2024 - a qualified year
A Qualified Year
Several years ago I got into quantifying my life. Number of books read. Number of miles run. Number of hours cycled. Number of active days.
I don’t do this anymore. Not because I think it is necessarily bad, but because it wasn’t inspiring or motivating. I think for some people, they can look at a calculation that says they ran an average of 3 miles per day the past year and that will motivate them to run 3.5 miles per day the next year. Not me.
At least, not anymore. Maybe it used to. Or at least, I believed it did. Now such a number feels overwhelming and dismissive of the experience of sucking in cold air as my feet pound the pavement and a foot lands in tempo with a cardinal’s call and the pained smile of the stranger jogging towards me with the cute ponytail. How does she get it so smooth? Reducing all that to a number erases the embodied experience of the activity and ends up discouraging me.
I didn’t always realize this. For many years I thought of myself as a strictly quantitative person. Over-training was diagnosed and monitored by keeping track of miles accumulated over time. I studied statistics in school. I went to state science fair.
When I transitioned I realized I had been dissociating. My ability to see the world purely as numbers was forever lost. I could no longer keep the separation. Numbers were inadequate to capture my life, now dripping in emotion. Writing helps me make sense of a life I can no longer make sense of through quantitative means.
I have mixed feelings about end of year round ups that reduce a life to numbers, and I will attempt to avoid that as much as I’m able.
2024 in Writing
Recollections of the Abyssopelagic Dredge
I started the year with my first fiction publication titled Recollections of the Abyssopelagic Dredge for Inner Worlds, which was later nominated for the Pushcart Prize. This strange story about an all consuming muck told by an unreliable narrator resulted from a conversation with Talia, a PhD researcher who actually goes out on ships like the one in the story and collects samples from the bottom of the sea and is reliable and very kind. I took a few creative liberties from what she told me about her work, but she, along with the way I observe transphobia twist people into hateful caricatures of evil slime, were the spark for that story, and I’m grateful she took the time to humor my questions while I played tour guide.
TRANSplants Zine
After a month or two of other stories being rejected, I found a passion project in TRANSplants Zine Issue 1, which arose from the (ideally, but not always) weekly art night I do with a few friends. I wanted a way to showcase their talents, and love a project, so I learned Affinity Publisher, figured out how to professionally print something, set up some websites, and put it out into the world. To my pleasant surprise, the first issue sold out. This motivated me to undertake TRANSplants Issue 2 with all new writers and artists with a larger print run, as well as print a second edition of Issue 1.
I’m forever grateful to the artists and writers who trusted me with their work: Ari Drennen, Maxine West, Victoria Scott, Madi Gali, Camille Beasley, Lorrin B., Alex Skladanek, Nora Novemilla, Harper O'Niell, Alexandra Rose, hannaH Jacques, Alana Storm, Alana Brase, and Mare Hirsch.
Next year I plan to release two more issues, each with all new trans artists and writers. I plan to get the zine into more brick and mortar stores (I think we’re at six so far) and also will hawk it at a few zine festivals.
You can submit your work here.
Additionally, if you pre-order TRANSplants Issue 3, it will help me guarantee a larger up front compensation to contributors. My goal for next year is to pay at least $50 per person upon acceptance.
Performance Review
One of my stories that faced a lot of rejection was Performance Review. What started as a short story for an anthology more than tripled in length to become a novella, which, it turns out, is pretty hard to sell to magazines and publishers. After letting it languish for most of 2024, I decided, rather impulsively, to self publish it.
This story is heavily inspired by the politics and isolation of my old home state of Florida, but unfortunately is likely to become even more relevant as the anti trans eliminationist project continues to gain power and influence.
I did not do a good job promoting or marketing, and as a result, it did not perform well (irony enjoyers rejoice). I’d considered the self pub experiment a failure and concluded I should stick to the publication grind, that it had been rejected from publishers because it actually wasn’t ready for the public despite what I thought.
But, at the very end of the year, only a few days ago, Bethany of The Transfeminine Review posted about it on Bluesky, which led to a few other nice reviews(one, two) and an uptick in downloads and sales. Someone even put it on GoodReads and rated it 5 stars. So thanks to Bethany for that! Next time I’ll be better about sending out ARCs and securing reviews and doing that whole song and dance correctly.
If I do self publish again, I have another novella length draft that’s set in the same world as Performance Review that I would like to revise for 2025. It is a much different vibe than Performance Review, less experimental, but, importantly, a lot of fun. It follows a stealth trans woman who travels from city state to city state selling drugs and other illicit treatments who ends up stuck in a small backwater and becomes involved in something bigger than her own survival. I’ve tentatively titled it Neon Panopticon.
SubGrid
I took part in an art show, much to my surprise. This show featured queer and trans artists from the PNW and was held in the Kittredge Gallery at the University of Puget Sound in Tacoma.
I designed art to go along with a story that explored the limitations of understanding and how breakdown and harm can occur through both accidental and willful ignorance of the other.
Hey Alma
Coming in right under the wire, I dusted off my essay gloves and wrote about the creation of traditions and my quest to find Hanukkah candles for Hey Alma. I had a lot of fun with this personal essay, and enjoyed being both silly and serious. I think I will not avoid essays in 2025 like I had been doing after my intimate 2023 Autostraddle piece.
Upcoming for 2025
I have tendencies of obsessive planning. When I was young I would make 5 year master plans for my life. I must have started doing that after reading about the USSR in school. A centrally planned economy? How about a centrally planned life. This, it turns out, was a bad idea, and something I’ve left behind with age and with the whole sex switcheroo. But, there are a few things I have planned for 2025.
please (t)read with me
Next year I am organizing a trans focused open night and guest reading series on the first Saturday of each month at Charlie’s Queer Books in Fremont. My goal with this is to bring together disparate trans (especially other trans women) writers and artists in Seattle. In essence, to create a “trans writing/art scene”, for lack of a better term. My hope is that this outgrows me, and that together we are able to correct the perception of Seattle as not a hub for trans culture, which I believe it is.
If you are in the Seattle area, I would love to see you there. You can keep up to date on featured guests and upcoming events via Instagram.
Lilac Peril Anthology
I’m finishing edits for a short fiction piece that will be in Issue 01: TABOO from Lilac Peril. It’s about a man who makes porn compilation videos and about gender. I love what Luke and Andrea are doing, and am so happy I get to be a small part of it. The book will be releasing in winter of 2025, and Issue 00 sold out, so jump on it.
Novel
I’m hoping to finish the draft of my novel, Deep Stealth, and start revising it in 2025. I’m being hush hush about it for now other than whatever I share at the occasional open mic.
Short stories
I’d like to publish one or two short stories in 2025. This will mean swallowing my ego and experiencing submission rejection death. That’s okay.
Etc.
I have a lot going on other than writing, which is something I remind myself of whenever I feel down for not accomplishing as much as I would like for the writer me. I want to keep the work life balance I’ve established going, devote time to my friends, partners, and family, as well as to stay active and avoid injury and sickness. I was mostly successful with this in 2024, though I had to stop running due to persistent knee and back pain. I’m aiming for a few back packing trips, one or two vacations, hiking new trails throughout the PNW, learning how to cross country skate ski, getting back into cycling, continuing Pilates for an unbreakable core, and getting closer to doing the splits.
I hope you have a nice New Years Eve, and I hope that we both, despite all odds, have excellent 2025s.
Thanks for reading.