Category: queer

art

For Pride, I will be bringing the Water Dragon Publishing table to the Mill District Queer Artisan Market on June 23, 2024. [Update: I’ve been declined a space at the market. I’m so disappointed.] I plan to bring a rich selection of the LGBTQIA+ offerings that Water Dragon offers — featuring my own works, of course. But Water Dragon has a lot of works both about queer protagonists and by queer authors. And so many of them, I now know personally: J. Scott Coatsworth, Daniel Fliederbaum, Jay Hartlove, LA Jacob, Vanessa MacLaren-Wray, Andrea Monticue, and Ryan Southwick. Dear friends all.

I think the very time I ever sold books was at the first Queer Pop-up Market in 2022. I didn’t yet have a real table or a canopy or signage or anything. But when I look at how far I’ve come with doing the work, it’s nostalgic to look back and remember how new and exciting it all was. I did pretty well in terms of sales too: I sold perhaps a dozen copies — not bad at all for a new author with only the first two books of a series. It was my first taste of meeting readers and signing copies of my books.

A lot didn’t go perfectly well either. I didn’t have weights for the borrowed canopy, which nearly blew away. I also hadn’t learned to put velcro on the back of my book covers on my easels and they kept blowing off too. We didn’t yet have a Square chip reader, so I was trying to use the magnetic strip reader, which was fiddly and just didn’t work very well. But overall it was a gentle way to have a great learning experience.

At the time, I only had the first two novelettes of Revin’s Heart out, The Third Time’s the Charm and For the Favor of a Lady. Storm Clouds Gather was about to be released. I printed out business cards to hand out with the QR code for the landing page on the back.

It’s possible that some people who bought the first two, all that time ago, will remember and pick up the rest of the series. There were a fair number of people who did that at both Arisia and Boskone this year. One person said, “Oh, thank GOD you’re here!” which totally made my day. There’s almost nothing better than having people come specifically to look for you in the bookstore.

The Queer Pop-up Market was canceled in 2023, so I didn’t get to do it last year. But I’m glad they’re doing it again this year. I had a great time doing it the first time and I’m really looking forward to being back at the Mill District again.

After that, the next event I’m scheduled to do is Readercon July 11-14, 2024. Although they rejected me as a participant, I’m still going to attend to staff tables for Water Dragon Publishing and Small Publishing in a Big Universe Marketplace. I’ve heard that this is a particularly good event for selling books, so I’m hopeful we’ll do well there.

It’s Complicated (aka The Mary Stories) is a serialized rural fantasy available through Kindle Vella about an older man who moves back to his childhood home and meets the “imaginary friend” he had as a child who, it turns out, is not so imaginary. And he discovers that there’s something special about his land and that someone — or something — is willing to kill for it.

She was dressed the same as the night before, with an old-fashioned ruffled blouse & skirt, a red cape, white stockings, & patent-leather shoes with gold buckles. Her hood was up today, wet with rain, covering her pretty curls. “He said he had fun with Mary. Are you Mary?” I asked. She cocked her head over on one side, then smiled. “You not ‘member. You call me Mary.” “W-What are you?” I asked. She raised her hands up next to her face & spread out her fingers. “I scary monster,” she said.

From To What Do I Owe, Episode One of It’s Complicated

It’s Complicated begins April 7 via Kindle Vella with weekly episodes through June 10. It’s first story presented via Vella. If it attracts a following, I could potentially write more episodes during the summer: there’s a lot more story to tell.

I plan to read two passages at Flights of Foundry (at 7pm EDT on April 14). And, of course, I’ll be reading a lot of other stuff as well. Come join the fun!

When I drew up plans to attend Chicon8 the 80th World Science Fiction Convention, my editor/publisher Steven Radecki, suggested that I might want to get some badge ribbons to promote Revin’s Heart (my steampunky fantasy adventure story with a trans protagonist that’s been serialized by Water Dragon Publishing). They had done a number of ribbons previously and he sent me a link to a site that would let you submit a design to have them manufactured. He even had a great idea for a ribbon: Airship Pirate.

I’m by no means a professional graphic designer, but I’ve done a fair amount work in this area (for example, self-publishing four books of haiku with artwork, covers, etc). And I teach students to make scientific figures and posters, which is functionally the same. But I was excited to fire up Inkscape and see what I could put together.

My first decision was that I wanted to see if I could use the trans-flag as a background. The site that Water Dragon had used previously couldn’t do that, but I had found a gay gaming company that had figured out how to do it. I asked them and they pointed me to PCNametag. We went back and forth a few times to sort out possibilities (e.g. full color yes, gold foil no.)

I ran a dozen different possible arrangements by Steve : just the words looked stark and not very interesting, so I added a dirigible, but then what should go in the dirigible? We went back and forth trying to come up with an idea. He suggested a rainbow, then I hit on the idea of using the new pride flag. We were getting close.

It was a delight to get the proof back and see that it looked like it was going to be perfect. And then to order them and receive them and they did look wonderful. But then the waiting began, because I didn’t want to reveal them until we were actually here on the ground. It was hard.

When I registered and got my badge, the first thing, I did was to put on my airship pirate ribbon as my very first. After we had successfully registered, Phil and I stopped at the bar and had a beer. While we were there, a drunk guy at the bar introduced himself saying he had a private pilot license, but had never flown in an airship and was curious about how to pilot one.

“It says, ‘airship PIRATE,'” I said. He was bemused to discover I was a writer, not an airship pilot.

When I headed to the Dealer Room, I got Dealer and Program Participant ribbons. And a Cometary Life Form ribbon.

I put a stack of the ribbons near my books and, when people approached the table, I used the ribbon as an essential part of my patter: “Would you like to be an Airship Pirate?” It frequently allowed me to initiate a conversation about my books.

The ribbons were insanely popular. Some people just collect as many ribbons as they can. (Some people end up with ribbons that reach the ground and then come all the way back up. One woman was making a skirt of ribbons.) But a lot of people were just tickled to become an airship pirate. And I think some people recognized the trans flag background and were glad for a visible symbol of their allyship.

Not everyone wants to be an airship pirate, however. Some people just said, “No!” Some quite abruptly. One woman seemed incensed and said, angrily, “I’m in too many groups already!” And she tore off some other ribbon she already had on her badge. It made me want to ask, “Who hurt you?”

But, frequently, it let me break the ice, describe my books, and make a sale. The ribbons were insanely successful from that perspective.

Beyond that, however, there was one thing I had not considered. As I walked around Worldcon, I would see people, here, there, and everywhere, wearing my ribbon. The ribbon that I had designed, gotten printed, and handed out from our dealer table. It was just unbelievably satisfying.

I’ve already gone through almost my entire stock of 100. Now, I’ll need to order 500 for Rhode Island Comic Con, Arisia, and Boskone coming up.

I attended Queer Publishing 101, part of OutWrite 2022 by the DC LGBTQ Literary Festival, a discussion with an interesting and diverse panel of queer editors and authors. The event was a preview of the weekend-long festival coming up August 5-7. It provided a variety of complementary perspectives driven primarily by audience questions. I asked two questions:

I’m interested to hear about the crossover between queer publishing & publishing generally: I’ve seen perceptions that they’re extremely balkanized: how separate are they from your perspective(s)?

This is similar to a question I asked at Lambda Literary and the answer, which surprised me, is that people in queer publishing see it as fundamentally disjunct from traditional publishing. “There is a lot of work to be done in terms of that representation.” And “There is not a lot of crossover.”

The role of small press and indy publishing was highlighted: “We have very few doors opened to us. Go where you are loved.” and “Indy is where the radical queer work is happening. Books pushing into mainstream can get sanitized.”

My own naive experience was that I wrote a steampunky fantasy novelette, The Third Time’s the Charm, with a trans protagonist and prominent gay supporting characters. And a small press, Water Dragon Publishing, picked it up and then doubled down by serializing Revin’s Heart — another 6 stories about the characters. (Part Three, Storm Clouds Gather, just came out!) They’re not an outlet that specializes in queer publishing, by any means. (Although I would remiss if I didn’t mention that they also publish the Grimaulkin series which also has queer characters).

What are the best ways for an indy press author (like me) to promote their queer books?

There were a lot of good answers here — these are the notes I took.

  • Be really creative
  • Traditional press may have more resources
  • Publisher may provide marketing to help
  • Work with publisher to determine how they can support you during the first 12 months
  • Help with book tour? Find conferences to attend? Make you a vendor?
  • You’re in charge of a lot of your promotion
  • It can be lonely
  • Network: find people excited to help you
  • Partner at readings
  • Doing it with your friends will make it better
  • Community is the most helpful thing
  • Bookstores and more
  • Tap into the world you know
  • Its a lot work
  • You’ll never think you’re doing enough
  • Identify five things you’d like to accomplish
  • Be realistic
  • Social media is important (twitter, booktok, bookstagram, etc)
  • Don’t pressure yourself to do it all
  • Choose one to two that you can do sustainably
  • You need a website
  • Gather emails
  • Put an email or contact form so people can reach you

A constant refrain was to cultivate patience. You’re playing a long game. Don’t try to rush things: Don’t query until you’re ready. Don’t be so eager that you accept a bad deal or compromise on your principles. Know what you want for your work and from your publisher. Sometimes “no” is the right answer.

I was glad I attended. Many thanks to Emily Holland, Chris Gonzalez, Lauren Cherelle, Saint Gibson, and Shelly Romero for their time and insight!