came out in issue three of |tap|. This story is important to me for a few reasons. It is that it is the first publication I’ve had in the two years since I began submitting short stories professionally, since I decided I would only submit to paying markets. And it is that this is the first time I’ve been paid for my writing.
Incidentally, this story came out of Chuck Wendig’s Flashfiction Challenge about a year ago. Wendig gives a list of titles, provided by commentors to his blog. The idea is to choose one of the titles and then write a story of about 1,000 words to go with it. I wasn’t expecting the story to go where it went, but here we are.
The story follows a young trans woman, Lucky, and her journey of recovery after surviving a horrific attack.
I finished the second draft of my novella, Bloom. It’s just under 57k. I may have to do some tinkering with the third draft and consider designating it as a novel.
I do feel accomplished, but I also feel relieved. I’ve been chasing this ending for what feels like forever, and I am ready to be done with this draft.
On the other hand . . . I have never completed a second draft of any long piece of fiction. So this is a big victory for me.
I’m going to put it away for at least a month and go work on short stories. But when the time comes — look out third draft.
