Getting Back In The Saddle

It's been a pretty rough year for me, professionally. After receiving several rejections from paying markets, and seeing disappointing sales of my recent novel Conversion Dysphoria Blues, I didn't even want to look at anything I'd written, convinced it was all terrible.

There wasn't a magic pill that got me out of my slump, it simply took time to work through it and move past it. It's not the first time this has happened, and it won't be the last. Paying markets are incredibly hard to crack, charity projects are overwhelmed by people who want to help, and the novels I really, really love writing seem to be the ones that sell the worst. It's weird how that is, but it's always been true going right back to some of my first.

I can only write for myself, though. I know this because I wrote my worst novel (under my deadname) trying to write what I thought everyone else wanted, and not only was I dreadfully wrong on that count but the work was dreck. Writers must, above all, be honest and true to themselves, or the work suffers. So I don't intend to change what I'm writing, though I may adjust the price point and tweak some other factors. 

Speaking of which, I'm putting together an anthology of my short trans-themed works, most of which were written for markets that rejected them. Before you shout and say "nobody buys single-author anthologies!" don't panic, I know. I'm going to aim for a much lower digital price point and possible Kindle Unlimited inclusion to see if it makes for a good gateway drug to my novels. It has to be better than these stories (and they're good ones!) sitting around on my hard drive unread. Don't expect a launch with a lot of fanfare and hype - I'll probably just drop it onto the market at some point with a little announcement and a very short pre-order period (if any).

I'm also working on three other novella-sized projects. One is about a haunted hotel, one is about a dystopian future workplace, and the other is about inherited magic. All of them feature trans protagonists, but I haven't ruled out writing about cis men again in the future. Nick Fabian #4 is also kicking around, but I'm on my fourth try writing it and I'm not going to proceed without a very solid outline. There's nothing more frustrating to me than having 30,000 words in completely unusable fragments because I noped out on an idea halfway through, which is what happened in all my attempts. I think I might try to write something a little more light-hearted when I attempt it again.

That's all for now!

​-Reis