Tag Archives: lgbtq

Birthday Twins Guest Post: Maya MacGregor and SAM SYLVESTER

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*dusts off the blog, tests the mic*

Happy Tuesday, dear readers, and thank you so much for checking out Books Beyond Binaries! Whether you are a follower or a first-time visitor, your time means so much to me, especially since the blog is technically on hiatus for 2022! That said, I knew when I took this time away that there were at least a couple of books on the horizon that I would absolutely have to make time and space for here. THE MANY HALF-LIVED LIVES OF SAM SYLVESTER is definitely one of them. I am so lucky and so honoured to be able to host author Maya MacGregor for a REALLY over-the-top, expansive guest post about this unique title.

I was fortunate enough to be connected with Maya through one of my agenting colleagues, and when I started learning about this book, I was so excited. As a non-binary, autistic fan of writing with contemporary themes and spooky speculative elements, this book is right in my wheelhouse! I couldn’t wait to get my hands on an ARC and chat with Maya about some of the things that got me so excited – like, for example, that GORGEOUS (and super duper queer coded) cover art, by Lauren Franklin??

Well, meeting Maya did not disappoint. They have been an absolute gem throughout this process, and incredibly generous with providing me with an incredible interview for this post, some character art, AND a tarot spread! Feel free to jump around and peruse this post, get to know Maya a little bit, get to know SAM SYLVESTER, and don’t forget to order your copy… because one of the serendipitous coincidences about this book is that TODAY is my birthday, and TODAY is also THE MANY HALF-LIVED LIVES OF SAM SYLVESTER’s book birthday!! Twinsss!

Meet Maya MacGregor

Rocking forest fae vibes, Maya MacGregor is an author, singer, and artist based in Glasgow, Scotland. A fluent Gaelic speaker, Maya is active in many community activities in Gaelic music as well as writing contemporary YA and adult fiction (as Emmie Mears and M Evan MacGriogair). Maya has a degree in history and is passionate about writing the stories for teens they wish had existed when they were younger and fills them with the type of people who have always populated their world. Their pronouns are they/them.

THE MANY HALF-LIVED LIVES OF SAM SYLVESTER is Maya’s first YA novel, and the best news? They have another on the way! THE EVOLVING TRUTH OF EVER-STRONGER WILL is coming from Astra Books for Young Readers in 2024.

Like Sam, Maya is autistic. Also like Sam, Maya spent much of life learning to mask autistic behaviours. Some of Maya’s special interests are: Gaelic (which you can now learn on Duolingo!), Dragon Age (especially Dragon Age Inquisition!), Gaelic song and poetry.

Interview with the Author

There isn’t a lot of non-binary representation for this age category of books yet, especially with a more nuanced view of identity. This is a story that I know younger me would have LOVED and seen myself in. How much did your own lived experiences inspire or factor into your writing this book?

A lot! I’ve lived in eight US states and three countries, and among them, both Oregon and Montana, but I went the opposite direction to Sam. We moved from Portland to Montana when I was 11, and it was a huge culture shock for me. I grew up in the height of the AIDS crisis with two mums, and homophobia was a formative factor in my life, even more so after that move. Many of Sam’s experiences are born of my own, though I (thankfully!) never experienced queerphobic physical violence. That said, I was fully aware when Matthew Shepard was murdered one state away from me, and I have really clear memories of being in PE and playing a game called “smear the queer”. I was so deeply in the closet myself and internalised heaps of homophobia and general queerphobia. Also, my biological mother is bi and when she and my mum broke up, my bio mother started seeing a man and was then ostracised from her queer friends, so there were a lot of things that kept me in the closet until I was almost thirty and a lot that I’m still unpacking within myself.

When I sat down to write Sam’s story, I really wanted to give them things I didn’t have. Even in Portland of the 90s, things were not a bastion of progressive values. Some of my friends weren’t allowed to come to my house because of my mums, and I remember so clearly how Heather Has Two Mommies was banned and the message that sent to me as a kid with two mums, that my family was so shameful we posed a danger even to read about. If I could go back and tell child me that I’d one day write a book that people want to ban in a dozen states, well. It fills me with a certain amount of ferocity and defiance. We’ve both come a long way and still know fear too well.

Things are scary right now on so many levels for trans people and the wider queer community, but so many more kids are able to be out now. I wrote Sam’s story as a way to celebrate that, to give Sam a community I wish I’d had: self-acceptance, acceptance at school, queer friends, a ride-or-die dad, school dances, a sense of belonging. Sam’s a love letter to my past self in many ways and even more so to the young people of today. We all deserve to exist and to live a full, whole life.

Photo by Ehimetalor Akhere Unuabona on Unsplash

What are your MC’s special interests, and can you tell us a little bit about what special interests are (for those who don’t know) and why you chose what you did for your character?

I do love Gaelic! As for dragons, it’s more the Dragon Age games, specifically, though I do appreciate a good dragon in general! “Special interest” is a term specific to neurodivergent communities, primarily with autism and ADHD, where a person’s interest in a topic is notable from neurotypical interest in its depth and intensity. That can look like a number of things–for me, when I finally got the chance to learn Gaelic, I basically spent twenty hours a week doing it for two years. I was conversational in a couple months and fluent after two years, and six months after that, I got an A-grade fluent Highers qualification. I read heaps of books, including a Gaelic grammar book written in Gaelic, phonology, hundreds of hours of recordings of songs, radio programmes, and more. I think from the outside, special interests can look like obsessions, and to a degree, they are, but it’s always tied up for me with profound respect and comfort.

Sam’s special interest is mainly half-lived lives, in remembering and learning about kids who didn’t get to become adults. They research stories of people and keep a scrapbook of these teenagers’ “half-lived” lives and treat them with reverence because Sam feels very strongly that they deserve to be remembered.

Originally, this was going to be literal past lives, but that vanished in an early revision. I was still in the early years of self-diagnosis when I first wrote the book, and in the course of the editorial process after it was acquired, I got my formal diagnosis, and part of that helped to reframe my own experiences as well as Sam’s, so I think that’s how it ended up as it did in the end!

Photo by Kirk Cameron on Unsplash

Masking plays a huge role in my life – so many people who say to me that I can’t possibly be autistic, because I don’t do whatever thing they think of as being typical for autistic people… when really, I’ve just worked really hard to mask over the course of my life. This obviously plays a role in Sam’s life and identity as well, and I’d be interested to know why you chose to address that aspect of autistic identity in your work.

Gosh, masking has been something so heavily on my mind for the past few years. With the pandemic, it’s become super evident how much energy I was expending masking when I was out in public and around people. Two years pretty much alone in my flat has left me without much of a mask–or maybe it just made the mask that much heavier to put on.

Masking sounds like a bit of a nebulous term, but for those who aren’t familiar with it, it’s essentially a set of altered behaviours, facial expressions, social scripts, habits, and strictures of bodily control that autistic and other neurodivergent people are forced to learn in order to be deemed acceptable by neurotypical society.

You may have heard that many autistics struggle with eye contact, so that’s an easy example. Masking that for an autistic person can be: forcing oneself to make eye contact (at great cost of emotional energy/focus/ability to participate fully in a conversation), training oneself to look between someone’s eyes or near their eyes to simulate eye contact, etc. It means suppressing stims (not bouncing when you’re happy about a good strawberry, not flapping a hand when there’s a too-loud noise) and constantly running processes to meet others’ specific expectations about what is acceptable existence and interaction.

I also have gotten a lot of the “you couldn’t possibly be autistic” lines, and it’s so frustrating because it so often comes from a level of ignorance that is both ignorant of the subject as a whole (what does autism look like) and ignorant of their own ignorance (ie: they don’t know what they don’t know and therefore think they know things they don’t). Which is a convoluted way of saying that we live in a world where clinicians exist in ignorance very frequently because of the historical failure to study autism outside of a very narrow phenotype (cis white men and boys), so the average person really isn’t aware of the diversity of autistic experience. My ability to mask impeded my diagnosis. It’s a double-edged sword–when we mask successfully, we are perceived to have low-to-nonexistent support needs, but none of us really mask well enough to not be perceived as somehow Other.

I think that’s what led me to leaning into that so much with Sam. I’ve been told so many times that I’m cold, self-centred, inconsiderate–almost always stemming from encounters with people where I was overstimulated, nearing meltdown, struggling socially or sensorily, or my social script slipped so I either didn’t know what questions to ask or how to seem appropriately engaged. I went undiagnosed so long that I was constantly just desperately confused at how hard I had to work to be acceptable to people–I really wanted Sam to meet people who would make space for their differences.

Photo by Josh Hild on Unsplash

This book has aspects of queer contemporary, mystery, fantasy, literary, even a little bit of horror – what drew you to this kind of storytelling?

The book started out with a much heavier speculative element, so that was actually pared back a huge amount and shifted elsewhere (less literal past lives, more spooky!), and I’m rooted in fantasy as a writer. All of my published adult novels are fantasy, and it’s where I feel most at home.

I think what’s different about this one is that it’s my first ever YA, and while I read a lot of YA, I wasn’t aiming at a particular genre within the category and just went with what felt right. I love liminal spaces (probably because I’ve spent my whole life in them!), so this is what comes most naturally to me.

A lot of the process of this was me needing to learn mystery beats to shore up that aspect since despite enjoying mystery, I’m not generally a mystery author! But beyond that, it was treating the mystery itself like a character arc that would change everyone it touched. One of the interesting things to me is that in the first draft, Sam’s strength came more from their past selves, and I think rooting it in Sam’s present self made them a lot stronger as a character. In a way, I kind of have to laugh at that–I have a tendency to process My Own Stuff through what I write, and writing and revising this book felt like giving myself permission to exist within my own strength. 

Even though most of the time, people are super supportive, being a marginalized publishing professional can be super challenging. Your book is with a major publisher – Astra Books for Young Readers in the US – and that’s a really big deal! What has your experience been like working with an agent and an editorial team at a big publishing house on a story featuring protagonist who shares some of your marginalized identity experiences?

Wooo! We are legion!

“Super challenging” is definitely a way to put it. This book was on submission for almost two years before it sold, and while most of the rejections I got were sort of typical (“not for me”, etc.), I got a few that really stung on both the axes of queerness and autism. My agent has been so phenomenal. I’ve been with her for seven years now, and she’s had my back no matter what, to the point of pushing back against a rejection to educate the person a bit about autistic experience.

The book was originally acquired by Jes Negrón before Astra bought BMK, and I’ve known Jes for a decade (she was my first agent and has championed my work from the beginning of my career!), but Jes left the industry for personal reasons, and Suzy became my new editor. I was definitely super nervous. Having an established relationship with Jes, I felt so safe with her, and…erm. Autistic people aren’t known for being super sanguine about change! (It me; I am autistic people who are not sanguine about change)

But my team at Astra has been phenomenal. I’ve been really assertive if I thought an editorial note would serve to make Sam’s reactions and behaviours more neurotypical friendly, and Suzy has been so supportive in that and always willing to listen and dialogue with me–and if you’ve not heard, she just acquired my next YA, The Evolving Truth of Ever-Stronger Will, which also features an ND non-binary protagonist. So we’ll be working together again and actually just had our first editorial chat about the book last week! As we’ve moved into the publicity phase, my publicists have really thrown extraordinary support behind Sam, and for a book as personal as this on so many levels, I really could not ask for better people around me.

I think the biggest challenge for me has been my own fear. There were a couple of times in the editorial process where I got really scared that Sam’s responses weren’t translating to neurotypical readers (particularly with regard to how Sam doesn’t easily name emotions they’re feeling), but I explained alexithymia and was met with support and kindness.

Have you encountered other stories by authors who are non-binary and autistic, or stories that reflect those experiences in ways that feel meaningful to you?

My TBR list is a mountain. I know so many other non-binary autistic authors, though most I know write adult fiction: R.B. Lemburg, Bogi Takács (who happen to be married!), Ada Hoffman, Andi (A.C.) Buchanan, Merc Wolfmoor, A.J. Odasso, and a BUNCH of others I want to also list but am not sure how out they are on both axes. I love, love, love Merc’s short fiction, and I’ve been reading R.B.’s The Four Profound Weaves, which really speaks to me on several levels. I also have Andi’s Sanctuary on my Kindle to read ASAP–that one is I think in a similar vein to Sam Sylvester in that there are ghosts and healing and queer family.

There is a fantastic compilation of essays called Knowing Why: Adult-Diagnosed Autistic People on Life and Autism that includes essays by A.J. Odasso and Andi Buchanan (as A.C. Buchanan). It feels really validating to plug into those personal essays and see my community and myself reflected back at me.

What is one thing that you would want your readers to know about THE MANY HALF-LIVED LIVES OF SAM SYLVESTER? Similarly, what do you wish you could tell adults who are going to choose this book to put in a young reader’s hands?

Oof. With things as fraught as they are politically and trans lives–particularly trans kids’ lives–at the eye of the storm yet again, I want to first of all say to my fellow trans and non-binary people that I know I don’t speak for you. Sam’s experience isn’t everyone’s experience, because we are all different, but I hope you will find something of yourself in the pages of this book. It’s for you no matter what because you deserve to be here and accepted without fear.

For adults? You never know what’s going on in the minds of the kids you interact with unless they tell you. Books obviously can’t make us anything we’re not already–if that were true, I’d be cis and straight for sure. 😛 But books can remind us that we’re not alone, and being young and queer can be incredibly lonely, especially if we’re in a place trying to legislate us out of existence. I hope that Sam’s story can be someone’s friend when they need one. Will you help me introduce them?

The cover art for your book is super evocative, and the figure portrayed is also queer-coded. Did you have any input into your cover design, and do you feel that it conveys the mood that you were trying to capture with your narrative?

First of all, I have to shout out the amazing Lauren Franklin, who is a Minneapolis-based Black illustrator and whose work is absolutely phenomenal. When I saw their portfolio, I about fell over. I had a surprising amount of input into the design, which I truly appreciate–that’s almost never true in traditional publishing!

The initial sketch was close to this, but the sky was plain blue. The tattoo bleeding into the sky was part of the revision notes, and I basically asked them to lean into their own style as much as possible–they turned around and came back with this, and it’s so perfect. I get so many compliments on the cover, and I’m just like Lauren! It’s Lauren! They’re AMAZING!

The art absolutely hits every note I was looking for, capturing Sam’s inner mind as well as their outward appearance, and I couldn’t be happier.

Last but not least, whenever I feature a non-Black author on my blog, I always ask for a book recommendation that’s by a Black author from them. This can be ANY book by a Black author that you think others would enjoy!

Oooh, yes! I’ve been reading Namina Forna’s The Gilded Ones, and I’m so hooked. I’ve been lamenting my work schedule keeping me from reading more. The prose is super evocative, and the worldbuilding is lush–it’s the exact type of second-world fantasy I love to, like, cannonball into and stay there.

Also on my TBR right now is C.L. Clark’s The Unbroken–they’re a pal, and I’ve had the book on my friend shelf for far too long, and it’s been watching me. >.> I think that book will be a great tonal follow-up for The Gilded Ones.

New Moon Mini-Tarot Spread

When I asked Maya if they would be willing to do something creative for this post, they REALLY delivered. At the time, it was the April new moon (both our lives have been a little… hectic… lately), so they did a mini-tarot spread for themself and Sam. They provided me with these gorgeous photos that speak for themselves, and they used the Weaver Tarot, a deck with an aesthetic that’s just perfect for Sam!

Maya drew three cards: one for Sam (seeker of wands), one for them (the fool 🙃) and one for their career going forward (five of cups reversed). 

Character Art by Paisley Wilson

Maya gave me ONE final treat to share with our readers – but this one is a great one. Their friend, Paisley Wilson, created this gorgeous art piece of two of the characters from THE MANY HALF-LIVED LIVES OF SAM SYLVESTER – Sam, the MC, and Shep. I hope that you love it as much as I do, and I want to wish a final HAPPY BOOK BIRTHDAY to SAM SYLVESTER and Maya MacGregor!

PS, if you enjoyed this post, please consider leaving me a tip! It only takes a minute, and it allows me to keep creating content just like this, buying food for my pets, and pursuing my career as a literary agent!

It Takes A Village

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I hope that you are all enjoying spooky season, ghouls and ghosts! I am so honoured today to have two guest posts to share! One is a brief review of Light from Uncommon Stars, the new SFF release from Ryka Aoki that just came out this past September. I know Aoki from her previous novel, He Mele a Hilo (A Hilo Song), but her new book is altogether a different animal. This review was generously provided to me by Marie Sotiriou, a member of my online book community, the Rogue Book Coven.

Cover of THE VOYAGE OF FREYDIS, by Tamara Goranson

After that, I have a post that addresses one of the topics that I get asked about the most as an agent: what is the role of editorial feedback to an author? My client, Tamara Goranson, author of the bestselling novel The Voyage of Freydis, graciously provided this post to me following a conversation that we had about the many people and professionals who helped Tamara bring her debut work to shelves all around the world. I am so proud and thankful to get to support Tamara and her work, and I hope that if you enjoy this post, you’ll check out her no-holds-barred feminist historical fiction as well!

Review by Marie Sotiriou

I listened to the audio of Light From Uncommon Stars by Ryka Aoki, and it’s very good! This is a science fantasy (blend of science fiction and fantasy) coming of age story of a young trans girl, written by Aoki, is a Japanese trans woman. The novel features three queer women. The first is Shizuka Satomi, the Queen of Hell. Satomi is looking for a violin player in order to complete her contract with the devil. She is the violin teacher from Hell with a heart of gold! Next: Katrina Nguyen, a young transgender runaway girl who is also an excellent violin player. Finally, Lan Tran, an alien refugee retired starship captain who now owns a donut shoppe. The story is centered around Katrina, but there is also a romance between the female starship captain and the Queen of Hell. It’s very whimsical, quirky, funny, and there are strong Asian influences threaded thru the tale. Light From Uncommon Stars also exudes love for classical music AND donuts!! I know it sounds weird, but it strangely works. The narrative moves around a bit, but I didn’t think that took anything away from my enjoyment of the book. It is very tough to read at times, since we see the transphobia that Katrina experiences. You just want to wrap your arms around her and protect her from the world. There are heartbreaking and infuriating scenes that include transphobia, homophobia, misogyny, and racism, but there are many more feel-good moments of acceptance. Overall, I thought it was a very hopeful story that showed the power of community and found family. And it has a joyful ending!

The cover of LIGHT FROM UNCOMMON STARS by Ryka Aoki

The Benefits of Working with Great Editors, by Tamara Goranson

Behind every great writer, there is a great editor.  Sounds cliché, but as a newly published author with one of the Big 5 houses, I know that my success is due to the help, support, and guidance of a truly amazing group of talented editors. 

My journey began approximately five years ago when I had the good fortune to be introduced to a panel of editors who were members of Canada’s leading editorial organization, Editors Canada.  After listening to them describe their interests and backgrounds, I hired one of them to review my work.    That was the turning point where a creative writing interest was honed into a craft.

My editor recognized that I was new to the world of publishing.  She patiently described the editorial process, outlining the differences between manuscript evaluations, substantive edits, stylistic editing, copy edits and proofreading edits.  At the time, I recall thinking it couldn’t be that complicated.  I convinced myself that I would have the edits done in no time at all.

Photo by John Schnobrich on Unsplash

For me, the editing process takes much longer than finishing a first draft.  Just to read and process that first manuscript evaluation took me well over one month.  While I was thrilled to receive the feedback from someone who had actually read the draft from start to finish, the detailed analyses and new insights offered were truly mind boggling.  The editor asked me to think about the targeted audience, the narrative voice, plot issues, the character development (including major and peripheral characters), the setting, the pacing of the novel, and the timelines.  When inconsistencies were pointed out – sometimes with over 50 pages in between – I recall feeling amazed by her talent for tracking trivial details.  To give an example, one of my characters lost a baby mid-way through my first novel.  In the original draft, the mother was pregnant for “two” winter seasons before she miscarried, and the editor caught this timeline glitch even though the months of the year and the names of the seasons had been written in a different language!  I started wondering if I was paying her enough.

As an author, we immerse ourselves into the lives of our characters and the worlds we create.  We have so many pieces to weave together that if one thread gets lost, we sometimes don’t notice.  A good editor catches these threading errors.  A great editor might even ask you to rework whole sections, to discard threads and start again, to weave an even more intricate and beautiful piece.

For me, the first round of editing is usually the most difficult.  One has to be willing to part with favorite passages and make uncomfortable changes.  My editors invited considerations and prompted me to really think about my underlying motivations as a writer.  I like to think of the role of an editor as a lighthouse beam that helps the writer to avoid rough waters, to navigate problematic passages and to see new possibilities.   The writer chooses her own route, but the editors help inform the choice.  Great editors raise awareness, but they always leave the final editing decisions to the author.

Photo by Priscilla Du Preez on Unsplash

In order to secure a literary agent, I had to face another significant editorial challenge that felt insurmountable at the time.  When I was asked to discard the first fifty pages of my novel and use an “in medias res” strategy, I recall tearing up.  This was a big ask.  It had been time consuming to draft those pages, and in many ways, I felt protective.  My editor encouraged me to be flexible, to consider making the revisions, and to embrace the process in a noncommittal way.  After the change was made, I was shocked to discover that the opening of the novel was stronger.  Sometimes editors make big asks.  They usually know what they are doing.

Authors are profoundly fortunate if their agent has the time to offer editing workshops and editing services.  I would venture a guess that in the competitive world of publishing, most submissions only attract the attention of an agent after the manuscript has been reviewed by a professional editor.  Even so, an invested agent may choose to offer editing suggestions to make the manuscript more marketable. 

Once the rights to my book were sold, editors affiliated with the publishing house then went through the manuscript repeatedly.    In total, my manuscript was subjected to four edits: a copy edit from my primary editor, an indigenous sensitivity edit, another copy edit from a secondary editor, and a proofreading edit.  What a process!  With each editorial revision, the manuscript grew more readable, more polished, and more salable.

Photo by Kaleidico on Unsplash

Editors not only work side-by-side with the author on the manuscript, many of them also help writers monitor their expectations.  I recall one of my editors telling me that it is not uncommon for publishing houses to change the title of a manuscript. I have to honestly say that when this happened, I was able to relinquish the novel title with grace only because my editor had prepared me.  Editors know the industry.  They know what works and what doesn’t, and they can offer words of encouragement to help authors navigate the business side of selling books. 

Editors can also become a friends who walk alongside you, who celebrate your successes with genuine enthusiasm, who encourage you to keep writing when it is hard, and who can be as invested in us as people as they are in us as writers.  If one is fortunate, an editor can be someone who enjoys the subject matter of your book as much as you do, who enjoys delving into the depths of your book’s characters and plots, and who enjoys sharing creative ideas and conversations about the manuscript.  The enthusiasm of an editor can be catchy when they champion your books.  Good editors help new writers overcome insecurities while simultaneously offering honest and constructive feedback.  It takes such interpersonal skill to be able to do this gracefully.

I often wonder what it would be like to go back in time and re-read that first, unedited draft to see what was reworked and what was added, to see what was discovered, to see what small or large vanities were taken out to make the magic of the manuscript really pop.  I often wonder until I reflect on the fact that my work made it into publication.  Then I go back and re-read the acknowledgement section of my book and see the names of my brilliant editors who stood in the shadows — working diligently, reading deeply, noticing more than just the words.   

Photo by Microsoft Edge on Unsplash

PS, if you enjoyed this post, please consider leaving me a tip! It only takes a minute, and it allows me to keep creating content just like this, buying food for my pets, and pursuing my career as a literary agent!

(How) Do Authors Get Paid?

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Listen. All I needed was ONE FRIEND to tell me that an industry-related post explaining royalties would be interesting, and I’m so ready to dive into this topic. The last time I wrote I post like this, I included this disclaimer, that is still true: I’ve been a little self-indulgent here. I love these details, but I hope that even if it’s not usually their jam, readers will be able to use this knowledge to support authors! This post is a massive info dump, but I hope that even if it’s long, it will contribute toward an ongoing goal of mine for more transparency in publishing.

BUT FIRST, before I dive headlong into how authors make their (very small amount of) money from the books that they publish in traditional publishing stream, I’m going to offer up a review of All Boys Aren’t Blue by George M. Johnson, written by our regular contributor Jack (thank you so much!!), and a short review of a simple and queer visual novel I completed recently.

Review of George M. Johnson’s All Boys Aren’t Blue, by Jack

Cover of All Boys Aren’t Blue

The specificity in Johnson’s All Boys Aren’t Blue makes this memoir a survival guide. Johnson explores carving part of themselves in their relationships, community and individual while simultaneously thriving off their duality. It’s the Black Queer joy, Black magic, is skipping rope with your girlfriends and playing football with your father. All Boys Aren’t Blue is an exploration of lived experiences, the linking and unlinking of one’s gender, sexuality, and favorite past times. Johnson’s work is meant to inspire, educate, illustrate, and challenge the stereotypical depictions of Black boys.

Johnson is an activist and writer based in New York who according to Macmillan publishers has written on race, gender, sex, and culture for numerous prominent publications. Their writing experience is evident in their memoir, which is an exploration of gender and sexuality intersecting with race and class; it’s a love letter to intergenerational relationships.

Johnson mentions interpreting their feelings for men as an indication of their gender identity rather than sexuality. Similarly, to how Sara Ahmed connects orientation and orientalism to explore how one physically orients themselves in space and identity, All Boys Aren’t Blue explores how in a world of social constructs, we use often use race and gender as tools of understanding our sexuality.

CW includes but is not limited to violence, misogyny SA, incest, transphobia, and homophobia.

Johnson’s memoir doesn’t shy away from acknowledging their healing journey and demonstrating what accountability looks like. Or how confusing it can be when those who are supposed to love you can harm you. All Boys Aren’t Blue, Johnson’s story, deserves to be heard both in the context of educational generalizations and a memoir. Too often are marginalized authors demonized for not representing or speaking for the collective.

***This is a note regarding representation: no Black Queer person needs to/can represent all our experiences when they write.***

I recommend this memoir to all boys who aren’t blue, to families and kinships who are trying to create communities, Black Queer kids, and adults who deserve to see versions of their story being told. 15+ and up.

All Boys Aren’t Blue is the warmth and comfort one feels when being hugged by someone they love, it’s the presence of community and visibility.

Review: A Hero and a Garden

The banner for the video game A Hero and a Garden

A while back, I posted about having discovered visual novels for the first time, through first buying a Switch Lite to play Animal Crossing in lockdown. Well, if 2020 taught me anything, it taught me that visual and interactive novels are masterful storytelling that’s just as powerful as any book I’ve ever read… and it can be just as super queer, too. A Hero and a Garden is an indie game by npckc available for Switch, PS 4, Android, Windows, Linux, Mac, and Xbox One. In it, you play Cyrus. He was a knight, born and sworn to protect a princess… until she ran away from home to live in a village of monsters. Cyrus went after her, and destroyed the town to save her – only to find that she was actually pretty content, and not in need of saving at all.

The game begins at this point – when Cyrus has been cursed by a local witch to tend a magical fruit garden until he has repaid his debt to the villagers, and helped rebuild their town. This game is super simple and light to play – literally zero pressure – but brings all the feels. As Cyrus helps the town, he learns about the villagers, their lives, their love, and himself. This game doesn’t play into normative expectations when it comes to gender, sexuality, or monogamy. If you’re indulging in a lot of baking shows and slice of life anime right now to get through this weird time in human history, maybe what you need is to pick some berries, and get to know the delightful cast of this very fluffy and sweet, LGBTQ2S+ celebratory game.

The creator of this game has SO MANY OTHER COOL GAMES, and because I don’t usually play on my computer (I spend too much time with this machine as it is – they need a rest every now and then, and so do my eyes!!), I am just very very hopeful that Ratalaika Games will port more of them to Switch ASAP. Take my meagre dollars, I beg of you!!

Let’s Talk About Money

I have previously used this space to write industry-related posts about things like how to best use your purchasing power to support authors through choosing to support the best retail outlets for authors, but it’s been brought to my attention recently that some readers might be interested in a post about another aspect of how money flows from readers to authors in traditional publishing. Once the money goes into a bookshop’s coffers – how does that money make it from the bookshop, via the distributor, back to the publisher, through an agency, and then back to the original creator of the intellectual property that you’re ingesting: the author? One part of the answer to that question is through royalties.

Royalties are used in all kinds of industries, including traditional publishing. In basic terms, royalties are the percentage of money that an author gets from the sale of a book. Any time that a reader buys a new book – not a book that’s purchased second hand, and not a book that’s remaindered – but a brand new book, the book’s author generally gets a little bit of money from that sale. That applies to all formats: hardcover, paperback, mass market, special edition, eBook, and audio. The one notable exception to that (that I can think of) would be if the book was written on a Work For Hire contract, and that contract included a fixed rate, but no royalties. That happens most commonly, in my experience, in a licensed content situation, which you can learn more about by watching the video below, by Alexa Donne 👇🏼

A YouTube video called WHAT IS IP IN PUBLISHING?

The amount of royalties that an author will get depends on a LOT of different factors. Some of these might include the size of the publisher, the size of the imprint, the values of the publisher/imprint, the negotiating power that an author’s agent or agency has with a particular publisher, the author’s platform and their past publication history or track record, the economy in general – the list goes on and on.

From here, the information that you want to know may depend on your positionality a little bit – so I’m going to split the rest of this post into two sections. The section that follows is probably most relevant to authors. If you’re not interested in the back end of how royalties come together, but you are a reader who wants to know how to best spend their money to support creators, skip to the next section!

For authors…

Royalties are negotiated individually on every book deal between either an author or their agent, and the publisher, and are often based on what are called boilerplate contracts. These are standard template contracts that publishers have in place that serve as the starting point for negotiation – and they vary between agencies and publishers. If an author is lucky enough to be represented by an agency with a long history, their boilerplates with publishers will be well-established, and that often means that authors can receive more royalties than if they are unrepresented, or if they are part of a newer literary agency who has yet to establish standards with different imprints around the world.

That said, like most things, there are some industry standards. For a deep dive into these, I recommend checking out the Writers’ Union of Canada’s royalty math page, but the basic numbers are these: for hardcovers, 10% of the cover price on the first 5,000 copies sold, 12.5% on the next 5,000, and 15% thereafter; for paperback, 7.5% of the cover price, and for eBooks, 25% of the publisher’s net receipts. For more information on retail versus net royalties, check out this post from Alexander Field at the Bindery. It’s important to know that most publishers, while they will compete on advances, do not typically compete with each other on royalties.

If you want to know more about the publishing process and where contract negotiations fit into it, there are three resources I recommend: one from Bloomsbury, a guide to the publishing process; one from blogger Rachel Kent for Books&Such Literary Management, about the publishing timeline; and one from KN Literary Arts, a publishing timeline for first-time authors.

Photo by lucas Favre on Unsplash

The other big question that authors tend to have is when do I actually get my royalties? The answer is, as soon as you earn out your advance. It’s always a difficult balance to strike as an agent when you’re advocating for an author: do you negotiate for as high an advance as you can manage, or do you go more modestly on the advance so that the author starts getting royalties sooner? Royalties are a more sustainable form of income for an author, and the higher the advance payment they receive, the less likely it is that they will ever see those payments, in this economy. Let’s take a recent release as an example.

As I write this, Shadow and Bone by Leigh Bardugo is #4 on the Barnes and Noble bestsellers list online, the first listed paperback, at $10.99 USD – which I’m going to call $10 for the sake of simplicity. From that $10, applying a standard royalty rate of 7.5%, Bardugo is entitled to $0.75. If you set aside hardcover sales and subrights sales, and you consider that most authors are printed straight to paperback, you can see how earning out a high five figure advance would take some time – and a huge number of sales. After the advance earns out, that’s when an author begins to see royalties – but not the full $0.75 per copy. From that, you need to also subtract the 15% of that royalty that would be collected by her literary agency, $0.11, bringing that amount down to $0.64 per copy sold.

There are, however, other ways to earn out your advance as an author that don’t involve royalties at all. For this part of my long-winded story, I consulted with BBB contributor, CeCe Lyra, who is also an agent for PS Literary. Since she gave such valuable insight here, and this section of this post is specifically for authors, you can see CeCe’s most recent MSWL here. This might get a little bit convoluted, but the TL;DR of this next paragraph is: any money that you earn for your publisher as an author before you have earned out your advance counts against your advance. The way that this most often happens is through subrights sales.

Photo by Mirza Babic on Unsplash

If you want to learn the basics of subrights, check out this blog post from Valerie Peterson for The Balance Careers. For the purposes of this post, the thing to understand is that any subrights that publishers retain for your book and sell generates income for the publisher. If this happens before you’ve earned out, it will also count against your advance. To illustrate this, let’s say that I write a great new book, and it is acquired by a publisher for $20K, but they negotiate with my agent, and manage to hold on to my international and translation rights. This book is getting a lot of good press, and the publisher has a super keen rights team, so they manage to sell it in four different countries before the book even goes on sale. A huge coup! Each of those rights sales generates a $5K advance – and, just like that, my advance is earned out before my book has even hit shelves. FANTASTIC, in so many ways – but as CeCe pointed out to me, this also comes with downsides. Some argue that if the publisher sold $20K worth of foreign rights and the author’s advance was already earned out, then they could lower their marketing budget for the book’s debut in its home market, since they’re not worried about losing money if the advance doesn’t get earned back. This is part of the reason why the best thing for authors is often for their agents to advocate to retain as many of their subrights as possible and sell them separately on the author’s behalf, rather than having that service be performed by the publisher.

Now – let’s say that an author has earned out their advance (yay!), and now their agency is receiving royalties statements, and cutting them a check for their earnings twice a year. I got a question from a reader over Twitter, and it’s a great one: how do returns get factored in? Royalties payouts and statements are anything but straightforward. If you really want to do a deep dive on this, you can check out the (slightly older, but still reliable) video below, from the Authors’ Guild. If you aren’t ready for the deep dive, though – and I don’t blame you, because unless you are an unrepresented author, understanding all of this is really your agent’s responsibility and not yours as an author – let me give you a wee primer on how book distribution works!

A YouTube video on Understanding Your Royalty Statements.

In this hypothetical world, your book birthday has passed, you have earned out your advance, and bookstores are steadily ordering new copies of your book to sell. In their retail outlets, booksellers put in their orders for merchandise to their distributors. These are companies that exist between publishers and retail outlets/wholesalers who organize book sales. Books flow from the publisher to the distributor, who then makes sure that all the retail outlets get their orders. The general rule in the industry is that book retailers have 90 days from the time that they receive the books from the distributor to either sell them or return them without any financial loss.

That allowance is essential for book retailers to stay afloat… but how does it affect authors? It means that when your royalties statement comes in, the publisher will hold back a small percentage of your royalties earned on “reserve” to safeguard against books that have been ordered by booksellers, but will be returned instead of sold. If you are an unrepresented author, you should always keep an eye on exactly how much of a reserve your publisher is holding, and be sure to ask them their policies around this. If you are represented, your agent should be reviewing your statements and verifying that they are being executed correctly on your behalf.

For readers…

If you are a reader who is lucky enough to have some money to spend on books, and you wonder what the best way to support an author is, the basic answer is a bit unfortunate, but also pretty simple: the more money you spend, the more the author gets. In general, authors make more money on hardcover sales than paperback, more on paperback than mass market, and if you buy at a store that gets special sales editions and pricing (like Costco or Target, or through a subscription like a book box), the author will get a little bit less than if you buy from a brick and mortar chain store or an indie.

Photo by Zachary Kadolph on Unsplash

There are two exceptions to these rules. One is that if you buy a book that’s on sale at a regular retail outlet, for example, a 30% off hardcover at Indigo, usually that loss in profit is absorbed by the store, or in rare cases by the publisher, and not by the author. The second is if you buy an eBook. Because eBook royalties are often calculated based on net profit rather than cover price, authors don’t always come out on top, but in general, they make a higher percentage of the cover price of the book than they do for physical books, and this can serve them well in the long run.

There are two red flags that you want to keep an eye out for if you’re wanting to make sure that an author is getting full royalties from your book purchase (aside from where you’re shopping). One, a sticker over the cover price of the book that advertises a lower price than the original. This generally means that the book was sold through special sales (explained in this post from Ingram Spark), and authors often get a lower royalty rate for these kinds of bulk sales. The second is a remainder mark, usually a mark made by a Sharpie or other permanent marker to the pages of a book, near the binding. While they may be sold at a more advantageous price for consumers, authors do not get royalties on remaindered book sales.

Photo by Ryunosuke Kikuno on Unsplash

Last but not least, is there a way to support authors financially without having your own money to spend? Always our heroes, the libraries. Authors do get some financial benefit from library loans, although the format of the book and the location of your library both play a role in this – and unfortunately, my knowledge here is limited to North America, so if you live elsewhere, it pays to do your own research about this! Also, when it comes to libraries and eBooks, what I will say is that at best, things are complicated, and if you want to support an author to the best of your ability, consider purchasing a hard copy of a book for your personal collection or as a gift or donation if you read something from your library’s eBook collection and you love it.

In the United States, authors only get royalties from libraries on physical books when they are purchased for their collections, no matter how many times the book is borrowed. That said, if you are an American reader, make sure to request titles from your local library so that they get that support! In Canada, we are #blessed to have the Public Lending Right program, which means that your library loans mean more to Canadian authors, so keep borrowing all the Can Lit you can manage!

PS, if you enjoyed this post, please consider leaving me a tip! It only takes a minute, and it allows me to keep creating content just like this, buying food for my pets, and pursuing my career as a literary agent!

Victories Greater than Death

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I am always humbled by the connections that I get to make with incredible new authors and emerging artists through this platform. Once in a rare while, I also get to connect with authors who I have admired for a long time. This week, I am super excited – and still kind of in disbelief? – that I get to share an interview that I had the pleasure of conducting with the iconic Charlie Jane Anders.

Charlie Jane Anders, photo by Sarah Deragon.

If Charlie Jane Anders is a new name for any of you reading this, buckle in, because you are in for a wild ride. I was excited to get to chat with Charlie Jane about her upcoming YA debut, the first book in a trilogy, Victories Greater Than Death, which comes out TOMORROW with Tor Teen! You still have a little while to pre-order! Run! (And don’t stop running.) This book is (if I’m counting right), Charlie Jane’s ninth novel-length work, but she is prolific and has won an awe-inspiring number of awards for her longer works, but also her short fiction: the Emperor Norton Award, a Hugo Award, a Nebula Award, a William H. Crawford Award, a Theodore Sturgeon Award, a Locus Award, and a Lambda Literary Award. Nbd. (Except, VERYbd).

I had the pleasure of reading an early copy of Victories, which was great, because I full-blown squealed when I heard that Charlie Jane was working on a YA project. Although I do love speculative work, for whatever reason I am a reader that struggles with worldbuilding – so, often, YA speculative is much easier for me to wrap my mind around. That said, though, I’m not an Epic Fantasy person… so sometimes, YA speculative that appeals to my interests can be a challenge to find. I was lucky, because (unsurprisingly to me at least) Victories delivered on everything that I wanted it to.

Like I told Charlie Jane before I interviewed her, I’m not usually an intergalactic-war person, but the characters and the voice of this novel were irresistible. Everything about this story is just fun. As an anxious and autistic person, the protagonist’s best friend, a character called Rachael, was highly relatable. Her needs were represented in ways that were charming and challenging and often not well-executed in fiction, and for me, it was a joy to follow her through this story. Still, the real beauty of this book for me was the absolutely bonkers diversity of the characters. The pub copy comps the book to Dr. Who meets Star Wars, and I grew up watching so much monster of the week TV that the levity of the worldbuilding really struck a chord with me as a reader, even though I’m not a science fiction buff. Suffice to say, I would recommend this book up and down to a wide variety of readers, and I’m thrilled that Charlie Jane agreed to chat with me about it in this space. Without further ado…


The cover of VICTORIES GREATER THAN DEATH.

You are becoming – if you’re not there already – a prolific author, and most of your work has speculative elements. This book is a bit of a departure, though, in that it is your first book intended explicitly for young readers. I have two questions about this. First, what came first – the story, or the intention to write for young readers?

I started thinking about writing a young adult book in spring 2016, around the time I quit my day job to write full time. I had been noticing for a while that YA fiction was getting more action-adventure-oriented, like there were more books being published like Warcross or Want or Illuminae. YA seemed to be taking a turn towards being a place where you could do something super fun and exhilarating. So I started to think about what I would like to do in a YA, and immediately started to remember all those times when I was a teenager, when I just wished a spaceship would swoop down out of the sky and come take me away from this planet. That led to imagining the story of a girl who’s actually the clone of an alien hero, and her efforts to reclaim her heritage and seize her destiny. 

Second, did you find it difficult to adapt your writing style to the voicey, confessional tone that is so characteristic of YA works right now (because I felt like you nailed it)?

In terms of the tone, that took a TON of work. I sat down with a huge pile of my fav YA books and paged through them, getting a sense of which were first person and which were third person, and how they worked on a sentence level. It took a ton of trial and error to get Tina’s voice right, and I had to keep coming back to the idea of her being snarky and funny, but not ironic or wry or self-mocking the way adults usually are. And once I handed in a complete draft, I worked a lot with my editor, Miriam Weinberg, to tighten the book and speed up the pace and boost the emotion in a lot of crucial places. 

Photo by Vincentiu Solomon on Unsplash

There is such a wide range of characters in this book, and it has a huge cast. Humans, clones, aliens, teens, and adults, all with very distinct aesthetics, cultures, bodies, identities, etc. Do you have an absolute favourite, or one who you relate to the most? What was the most enjoyable part about creating such a rich and diverse cast?

I had so much fun creating all of these different aliens and creatures. It was a total dream come true, and I spent hours and hours cooking up complicated histories and backstories for the different alien worlds and societies, as well as the galaxy as a whole. And then I also spent hours and hours doing research and talking to people for my human supporting cast, since they come from all over the world. I definitely had different characters on different days, but overall my favorite character probably ended up being Rachael — I love how she just wants to hide away and draw when she’s on an alien ship in the middle of a space battle. 

One of the norms in this book is that the characters consistently introduce themselves with their pronouns, and many of the characters use non-binary pronoun options or no pronouns at all. This isn’t prominent in many books. What was your rationale behind that choice, and did you struggle with it through the editorial process at all? 

I honestly can’t remember how I decided that everyone should introduce themselves with their pronouns. I was just thinking about the fact that all of these aliens are speaking their own languages and it’s being translated into English, and so it made sense to me that a translator could also give you other important information — like someone’s pronoun. And once I started doing it, it just made sense. I made sure to mention that not everybody actually “hears” the pronouns spoken out loud, the way Tina does. It works differently for different people. But this felt like a good way to be introducing a lot of human and alien characters, some of whom might not have genders or other identifiers that a human would be able to figure out at a glance. It also went along with the overall theme of the book, of respecting other people’s identities while you try to figure out your own.  

Photo by NASA on Unsplash

As a literary agent who represents speculative authors across age categories, I am constantly hearing from editors that sci fi in YA is a super tough sell, and that they have trouble getting these works approved by their acquisitions boards. In comparison to your other works, what was the process like finding a home for VICTORIES, and what made you choose to write sci fi for this age group? 

I always hear people say that science fiction is a hard sell in YA as well, but then you look at series like The Hunger Games, Illuminae, Divergent, the aforementioned Warcross, and a bunch of others, and it’s clearly not accurate. That said, I am very nervous about launching a YA science fiction book, just because I’m aware of that widespread misconception, and I’m worried it’ll keep people from offering the book to kids. I think especially right now, it’s super important to get young people (and everyone) fired up about science and exploration and discovery. Luckily, the folks at Tor Teen were super excited to delve into this space-opera universe—and I think the fact that it stands out a bit is not a bad thing. 

If an educator was going to teach your book in a high school or college creative writing class, what do you hope students would take away from that experience? Similarly, what do you wish you could tell educators who are going to choose this book to put in a young reader’s hands?

Wow, I can’t ever think about people teaching my books to creative-writing students, except as an example of what *not* to do. 🙂  In the case of Victories, I hope they’d be interested in the voice, like we talked about before, and the way I use humor and feels to add to the suspense. (Or at least, I hope I do that.) For high-school teachers generally, I would hope they’d talk about the themes of post-colonialism and what it means to be a hero. 

Photo by Jeremy Thomas on Unsplash

Being a marginalized publishing professional can be super challenging once in a while. You have worked with a few different imprints and editors over the course of your career so far. What has your experience been like working with an agent and an editorial team at a big publishing house? What would you say the most fulfilling part of this process was, and what was the biggest challenge?

I’ve been so lucky with Russ Galen and with everyone at Tor, including Miriam Weinberg and Patrick Nielsen Hayden. Everybody has been incredibly supportive and understanding, and nobody blinked when I said I wanted to include so many queer characters in my space opera universe. The most fulfilling part has probably just been talking to Miriam about the characters and the story and how to make them pop — and the biggest challenge has just been breaking in as a YA author, especially during a time when school visits and other in-person appearances are not possible. 

Last, but not least, when I’m covering a non-Black author, I ask them to recommend a book by a Black author to go alongside their post. Would you mind sharing a rec with me?

Three that I’ve read and loved recently come to mind: The Stars and the Blackness Between Them by Junauda Petrus, A Song Below Water by Bethany C. Morrow, and Legendborn by Tracy Deonn. 

Covers of THE STARS AND THE BLACKNESS BETWEEN THEM, A SONG BELOW WATER, and LEGENDBORN.

Victories Greater Than Death comes out on April 13th, 2021 from Tor Teen. If you enjoyed this interview, you can find Charlie Jane Anders on her Hugo Award winning podcast with co-host Annalee Newitz, our opinions are correct.

PS, if you enjoyed this post, please consider leaving me a tip! It only takes a minute, and it allows me to keep creating content just like this, buying food for my pets, and pursuing my career as a literary agent!

New Books by Genderqueer Breakouts

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In this post, I am super lucky to be able to host A. E. Osworth, author of the breakout adult fiction novel We Are Watching Eliza Bright. This #MeToo era story about harassment in the gaming industry is told multiply and unreliably by users on Reddit, a novel that shatters the concept of form and narration completely. You’ll either love this one or you’ll hate it, but either way, you’ll probably emerge with huge admiration for this author.

But first, I have a guest review from a wonderful friend from my online book community, The Rogue Book Coven, and brilliant reader, Amanda Hamilton. Amanda has graciously penned a review for the highly-anticipated forthcoming title One Last Stop, from Casey McQuiston, whose adult LGBTQ2S+ romcom with crossover appeal, Red, White, and Royal Blue was an overnight sensation in 2019. Does their sapphic sophomore novel meet the high expectations set by the previous novel?

Review: One Last Stop, by Casey McQuiston

By guest contributor Amanda Hamilton

Like so many people, I read and loved Casey McQuiston’s debut bestselling novel, Red, White & Royal Blue last year, so when I had the chance to read an ARC of their upcoming book, One Last Stop, I was over the moon. And I am so happy to report that there is no sophomore slump here.

One Last Stop follows August, newly arrived in New York City, as she settles into her new life, complete with too many roommates and a job at a local diner. It is not the most glamorous life, but for once, it is completely hers. Until she meets Jane, a criminally attractive and charming woman replete with a motorcycle jacket. August and Jane have the ultimate meet-cute on the subway, but Jane doesn’t seem to want to see August outside the station. Because Jane is stuck. Stuck in time, stuck in the station, stuck riding the train over and over. But when the chemistry is this strong and the girl of August’s dreams are right in front of her, what’s a little time loop between friends?

August, Jane and the myriad of characters in One Last Stop’s world are all fully developed, with their own motives, concerns and loves, and it’s a joy to watch them all bloom throughout the course of the novel. Romance novels are often dismissed as predictable and rote, but that is certainly not the case here. Jump into this lovely and surprising with August and Jane – you won’t regret it.

For readers who enjoy One Last Stop, Amanda also recommends The Princess Trap, by Black author Talia Hibbert.

We Are Watching Eliza Bright: Feature Interview with Author A. E. Osworth

In Chapter 10, you give a bit of a gaming history of one of your characters in the book, Lewis. I would love to hear your gaming history! Did you write this book based on a lifelong interest in gaming, are you completely new to the gaming world, or was this just an interesting world for you to explore through fiction

It might come as no surprise that all the characters who have a gaming history (I believe there are three and there were almost more!) just have pieces of my own gaming history. I love video games and board games and table top RPGs (though I do not happen to be very good at most video games—especially if they require a large amount of dexterity-based combat). We were a Nintendo family, and my brother and I spent mornings before school playing the Nintendo 64 (Super Mario! Star Fox!) or, if we’d been dropped off early, Pokemon on our Gameboys. I also played Ultima Online quite a bit in my teen years—until a member of my guild took advantage of my naiveté and slaughtered me in a PVP zone for all my stuff (I had a lot of cool stuff). It wasn’t as much fun after that! Not because I lost all my cool stuff (though that was a bummer) but because it made me feel like my weird little online friendships weren’t meaningful.

Two more gaming-related questions. 1, do you have a favourite game that has kept you busy during the pandemic? 2, what character alignment do you most relate to yourself?

Honestly? Dungeons and Dragons. My household plays a big outdoor game with two other households, all socially distanced and our DM painted a giant battle grid on a bed sheet and hand-stitched cute beanbags to use as “minis.” Right at the beginning of the pandemic, though, it was all Animal Crossing all the time. Could that game’s release have been timed more perfectly? I used to get my avatar all dressed up in pajamas and have them lay in bed, surrounded by aesthetically pleasing digital objects in a world where no one was sick. They closed their eyes and slept soundly while I watched and pretended I felt like that. That sounds a bit sad, now that I say it out. But it is how I spent the early days and it was instrumental.

And that second question—like most folks I talk to, I wish desperately that I were Chaotic Good. When I play said Dungeons and Dragons, that’s usually what I go for. But the reality is that I’m Lawful Good. Which is to say, I am a giant weenie of a rule follower. I don’t make illegal u-turns and I get to airports a full two hours before my flight. I comfort myself only with the knowledge that I am not the worst alignment: Lawful Neutral. Law for the sake of law, rules for the sake of rules. Fuck that alignment!

You use gender neutral pronouns and have written a lot of non-fiction about queerness and technology. Did your experiences of gender and queerness impact the way that you approached writing this book? If so, how?

So when I wrote this book (or at least, the first several drafts of it), I didn’t know I was trans. I could’ve sworn up and down that I was a cis woman, and I wrote a story that centered on one. In that respect, my experience of gender has been with this book throughout. And queerness was always a part of it, too, in the character of Suzanne.

After coming out as trans, I had the opportunity to add and revise the second collective narrator, The Sixsterhood. This queer and trans art commune is inspired by a real group of people and a real place—the former Octagon in San Francisco, as well as other queer communities of which I am a part. That voice is explicitly queer and trans (and there are a lot of in-jokes there that are specifically for my queer and trans folks).

The cover of WE ARE WATCHING ELIZA BRIGHT

One of the things that is super unique about your book is the narrative style. Rather than having a single POV character, your book is narrated by a group of online fans of a popular MMORPG. For me as a reader, it created a sort of distance between me and the titular character, Eliza Bright. As a literary agent, I would say that this is a super risky choice in a competitive literary market. Why did you make that choice, and what do you hope it adds to your story?

I heard it again and again: cut the narrators, just tell the story. So many people in graduate school were of the opinion that I should do away with the book being narrated by Reddit, and they said the same things you’ve just said. I knew they were wrong because the whole point of the book is the Reddit narrator. The point is the antagonistic collective; the point is the parasocial relationship they have with the group of protagonists; the point is the feeling of being watched. I am so very lucky that I found an agent, and then an editor, whose whole mission was not to simply tell me to cut the narrator, but to ask the right questions and make the right comments to help me make the narrator really, really work. And I think it does; I think they do.

In addition to being a novelist, you also do a lot of teaching (you are so busy!). If an educator was going to teach your book in a high school or college creative writing class, what do you hope students would take away from that experience? Similarly, what do you wish you could tell educators who are going to choose this book to put in a young reader’s hands?

I think what I hope students take away depends on what this is being used to teach. If it’s being taught in the context of writing, I hope students try their own collective narrators. It’s really fun to consider how the collective knows what they know, how they share information with each other, whether or not they all agree, what they all sound like as one. There’s so much delight in working with this point of view, and there are so many good examples that all do it drastically differently (The Virgin Suicides, And Then We Came to the End, We Ride Upon Sticks).

If it’s being used to teach current events or internet culture or any number of other things, I hope students are taught the book beside the headlines that inspired it, because in the end I did make it up. The psychological and emotional underpinning of the book is as true as I could render it, but it’s a work of fiction. The narrators’ voices are accurate, but imagined. A good place to start with that is The New York Times’s Everything Is Gamergate.

A. E. Osworth, author of WE ARE WATCHING ELIZA BRIGHT

Being a marginalized publishing professional can be super challenging once in a while. Your book is with a Big 5 publisher – one of the Hachette imprints – and that’s a really big deal! What has your experience been like working with an agent and an editorial team at a big publishing house? What would you say the most fulfilling part of this process was, and what was the biggest challenge?

I have loved nearly every moment of working with my team at Grand Central. Seema Mahanian, my editor, has made this book the very best version of itself that it could possibly be. I was a little nervous that any editor at a Big Five publisher would look at my weirdo narrators and try to tone them down; Seema helped me turn the dial up on the narrators, and it was actually her idea to add the second collective (my beloved Sixsterhood). When I did two sample pages of the Sixsterhood and there were no periods at the end of the sentences, she said bring it on. I have felt not only artistically free, but artistically encouraged to find my very strangest ideas and let them play.

The biggest challenge for me is something that I truly think would be a problem no matter if I was working with a Big Five or not, and that’s the feeling of at-sea-ness that comes from We Are Watching Eliza Bright being my very first foray into publishing a book. The process is really opaque to me—as my book’s launch date approaches, I don’t know what I should be doing or what’s working or what’s not. My agent, Christopher Hermelin, is truly amazing though. And he’s been able to contextualize and guide and clarify for me. That I remain confused at times is a shortcoming of mine and not anyone else’s.

Last, but not least, when I’m covering a non-Black author, I ask them to recommend a book by a Black author to go alongside their post. Would you mind sharing a rec with me?

Oh oh oh! One of my year-mates from my MFA program at The New School (we graduated in 2016!) is publishing something I’m REALLY excited about. Zakiya Dalila Harris’s book The Other Black Girl is coming out in June and I am AMPED.

The cover of THE OTHER BLACK GIRL, by Zakiya Dalila Harris.

PS, if you enjoyed this post, please consider leaving me a tip! It only takes a minute, and it allows me to keep creating content just like this, buying food for my pets, and pursuing my career as a literary agent!

The Longest Shortest Month of the Year

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Theydies and gentlethems, the first thing I need to do in this post is apologize for the sometimes sporadic timing of posts over the last several months. I am personally, officially more than one year into lockdown, more than one year into working as a literary agent, and I am doing my best to be mindful of my abilities and limitations during this weird part of our collective history. As such, there have been times when I’ve had to step back from some obligations in order to fulfill others, and at times the regularity of the blog schedule has suffered.

Today, however, I have a great post in store. First, I want to review a super exciting picture book, Jamie and Bubbie, by Afsaneh Moradian and illustrated by Maria Bogade. Then, I have a very exciting interview from author Zak Salih, whose gay literary fiction Let’s Get Back to the Party comes out THIS TUESDAY (!!!) from Algonquin books.

Before I dive into those, I have a VERY COOL resource to share for all of you who maybe didn’t get as much reading done in 2020 as usual. I’m super, super lucky to be part of a great online book community, called the Rogue Book Coven. This year, some of our incredible and skilled members put together this great resource featuring the best books read by our members in 2020 – across age categories, genres, and release periods. Check it out, and find something great that maybe you missed. I think of it like the front table at your favourite indie bookshop at the end of a long year.

Jamie and Bubbie

The cover of Jamie and Bubbie, A Book About People’s Pronouns

I have written about Afsaneh Moradian’s first children’s book, Jamie is Jamie, in this space before. I am a huge supporter of Moradian’s work, and so I was thrilled when she reached out to me to ask if I would review her newest offering. Moradian is an educator, and her expertise and familiarity with children really shines through in her picture books.

This book features illustrations of a diverse population that extends beyond racial inclusion, including wheelchair users, and a broad range of ages. It addresses an important topic – the use of pronouns – and it fills a huge gap in resources created on this topic by non-white creators. The book handles the topic with great sensitivity, allowing the young character to be the hero of the story, educating their elders in new and different ways to use language, while maintaining a sense of gentleness, positivity, and humility throughout.

This is a great 101 resource, and a lovely story. The only criticism that I could offer is that it is limited in the sense that there is no discussion of neopronouns. That said, for most people living in North America, this book is a great, accessible starting point for learning, that is expertly executed. It also includes resources for teachers and caregivers in the back of the book.

While you’re checking out Jamie and Bubbie, check out another one of my favourite picture books, Saturday, by Black author Oge Mora.

The cover of Saturday by Oge Mora.

Feature Interview: Zak Salih

Debut author Zak Salih’s novel, Let’s Get Back to the Party, will drop this Tuesday, February 16th. It’s been hailed as “iconic” by the Gay Times, was one of this month’s most anticipated books from Lambda Literary, and Michelle Hart, the assistant editor of books at O Magazine, said that it was among the titles that would change the literary landscape this year. I am honoured to have gotten the chance to interview Salih, and I hope that you enjoy reading as much as I did!

Cover of Let’s Get Back to the Party, by Zak Salih.

I can remember the exact moment that I heard that the US had legalized gay marriage – it wasn’t so long ago, after all. Do you remember that moment in your life? What did it mean for you?

I was working in the marketing department at The Washington Post at the time, so I was at my desk and saw the news on the website as soon as it broke. The next morning, I went down to the lobby and picked up a copy of the paper; I still have the front page here somewhere in my office. While marriage equality hasn’t been a social panacea for the LGBTQ2S+ community, it’s a powerful symbol and its legalization was a powerful moment. I’m glad I was alive to witness it.

You write a lot about art in this book, which is in itself a very artistic, literary work. Is art something that you feel passionate about, or was it just something that you researched for your novel? What role has it played in your life? Do you have a favourite artist or particular work that you wish all of your readers could experience?

I’ve always enjoyed art—flipping through art catalogs, walking through art museums, reading novels about artists—so those sections of the novel were relatively delightful to write. When it’s safe, the National Gallery of Art here in D.C. is the first indoor place I plan on going post-pandemic. I highly recommend it to everyone, especially because you’ll find John Singleton Copley’s Watson and the Shark there, a painting that’s fascinated me since I was a young boy.

Watson and the Shark

For me, your book felt very nostalgic. I think that it really hearkens back to a tone and type of iconic gay literature that we don’t see as much of these days, but it grapples with very contemporary material. I wonder what books you would recommend for readers of your book, and what works you would say influenced you when you were working on it?

I’d recommend all of the LGBTQ2S+ books that inspire me— as a member of an incredibly diverse and wonderful community, as a writer, and as a human being. At the moment, I’m thinking in particular of books like Maggie Nelson’s The Argonauts, Daniel Mendelsohn’s The Elusive Embrace, Alexander Chee’s How to Write an Autobiographical Novel, and Andrew Holleran’s The Beauty of Men.

From my experience, particularly for LGBTQ2S+ “elders” (feel free to interpret that in whatever way you wish!), childhood memories of grappling with sexuality and complex relationships with peers are often poignant, and linger throughout our lives. This is a theme that comes up in your book, and I’m curious what that was like to explore through your writing. 

While I don’t share the specific childhood memories of Sebastian and Oscar, I do dwell on the past a little more than is healthy. But I think that’s true of most people, queer or otherwise. The past always tends to pop up in the most unlikely of places: the face of a stranger, a painting in an art gallery, a line in a poem. I find stories that focus on the past, or in which characters cannot get over the past, to be the most rewarding types of stories. They teach me about navigating my own relationship with memory and experience.

Photo by Seven Shooter on Unsplash

Obviously, as creatives, we all carry different parts of our identities into our work with us. How did your identities direct what you wanted to do with this novel, and to what extent do you feel your various identities define you as a writer?

In an obvious sense, my identity as a gay man informed what I tried to do with this novel, and the complexities of what it means to be part of a generation strung between a traumatic past and a more hopeful future. But when I sit down to write, I’m nothing thinking (at least consciously) about my identities. I don’t care to label myself a “gay writer” any more than I would label myself a “biracial writer” or a “cis-gender writer.” These identifiers and descriptors, I feel, are more for other people to make sense of me than for me to make sense of myself.

One of the characters in your book is a high school teacher. If an educator was going to teach your book to a group of young adults, what do you hope students would take away from that experience? Similarly, what do you wish you could tell educators who are going to choose this book to put in a younger reader’s hands?

I would hope students came away from the book with a sense of enlargement about their relationships with other people—the idea that they’re part of a larger community with a past, a present, and a future. I suppose I’d caution educators (and all readers to remember that Sebastian and Oscar represent no one but themselves; their messiness is not what makes them queer, it’s what makes them human.

Photo by Tim Mossholder on Unsplash

Being a marginalized publishing professional can be super challenging once in a while. What has your experience been like working with the editorial team at Algonquin, which is a large independent publisher? What would you say the most fulfilling part of this process was, and what was the biggest challenge?

I honestly have nothing but kind words for everyone at Algonquin Books. Since they first acquired the novel, everyone from my editor to the marketing team has been entirely supportive not just of my writing but of the inherent queerness of the book itself. Perhaps other writers have horror stories to share, but in my relationship with Algonquin, I was never once asked to tone down or make more “cis-hereto-friendly” the story I was trying to tell.

Last, but not least, when I’m covering a non-Black author, I ask them to recommend a book by a Black author to go alongside their post. Would you mind sharing a rec with me?

Season of Migration to the North, by the Sudanese writer Tayeb Salih. A fascinating, and occasionally disturbing novel about reverse colonization, whose enigmatic central character is a Western-educated Sudanese man who resolves to “liberate Africa with [his] penis.”

Cover of Season of Migration to the North, by Tayeb Salih.

New year, who dis?

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Happy 2021, theydies and gentlethems! A quick personal note to start this post: Books Beyond Binaries may look slightly different this year, in terms of content. Part of the reason for that is because I have recently transitioned my Twitter account to announcements-only for the foreseeable future. I’ve come to accept that posting my updates and checking my mentions through Hootsuite is a lot better for my mental health and time management than reading my feed every day, even if it does mean that I miss out on content sometimes. If you see anything on Twitter that you think should be featured in this space, feel free to tag me or send it my way via DM or the contact page!

Now, on to the good stuff. I’m thrilled that for the first post of a new year, I have some super special content to share. CeCe Lyra has reviewed Susan Mihalic’s novel Dark Horses. This one holds a special place in my heart, because I grew up horseback riding every chance I got, competing, and devouring “horse girl” books. Not only are these coming back in MG and YA literature lately, which is a welcome trend over here, but I am hype for the books coming out for former horse girls turned reading adults.

I am also super excited to welcome an author who I’ve been following for a few years now for his first feature post in this space, Sam J. Miller. I first discovered Sam through his acclaimed YA novel, Destroy All Monsters, which I featured in a post back in 2019. At the time, this poignant and bizarre novel had become a staff favourite at Another Story, the local indie where I worked as a bookseller.

Sam’s fourth novel, The Blade Between, recently dropped, and I’m honoured that he was willing to put together a super cool post for us about some of the research that he did when writing the book. Sam’s books are spooky and fascinating and, in his words, “gay as heck.” If you’re new to his writing, I hope that this post will encourage you to dive in, because you’ve been missing it in your life. I promise.

Review of Susan Mihalic’s DARK HORSES, by Cecilia Lyra

The cover of Dark Horses.

Fifteen-year-old Roan Montgomery is a competitor in the exclusive, high-stakes equestrian world with a goal of becoming an Olympian. She has good reason to think she’ll get there: Roan is talented, hard-working, and genuinely passionate about riding. She’s also pedigreed—her father has several Olympic medals of his own and wrote the book on eventing. It’s no surprise then that he is Roan’s coach, publicist, and agent. What is a surprise: he’s been raping her since she was six years old. A greater surprise still: Roan’s mother knows.

An image of a chestnut horse wearing a harness eating hay.
Photo by Emmy Nordstrom Higdon; Cape Breton, 2011. Taken on Portra 160 VC; Minolta.

To survive (a word Roan would undoubtedly resent), she compartmentalizes. She tells herself it’s not all bad. That staying silent is her choice. That she would rather be complicit than a victim. That what really matters are her riding ambitions. As with all emotions, perhaps a lot of it true, or perhaps all (or none) of it is. But truth in emotions is beside the point. What is the point: Roan’s indomitable, clear-eyed strength. It is this strength that guides her as she struggles to comprehend and navigate her circumstances, not just the conflicting emotions she feels towards her father, but also the role she feels she plays in their relationship. Throughout the novel, we watch Roan’s sense of self grow stronger, which in turn causes her father to tighten his grip on her. This is exacerbated by the fact that Roan’s mother leaves, taking with her what little protection she could offer, and that Roan falls in love with Will, a classmate at her exclusive prep school. Although she is, without a doubt, a victim of abuse, Roan does not come across as a victim. She’s a fighter—has been from page one, and as the story unfolds, we watch her battle with growing fortitude.

Set against the backdrop of competitive riding, DARK HORSES moves along nimbly, with explosive stretches that made my pulse race. Typically, when I’m reading a book that I know I will later review, I make notes as I turn the pages. I jot down my impressions on the narrative flow, themes examined, and characters I meet along the way, pausing to reflect on their fatal flaws (I have a thing about flaws). I’m a natural note-taker and, more to the point, I find it helps with my reviews. I couldn’t do that with this novel. Its pull was all-consuming, like being sucked in by a tidal wave. I had no time—or headspace—to make notes. It’s quite a feat for any novelist, holding a reader’s attention like that. But given the disturbing nature of the subject matter it’s even more impressive.

A black Newfoundland pony, wearing a harness, grazing, seen through a white fence.
Photo by Emmy Nordstrom Higdon; Newfoundland, 2011. Taken on Portra 160 NC; Minolta.

DARK HORSES had everything to be a story of privilege. A poor-little-rich girl narrative with a horsey twist. Instead, it’s an exploration of power, control, and desire as told through the lenses of a girl who refused to be broken. It’s a powerful novel—in more ways than one.

Along with Dark Horses, CeCe recommends readers check out Aftershocks, by skillful Black author Nadia Owusu. It comes out on the 21st of this month.

The cover of Aftershocks by Nadia Owusu

Feature Post: Author Sam J. Miller on THE BLADE BETWEEN

Hudson is a weird distinctive haunted looking town, and so I had a huge assortment of creepy fascinating spaces at my disposal when I started writing my gentrification ghost story The Blade Between. And while I hope I succeeded in rendering those locations vividly enough on the page, the reality of the city is worth sharing. 

The cover of The Blade Between.

Here are eight of the locations where key events take place, along with a quote from the book describing each. If you’ve already read THE BLADE BETWEEN, I hope they help you compare the space as it really is to the way you imagined it. And if you haven’t read it, I hope they spark your interest enough to want to visit Hudson… even if it’s only on the page. 

A brown brick building against a blue sky with dry greenery in front and bare trees. Text reads, Every building on that block looked like something out of Meet Me in St. Louis, great gingerbread monstrosities of nineteenth-century wealth, ;wide, deep porches and Tiffany glass, ; porticos and gables and other words I never knew before I started researching Hudson home prices - the better to burn them all down.
A bridge covered in faded graffiti over a worn concrete road. Text reads, A set of rusted black trestles carried the train tracks over Power Avenue.
An American diner on the corner of a street, red and white with silver metallic accents. Text reads, The familiar sooty chrome exterior of the Columbia Diner caught my eye, sucked me inside by awakened twenty-year-old instinct - an entire childhood's worth of Saturday morning breakfasts with my dad, on our walk to work at the butcher shop...
A road on a tree-lined street in winter, after the leaves have all fallen. A new-looking house sits on the corner. Text reads, Walking south on Second Street, up the steep block that fell away to a ravine on either side, where the rain still fell from the trees and the air smelled like rot and wilderness, I heard a voice say: Why so glum, glummy?
Twilight, a street with train tracks embedded in it, lined on one side with run-down buildings, and on the other side with parked cars. Text reads, Freight train tracks run right through upper Hudson, along sixth street, right below the park.
An evening sky with a streetlight on in the foreground, over a quiet back alley. Text reads, He puts a brown paper bag on the hood of her car, and stalks off into the alley dark. She hollers at him to wait - even turns on her cell phone's flashlight function and hurries after him - but he's already gone.
A bridge over the Hudson River. The sun shines through the clouds, reflecting off the water. Text reads, I was kneeling on the pedestrian walkway of the Rip Van Winkle Bridge. Staring down into the same dizzying dark, the same twenty-story fall that swallowed up my mother.
The inside of a library with marble floors and white-painted shelves. Text reads, ...the Hudson Library, which before being a library had been a mental institution and before that a foundlings' home, and both of those establishments had been in need of a cell in the basement for their most recalcitrant occupants.

In addition to The Blade Between, Sam J. Miller (and I!!!) recommends that readers check out A Spectral Hue, by Black author Craig Laurance Gidney. Sam writes: A gorgeous, creepy, rapturous story, told in incredible prose, and if there was any justice it would have already won ALL THE AWARDS. 

The cover of A Spectral Hue.

PS, if you enjoyed this post, please consider leaving me a tip! It only takes a minute, and it allows me to keep creating content just like this, buying food for my pets, and pursuing my career as a literary agent!

Wounded

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2020 is drawing to a close, and as arbitrary as time is, this is our last post of the year here on Books Beyond Binaries! First things first: if you’re here, that means that you’re seeking our new banner! I could not be more thrilled with the result of this year’s refresh, thanks to Oaky, a non-binary, Latino, concept artist and illustrator, who created this awesome new look for the blog going into 2021!

In today’s post, lots of new resources to share (as you can see) for books to read from trans and/or non-binary authors from 2020 and going into 2021, including this list of 2020 debuts from trans, non-binary, and gender non-conforming authors from the Chicago Review of Books.

Otherwise, this post is all about the Big Feels, which seems appropriate for the end of 2020. I review a new poetry collection called Wound from the Mouth of a Wound, by torrin a. greathouse, and we are super excited to host a post from #SpineSquad author A. J. Vrana on writing for emotional impact.

As always, when we feature books by non-Black authors in this space, we also offer recs of books by Black authors to accompany them. For my part, I want to recommend my favourite book that I read this year, Riot Baby, by Tochi Onyebuchi.

The cover of Riot Baby, by Tochi Onyebuchi.

A personal request for support…

Before I kick off this post, I’m going to use this space to make a small ask for support. For those of you who don’t know, I’m completing my PhD studies right now. I was supposed to have defended my dissertation in December, but due to an administrative error at the School of Graduate Studies at my institution, and delays within my committee caused by COVID, I am being forced to take an extra term in order to be able to complete my studies. All of this, despite my having met every deadline and requirement thrown at me in 2020, has been really challenging to come to terms with. In addition, this situation comes with a whopping, unexpected, $2300 price tag that I am completely unable to afford. As a new agent and having lost my bookstore income due to the pandemic, I am just making enough money with freelancing and agenting to stay out of debt, and my department is not offering me any financial support for this extra semester of studies. If you are interested and able, there are three ways you can support me, a disabled trans student trying my best to have my work over the past seven years of study recognized. One, I have a crowdfunding campaign that you can donate to, two, you can hire me to edit your work or the work of an aspiring writer in your life, three, you can share these links (and the blog!) within your networks. Thank you in advance! 💜

Review: WOUND FROM THE MOUTH OF A WOUND, by torrin a. greathouse

A few months ago, I was approached by Claire Laine, a publicist of Milkweed Editions, one of my favourite independent publishers, to review the poetry collection Wound from the Mouth of a Wound, by torrin a. greathouse, which comes out tomorrow: December 22nd, 2020. torrin’s online bios describe her as a transgender cripple-punk and poet.

I am a person with Big Feelings, so sometimes I struggle to read poetry, because when it is done well, it feels like every syllable is an emotional gut-punch. That said, I love poetry for the same reason. Two of my favourite books of all time are a place called NO HOMELAND by Kai Cheng Thom, and Bodymap by Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha. Both of these collections absolutely gutted me. The blurb for torrin’s collection calls it, “A versatile missive written from the intersections of gender, disability, trauma, and survival.” I felt confident when I accepted the offer to review that this book would soon join Kai and Leah’s in my heart.

Wound from the Mouth of a Wound is the winner of the 2020 Ballard Spahr Prize for Poetry, and has already received many glowing reviews and recommendations from Refinery29, NBC Out, Book Marks, Lambda, and the Chicago Review of Books. I’m afraid that Books Beyond Binaries won’t be the source of a dissenting opinion in this case. I do feel that I should, however, note that I am not a poetry expert, so I come to this review purely as a reader. If my thoughts in this post lack precision or technicality, I apologize in advance for that.

The collection opens with six verses inspired by a 2008 sculpture of Medusa carved by Luciano Garbati. The statue itself is fairly unadorned, a rendition in bronze of the woman with hair of snakes, unapologetically holding in one hand a blade, and in the other hand the severed head of a man. This sculpture is a response and inversion of another work that resides in Garbati’s hometown in Italy, near Florence, a statue by Benvenuto Cellini, called Perseus with the head of Medusa. In torrin’s collection, they use accessible, but poignant, imagery to write about this sculpture as a symbol of rape culture, and how that culture bleeds into the lives of children who are the product of traumatic experiences. Garbati’s sculpture has been reinterpreted again as the stunning cover art for this collection.

The cover of Wound from the Mouth of a Wound by torrin a. greathouse.

The first formal section of this book begins with a quote. I was charmed by this, because coincidentally, shortly before reading Wound, I connected with queer Palestinian poet George Abraham after the Palestine Writes Literature Festival, in the hopes of featuring them and their poetry in this space soon. His collection, Birthright, is available now.

Wound is a collection of short works in verse, prose, and essay formats. There are five sections total. I am amazed by the efficiency of torrin’s collection. This is writing that works hard. In the first section, she tackles themes including motherhood, infant loss, and parentage; a relatable yet brief critique of the medical model of disability; the sterile experience of medical transition and the scientific fragility of physiological gender; sex and trauma; finally, and most resonant for me in this section, the radiant, emotional impact of medical transition. These themes unravel at a pace that is perfectly possible to keep up with, and with moments of startlingly beautiful imagery. Often, I find myself lost in poetry, but in this section, I rather found myself awash in it.

Mirroring the first section, the second begins with a quote (this time from Jillian Weiss), and a section of prose. The themes from the first section thrum throughout this book, with occasional meditations on body image and eating disorders, morality, addiction and blackouts, etymology, fear… torrin pulls absolutely zero punches in unraveling what I can only assume are their reflections on personal experiences on the page.

My personal favourite piece in this collection, and one that I am eager to share with the world, is the poem That’s So Lame, which addresses the casual violence of ableist language. It is searing, relatable, and communicates so much that is difficult to articulate in such a short space. It is both beautiful, and functional, and such a valuable tool, I think, for social justice and for literature.

Wound from the Mouth of a Wound by torrin a. greathouse launches tomorrow, and if you are able to purchase it from an independent bookstore, you have the opportunity to support a trans, disabled author, an independent not-for-profit press, and an independent small business, all at the same time. This collection, despite dealing with impactful themes, is not a chore to read. It is accessible and easy to follow, overflowing with evocative imagery, and it filled me with the sense of empowerment that one might get from watching a beautiful flower emerge from a crack in the concrete. Works like these are how the light gets in. I’m very grateful for Claire and torrin sharing this book with me, and with Books Beyond Binaries, and I hope that many of our readers will indulge in this incredible collection this winter.

Writing for Emotional Impact, by A. J. Vrana

A. J. Vrana’s recommendation for a book by a Black author to read alongside this post is from non-binary author Rivers Solomon, The Deep.

The cover of The Deep, by Rivers Solomon.

As a reader, there is no better experience than being emotionally moved while devouring a good book. The written word is, after all, intended for communication, and more often than not, what writers want is to make their readers think and feel a certain way. This is especially true in the world of fiction and memoire writing, where readers expect to be drawn into the story and to grow attached to the characters.

However, if you’re an author, you know that it’s not easy getting people to notice your book, and it can be even harder to get them invested. The world is full of different kinds of people, which means not everyone will pick up what you put down. Nonetheless, at the heart of authorial passion is the desire to have your story emotionally resonate with as many people as possible.

Okay, great, but how does one convey emotion through writing? We know beautiful prose when we see it, but how do we emulate it? How do we communicate the rawest parts of ourselves authentically and effectively? This is no small or easy task, but there are techniques that can help. In this piece, I will share four tricks I’ve picked up.

Photo by Seven Shooter on Unsplash

Sentence Structure

The very structure of a sentence—its length, syntax, and punctuation—can impact the way it is received be a reader. The way writing flows from word to word, sentence to sentence, conveys a lot about the writer’s intentions. For example, short, choppy sentences can be great for communicating strong, sudden emotions like distress, confusion, and pain (in the negative) or excitement, anticipation, and joy (in the positive). Although I am generally not an advocate of using sentence fragments, the occasional fragment can be very effective in communicating a strong emotion—the caveat being that it’s used occasionally. Let’s look at a few examples:

            It came from within, this furious, bone-deep itch. Thousands of tiny needle-point legs, trampling on nerves. They burned and screeched, demanding nails on flesh.

In the above example, I’m describing someone in distress. I would assume that a person experiencing this level of discomfort wouldn’t be able to think or narrate in fully formed, complex sentences because of their emotional state, so their thoughts would come out choppy and somewhat fragmented. Keeping the sentences short ensures a snappy, urgent pace that puts the reader on edge. Now let’s look at another example:

            She stood there—a ghost returned from the grave. Only she wasn’t a ghost. She was flesh and blood. She was family, and she was alive.

 In this example, we have someone seeing a loved one they thought was dead. Although this is definitely a happier occasion, it is nonetheless riddled with complex emotions. Seeing someone you’ve grieved over is still quite traumatic and stressful, even if you are happy to see them! Similar to the previous example, I would assume that the person in question wouldn’t really have it in them to form long, eloquent sentences when first seeing a family member who is presumed dead. The short sentences mimic their tattered emotional state: shocked, confused, uncertain, but ultimately relieved or happy.

However, short sentences aren’t the only ones that can convey emotion. Longer, occasionally even rambling sentences can communicate scrambled thoughts, worry, or exasperation. For example, someone trying to recount a highly stressful or exciting event might narrate in run-on sentences. The same could be said of someone who is overstimulated or has had too much caffeine! Here’s an example:

            I put the key in the ignition, then turned it—the key, I mean—and then the engine revved like usual, but as soon as I switched the gear, I heard this noise like someone had dropped a glass from the roof, and then there was this bang and a sputter, and I could smell smoke, so I panicked and hit the breaks even though the car wasn’t moving because I was scared, you know?

The sentence above is narrated in the first person from someone who is frazzled after their car broke down (and who knows what happened before then!). The sentence is longer than any sentence should be, frankly, but the use of punctuation makes it manageable to read/ However, occasionally, using sentences like this is fine because they can effectively convey the person’s emotional state.

Photo by Jerry Wang on Unsplash

Word Choice

Be methodical about word choice. Sometimes, the right words can go a long way in creating a specific emotion. For example, if I say someone is ‘angry,’ it doesn’t really evoke much of an image, but it I say someone is ‘seething,’ my brain conjures a specific image of a pot about to boil over. It gives me the distinct sense that something bad is about to happen—like someone might lose their temper and lash out. In comparison, the adjective ‘angry’ has very little impact.

Here is another example: if someone is drunk, rather than describing their gait as ‘clumsy’ or ‘uncoordinated,’ you can describe them as ‘shambling.’

“They shambled down the hill” is far more evocative than, “They walked clumsily down the hill,” or, “Their gait was uncoordinated as they walked.”

Photo by Dollar Gill on Unsplash

Metaphors and Similes

Perhaps one of my favourite techniques for evoking emotion is using similes and metaphors to conjure a specific image in the reader’s mind. The fact is, direct, simple language often does not create emotional impact the same way that abstract images do. When we write about something directly, it may engender intellectual understanding, but it rarely provokes empathy from the reader.

Metaphors and similes are a great way to communicate how something feels without saying it directly. Because direct and clinical descriptions are so endemic to how we communicate on a daily basis, we are desensitized to their impact. For example, when a friend has a bad day at work, they might say, “I was so annoyed,” and then go on to explain why. We hear this so often that it has almost no meaning and falls flat when encountered in prose.

However, metaphors and similes give us a tool for creative expression for emotions we all experience; they defamiliarize us from the simplicity of loaded terms like ‘anger’ and ‘happiness.’ They offer us a specific and tangible image with which we can better understand the power of what is being conveyed.

For example, saying someone is “unpredictable” doesn’t really evoke any particular emotional response from me as a reader. However, if we say that someone is “like a tornado in the middle of the night,” we can insinuate that they are unpredictable based on culturally shared knowledge and symbolism around tornados: they are highly unpredictable and destructive storms with an erratic path, and the idea of one dropping from the sky after dark is especially terrifying because everything is less visible and less certain when the sun goes down. In other words, it’s the image, not the adjective, that evokes feelings of uncertainty, unpredictability, and anxiety. Through the image, we create an empathic connection with the subject of the writing. As a result, we genuinely feel that the person being written about is unpredictable.

Photo by Jilbert Ebrahimi on Unsplash

Bodies Talk

Ah yes, the mind-body dualism. Whoever came up with it did some serious damage to how we think of ourselves. In reality, the border between mind and body is paper thin, and anyone who has ever had anxiety (aka all of us) can confirm this. Our emotions manifest through our bodies, and more often than not, bodies speak what we cannot.

For this exact reason, using the body as a tool to convey emotion is far more effective than direct, clinical description. Many of you will have encountered this advice in the form of “show, don’t tell.” For example, rather than telling your reader that someone is grief-stricken, show them through body language.

Does their face twist with realization? Do they curl in on themselves, seeking comfort and safety? Do they flee their immediate surroundings? Do they grab a drink or light a cigarette with a trembling hand? What does their voice sound like? Does it come out rough like sandpaper? Are they swallowing rapidly, mouth parched? Are their eyes red from tears and sleeplessness? Do shadows cling beneath them?

When you find yourself writing a scene that demands emotional impact, try to make those emotions visceral by focusing on the body. Embodied experience is the most tangible way we relate to the world, and it is also one of the best tools for communicating what lies beneath the skin.

PS, if you enjoyed this post, please consider leaving me a tip! It only takes a minute, and it allows me to keep creating content just like this, buying food for my pets, and pursuing my career as a literary agent!

(What a) Year(!) in Review

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I’m sort of in disbelief that I’m writing this post to celebrate the end of 2020, and the second anniversary of Books Beyond Binaries! If you are reading this post: congratulations, yall. We made it.

This one’s a big one! First, I’m going to throw out a bunch of resources on the best books that I can recommend going into 2021, I want to talk a bit about how you can support the blog going into 2021, I’m going to do my customary review of my own #2020Reading (which you can see snippets of on Twitter), AND last but not least, scroll on down to the end of this post, because I do have a review for today, from Jack! Jack read and gives her thoughts on one of 2020’s most lauded LGBTQ2S+ titles of the year – Luster, by Raven Leilani.

Roundups and Recs

Alright, folks. In this section, I have included links to a couple of different roundups of non-binary and trans books that have been posted recently. There are a few other resources that I would absolutely encourage you to check out as you do your holiday shopping or consider what to add to your TBR for the new year. First, a friend of mine and member of the Rogue Book Coven (my online book community), Sarah Cuddie, does this impressive data gathering project annually where she takes the “Best Of” lists from that year, and creates a GINORMOUS master “Best Of”. Obviously, the 2020 list is still in progress, but the Best Books of 2019 BIG Roundup is available and super interesting – especially for spreadsheet nerds like me.

I also always want to recommend the Another Story Holiday Gift List. Compiled by the best indie booksellers I know at the bookshop where I worked in the Before Times (aka, until the pandemic made it too dangerous for me), this list is the active staff’s favourite books of 2020! If you decide to buy from this list, please patronize your local indie. If you don’t have one, check out Bookshop.org if you’re in the US, or McNally Robinson in Canada (who offer $5 shipping all over the country).

Last but not least, I want to announce that there is a new trans book blog that you will love if you love this blog. It’s called Oceans of Novels, and it’s run by the creator of the Transathon book challenge! Welcome to the blogosphere, Ocean!

Support Books Beyond Binaries

Especially over the course of this tumultuous year, Books Beyond Binaries has been a space of safety and freedom for me, and I hope that I’ve curated content that has felt that way for all of our readers! Over the course of 2020, I really didn’t have the capacity to keep an eye on the performance stats for Books Beyond Binaries, but recently I took a peek, and on average this year, we are getting about 720 page views per month! I’m so proud.

If you are one of those approximately 8600 reads this year, and would like to support us, there are a couple of ways that you can do that! You can make a small donation through my ko-fi, or you can purchase my editorial services for yourself or for another writer in your life! Money received through these channels helps pay for the domain, hosting, artwork, and books that you see featured on Books Beyond Binaries! And what will that mean going into 2021? Well…

I won’t give away our secrets, but of course it means more guest posts from rad authors, more artwork commissioned from LGBTQ2S+ artists, more book reviews from Jack and CeCe Lyra, and it means that BBB can continue to support emerging non-binary literary content creators like Santana Reads and reddietoread! WOW a lot has happened since I created this space. Happy anniversary, blog supporters. I’m so honoured you’re sharing this with us.

This Year Did Not Go As Planned

Me in 2020, wearing a mask from the Canadian Children’s Book Centre, featuring art by Gabrielle Grimard, author and illustrator.

…dramatic understatement, I know. And honestly, I don’t know if I have it in me to write a big personal blog post about my experience of the pandemic, or even of the last 12 months of my own life. So much has happened, personally and professionally, that it would be difficult for me to capture in a way that would feel safe and interesting in this kind of forum. In summary, I will say that I feel incredibly lucky on an individual level to have been able to stay healthy and safe this year, and to have stable housing and employment (even if it’s less than it used to be).

In my professional life, I am so honoured to have been able to spend this year building my list of authors as a literary agent, and to have been offered a dream position with Westwood Creative Artists. The #SpineSquad are an incredible group of creators who I am in awe of every day, and who I feel so lucky to be able to support in their work. Although some of the contracts are still being finalized, and announcements being prepared, I am super proud to have sold 11 books (including three audio deals) since February. Those that you can check out immediately are: The Hollow Gods, by A. J. Vrana, and Maiden Leap, by C. M. Harris… with many more to come.

How Agenting Changed My Reading – For Better and Worse

This year, my reading stats are very different from other years. This is in part because I haven’t been able to work at the indie book shop where I was employed in the Before Times because my partner is high risk for COVID, and the shop was unable to make accommodations that would keep us safe. I hope that that will be different in the future – I miss the shop with my whole heart – but for now, I’m part of the long-term self isolating crowd. We’ve been quarantined since mid-February… going on month 10 over here.

The biggest factor, though, has been my agenting work. Although I finished 99 books so far this year, about 2/3 of those were complete (unpublished) manuscripts that I read every word of with an editorial brain on as queries, freelance projects, assigned work from supervisors, or client work. Of the other books that I read, some were for my academic work, some were for research, and some were recreational books that I picked up because I just wanted to. I really have yet to find a way to strike a healthy balance between reading for work and reading for fun – and I’m aware it’s a problem, and working on it.

2020 By the Numbers!

My 2019 in review can be seen here.
My 2018 in review can be seen here.

How many books I read in 2017: 41
How many books I read in 2018: 57
How many books I read in 2019: 124
How many books I read in 2020: 99

First book read: All Eyes on Her, Laurie Elizabeth Flynn
Last book read (as of this post): I’ll Never Tell, Catherine McKenzie
Average length: 302 pages

Books by POC: 20
POC MC: 18
Male authors: 25
Female authors: 81
Non-binary and/or trans authors: 14
Queer authors: 36
Queer MC: 38

Middle Grade: 9
YA: 28
Adult: 62
Graphic: 2
Short story or anthology:
Non-fiction: 16
Memoir: 4
Lit Fic: 25
Poetry: 2
SFF: 26
Thriller: 19
Horror: 10

Purchases: 9
Library: 14
ARC: 12

Digital: 35
Print: 13
Audio: 1

½ Star Books: 0
⭐️ Books: 0
⭐️ ½ Books: 1
⭐️⭐️ Books: 2
⭐️⭐️ ½ Books: 0
⭐️⭐️⭐️ Books: 12
⭐️⭐️⭐️ ½ Books: 16
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Books: 31
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ ½ Books: 13
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Books: 24

January: 30
February: 13
March: 11
April: 3
May: 12
June: 9
July: 7
August: 6
September: 9
October: 2
November: 6
December: 0

Reading challenges I participated in: None

DNF: 9

Currently reading (published, unfinished in 2020): The Sunset Sisters, by Cecilia Lyra; White is for Witching, by Helen Oyeyemi; Devotions, by Mary Oliver; The Deep, by Alma Katsu; Amanda Greenleaf, by Ed Kavanaugh; On This Day, by Dale Jarvis
Favourite (published) books read this year: Riot Baby, by Toni Onyebuchi; Resilience is Futile, by Julie S. Lalonde; Love Notes, by Philip McKibbin

emmy’s Most Anticipated of Early 2021

  • Detransition, Baby, by Torrey Peters
  • In the Garden of Spite, by Camilla Bruce
  • The Bad Muslim Discount, by Syed M. Masood
  • We Are the Ashes, We Are the Fire, by Joy McCullough and Maia Kobabe
  • Loner, by Georgina Young
  • Kink, ed. by R. O. Kwan and Garth Greenwell
  • Let’s Get Back to the Party, by Zak Salih
  • Dark Horses, by Susan Mihalic
  • Spin With Me, by Amy Polonsky
  • Honey Girl, by Morgan Rogers
  • Some Other Now, by Sarah Everett

Jack’s Review of LUSTER, by Raven Leilani

Raven Leilani’s debut novel, Luster, is a rollercoaster. It’s not for the faint of heart. Leilani is an American writer and artist, with an MFA from NYU. In a NYT feature, Leilani mentions how surreal the release of Luster feels, during a pandemic that claimed her father’s life. Leilani also expands on Edie, explaining that “” she wanted to highlight a nonlinear artistic path, one that came in contact with the real world”.

Luster reads as a confessional, observational disclosure of Edie’s internal world. This book tells the story of Edie, an editorial assistant and artist. It’s about the awkward moments, it’s about being young, it’s about being human.  Like most 23-year old’s, Edie seeks validation in her relationships and at her job. What starts off as an affair between Edie and Eric, a white man in an open marriage, mutates into the exploration of the dynamic in families, with Edie living with Eric’s wife and adopted daughter.

As a disillusioned painter, Edie begins to question everything: what makes somebody an artist? How do you maximize productivity and is genius contagious? What and how do you structure the hard work that makes one’s talents shine?

Content warnings include violence, racism, child loss/pregnancy and transracial adoption. I recommend this book to hopeless artists, Black Women, and to the dream chaser, who is being held down by reality. This is a perfect read for YA.

Leilani expertly articulates the tension one feels when survival requires a never- ending audition. Luster is about grounding oneself and how we become products of our experiences. Did Luster lure me in? Or did I recognize something I needed in it?

By avoiding writing, a “neatly moral character” (Leilani’s words), Luster reminds me of Dionne Brandt’s Theory. You are then invited into a world where you not only read and see characters, but you’re also invited to be them.

Luster is about the relational understanding of one-self in the context of the world. By exploring Black womanhood, personhood, and the complexity of being a human being and societal established dynamics, Luster spoke to me. I couldn’t walk away, I needed to know what was next, I needed to be with Edie as she moved through life, searching for affirmation and validation.

Leilani wrote about a Black Woman who is questioning everything.

Edie’s astute worldview conflicts with her poor communication skills. The reader is then strapped in their seat, aware of the aside but unable to disclose what they know. Reading Luster is like driving by a car accident, with Edie at the wheel.

Meet A.J. and Ana!

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I grew up as a sports-loving tomboy in St. John’s, Newfoundland, and one of my earliest memories is of my toddler body being stuffed into a snowsuit and skates, and thrust onto the ice by my grandfather. I leaned my torso on the seat of a rickety wooden chair that scraped along in front of me as I learned to clop my way around a worn rink and lots of bumpy pond surfaces. When I got steady enough on my feet, being a girl, I was funnelled into figure skating classes, while my masculine peers were shuffled off to hockey. I did local competitions until I was 10, when a knee injury from horseback riding kept me on crutches for a year, and I was relegated to recreational skating for the rest of my days. Still, ice skating has been a huge source of joy in my life, and every winter I still haul my neon purple and pink skate bag, monogrammed with my dead name, out to the rinks in Toronto. I wear knee pads these days.

The cover of The Shiny Skates, by Elizabeth Koda-Callan.

When I first came across A.J. Sass’ book, ANA ON THE EDGE, the first thing that came to mind was one of my 1990s childhood favourites, a book called THE SHINY SKATES, by Elizabeth Koda-Callan. Truly a relic of the 90s (although it was reprinted in 2004 by Workman Publishing), this was part of the Magic Charm books – a series of chapter books that came with charm necklaces for the reader to wear along with their characters. I wore mine religiously.

Around the time that THE SHINY SKATES was released was also when American Olympic figure skater Tonya Harding’s career came to a close due to her possible involvement in a scandalous event in which her skating rival, Nancy Kerrigan, was assaulted and injured at the rink. Both skaters competed in the 1994 Olympics, where Kerrigan won a silver medal and Harding finished eighth. I still remember how public perception of Tonya Harding and her less feminine presentation on the ice coloured my entire experience of learning how to skate as a young, gender non-conforming athlete. (If you want to learn more about Harding and her story, journalist Sarah Marshall wrote a great piece about her, and later did a two-part podcast episode about her on You’re Wrong About.)

The cover of Ana on the Edge, by A.J. Sass

ANA ON THE EDGE is an #OwnVoices middle grade novel about a non-binary figure skater, written by a non-binary figure skater, and all I can think every time I think about this book is how the world has changed since I was a kid. I can’t even imagine how life-changing it would have been for me to have gotten my hands on this book back in the body-shaming mid-90’s, when I was mortified by how my muscular, chubby body looked in my skin-tight, sequinned figure skating dresses… if Tonya Harding couldn’t pull them off, how could I be expected to? The gentle exploration of gender, identity, and self-perception that is navigated with such charm in ANA ON THE EDGE could have been a balm to my soul back then, as it is now.

I am so honoured that author and figure skater A.J. Sass was so generous and receptive when I reached out to see if they would collaborate on a post for this site about ANA, and my interview with them is below. I would be remiss not to mention that not only is A.J. an autistic author with an interest in neurodivergence representation in fiction, they are a much more accomplished skater than I could ever dream to be! Aside from writing books, A.J. is a US Figure Skating double gold medalist in Moves in the Field and Free Skate, a silver medalist in Ice Dance, and a member of the 2018 national bronze medalist and 2019 national silver medalist Masters synchronized skating team, IceSymmetrics. (Insert my fan face here!) Now living in San Francisco, ANA is their debut novel, and it was released in October, and is available for purchase now!

Covers of King and the Dragonflies, Black Flamingo, and This is my America.

When I asked A.J. what books by Black authors they would recommend alongside ANA, they struggled to narrow it down to three choices… Kacen Callendar’s KING AND THE DRAGONFLIES (a fan favourite in these parts), THE BLACK FLAMINGO, by Dean Atta, and Kim Johnson’s THIS IS MY AMERICA.

Interview with A.J. Sass, author of ANA ON THE EDGE

A.J. Sass, author of ANA ON THE EDGE.

When I first encountered ANA ON THE EDGE, I was so thrilled for two reasons. One, there isn’t a lot of #OwnVoices non-binary representation for this age group yet, and two, I would have loved a book like this growing up. What do you think your young self would have thought of Ana and of this story?

I definitely didn’t know I was non-binary when I was Ana’s age. In fact, I’m not even sure if the term had been coined yet, officially! What I do know is that I would’ve gravitated toward a book like this on the shelves because I was an avid fan of skating as a kid. I started group class lessons all the way back when I was seven. And I think reading about Ana, a rising star in the sport of figure skating who realizes she* is uncomfortable with some of the gendered aspects within the sport, would have been revelatory for me as someone who always felt a little prickle of discomfort when I encountered similar binary components as a skater.

I can’t know for sure what I would have thought of Ana, or Hayden, her new friend who is a transgender boy, but I suspect that seeing a mirror of my own feelings reflected in someone else would have given me a solid starting point to exploring my identity much earlier in my life.

*Just as a heads up, I’m referring to Ana with female pronouns because Ana hasn’t chosen a new set by the end of the story. Non-binary people use a variety of pronouns, like gender neutral and even male and female pronouns in some instances (e.g., I use he/him and they/them pronouns interchangeably). In Ana’s case, she’s still exploring what feels best for her.

Photo by Kelli McClintock on Unsplash

You’ve competed in figure skating, ice dance, and synchronized team skating. How did your own experiences in this artistic sport factor into your work on ANA?

As I mentioned earlier, I started skating when I was a child and I remain active in the sport now. As a kid, my discomfort associated with wearing skating tights and dresses was more of a subconscious undercurrent rather than something I was actively aware of. I think kids today are often more aware that the LGBTQIA+ community exists, even if they don’t know precisely how they fit into it. So I made sure to reflect that in Ana’s narrative, even though it took me until adulthood myself to pinpoint why I was uncomfortable with skating’s gendered components.

One of my favorite memories in the sport is of the friendships I made, and the moments my training-mates and I would goof off in between lessons during practice. Because at its core, skating is a really fun activity, even for kids like Ana who are very serious about their training. An early scene where Ana’s best friend, Tamar, challenges her to perform a cartwheel on ice comes directly from my own experiences. Here’s some proof:

From A.J. Sass’s instagram.

Being a marginalized publishing professional can be super challenging. Your book is with a Big 5 publisher – one of the Hachette imprints – and that’s a really big deal! What has your experience been like working with an agent and an editorial team at a big publishing house on a story featuring a protagonist who is questioning their gender? What would you say the most fulfilling part of this process was, and what was the biggest challenge?

I feel like I’ve been supremely fortunate to work with my agent, Jordan Hamessley, and the entire team at New Leaf, as well as ANA’s publishing team at Little, Brown Books for Young Readers.

Working with Jordan has been wonderful and affirming. An example: When we were preparing to go on submission with ANA, Jordan made sure I was comfortable being out as a non-binary author before pitching me as such to editors. Now that ANA is published, I absolutely see where Jordan was coming from since the vast majority of author panels I’ve been on and interviews I’ve done have referenced my experience of being non-binary in some way. I’m proud to be out and open about who I am, but I definitely appreciate Jordan preparing me to think about how that choice would impact the way people approach questions about me and my book.

My editorial team at Little, Brown has also been fantastic. Even so, working on a story with a non-binary protagonist who hasn’t made a decision to change her pronouns yet by the end of the story presented a challenge for all of us.

Photo by Kelli McClintock on Unsplash

About a year ago, right around the time we were finalizing the book summary that would appear on ANA ON THE EDGE’s dust jacket, the use of female pronouns in reference to Ana started feeling off to me. I really couldn’t explain it at first. We’d used female pronouns for the Publishers Weekly announcement when ANA first sold and we used them on internal email communications as well. So why was it bothering me to see them on the inside flap of what would eventually become the book’s dust jacket?

Eventually, I realized my concern was that prospective readers would be unfamiliar with the nuances of Ana’s story and what it even means to be non-binary. I worried that cisgender readers would see those female pronouns and immediately make the assumption that Ana is a girl who decides to become non-binary, rather than a non-binary kid discovering that’s who they’ve always been.

Then I proceeded to worry that my publisher would be annoyed if I asked to change the wording after I’d already approved the final copy. But ultimately, this became one of the most fulfilling aspects of the publishing process for me because my editors were incredibly receptive to my feedback. They were happy to rework the copy so that pronouns aren’t referenced at all on the dust jacket, or marketing and other promotional materials. Now I feel like readers can enter Ana’s world without any misconceptions about gender identity and come to their own conclusions as they immerse themselves in the story.

Photo by Joseph Costa on Unsplash

In this story, you decided to include not only Ana, a non-binary protagonist, but you also introduced readers to Hayden, a transgender boy. Was it important to you to include more than one trans character in this book, or did that just happen organically as you were writing? In addition, how did you make sure that you were doing both of these identities justice in your representation of them in this book?

It was an intentional choice to include two trans characters because I wanted to highlight how no two trans experiences are the same. Hayden’s known who he is for a while by the time he and Ana meet, whereas Ana is just starting to explore the layers of her identity. As I touched on in an earlier answer, I think it can sometimes be a revelation to see an aspect of yourself reflected in someone else. That’s what happens when Ana meets Hayden: Hayden’s identity doesn’t match Ana’s precisely, but she recognizes a shared commonality, one that spurs her to dig deeper and learn more about herself.

In terms of representation, I’ve identified as a transgender man and non-binary at various points in my life. There are parts of my experience with those two identities in the representation of both Hayden and Ana. Since trans experiences can vary greatly from person to person, I also had authenticity readers provide further feedback.

Photo by LOGAN WEAVER on Unsplash

What is one thing that you would want your readers to know about ANA ON THE EDGE? Similarly, what do you wish you could tell adults who are going to choose this book to put in a young reader’s hands?

My answer here applies to both kids and adults: It’s okay not to have everything figured out about yourself all at once. It’s fine if you do, of course, but I think something I struggled with when I was younger was a concern that I might change my mind later or realize I was wrong about my identity after I’d already come out to my friends and family. I worried about burdening others if I had to come out again and ask them to use a name and set of pronouns that fit me better.

People aren’t static. We are constantly changing and evolving. The same can be true about identity, and there is no shame in coming to a better understanding of yourself, no matter what age you are. I hope Ana’s story helps readers embrace uncertainty and consider it an opportunity to get to know themselves even better.

PS, if you enjoyed this post, please consider leaving me a tip! It only takes a minute, and it allows me to keep creating content just like this, buying food for my pets, and pursuing my career as a literary agent!