I like reading other people’s year-end wrap up posts more than I like writing them. That’s not to say that there’s nothing worth mentioning about 2025. After all, I did finish that third and final Angel Dare book.

I also got to be a part of this amazing anthology and spend more quality IRL time with my Queer Crime Writers siblings.

But there’s one thing that happened in 2025 that overshadowed everything else. And when I say “happened” I guess I mean something more like “fully externalized” or “went public.” I X-ed, out loud.

When I was a little kid, my word-nerd grandfather gave me the nickname Xa. You know, like Xmas. Atheist AND non-binary in one tiny package. That’s me!

I loved Xing a Paragrab by Edgar Allan Poe back then and it still makes me giggle to this day. “Dxes yxur mxther knxw yxu’re xut?” I also wrote a book about a professional wrestler named X and worked in the x-rated video industry. X is a fun letter. It’s sexy, brainy and mysterious and, despite Elxn’s best efforts, still free for anyone who wants it.

All my life, I’ve felt different. Not a round hole or a square peg, but something more fluid and complex, like a sea urchin made of mercury. An X.

I didn’t want to play sports, but I didn’t want to play house either. I just wanted to read, and eventually to write. Because living vicariously through stories allowed me to be any and everybody I wanted, any time I wanted.

I was also attracted to monsters from a very young age. Creatures that existed outside the boundaries of what should be, what was allowed to be. These creatures were unknown, unknowable even, and that was what made them powerful.

You see, scary stories never really scared me, they evoked a much more intense and complicated kind of feeling. Something proto-sexual and full of strange longing. I felt like a monster on the inside and wanted desperately to be with other monsters, just like Boone in Clive Barker’s Cabal.

I found my fellow monsters when I got involved with the queer BDSM scene in NYC in the early 90s. I loved playing with gender and drag, putting on masks and costumes, and toying with role-playing and erotic storytelling. But I never let any one costume define me and that kind of dress-up was never more than skin deep.

I’ve always been out as queer and kinky but I don’t think most readers ever really grasped what that actually meant. I’m sure they never grasped the idea that the busty person in the vintage seamed stocking and stiletto heels might not be a woman. Not exactly, anyway.

As I mentioned in my recent post about my boobs, I’m currently feeling comfortable with she/they pronouns but increasingly uncomfortable being labled with an F or perceived as a woman. I clearly picked the worst possible time to identify as anything other than cisgendered but what can I say? I am what I am.

So that leaves me with two choices. I could go back to lurking under high-femme drag and continue to let the way other people perceive me define me. Or I can lace up my favorite Docs and stomp on in to 2026 with my X flag flying and absolutely nothing to hide.

Of course, you already know which choice I made.

I’ve been researching non-binary top surgery options and if all goes according to plan, 2026 will be the year I officially Yeet the Teats. These boobs have served me well over the decades, and I plan to thank them Marie-Kondo-style before sending them off to live on a farm upstate with all the other boobs that no longer spark joy.

I also plan to host a rockin’ Gender Repeal party where I can burn all my huge bras and have a hot non-binary stripper pop out of a big purple cake that says “It’s a Person!”

But until then, I’m just going to keep on trying to adjust to a slower, greener life in the Pacific Northwest, to navigate through the Not-So-Fun House of menopause and take care of my special needs dog and my aging mom. I have a sexy new topic crush and am working on an extremely weird little project that I love. Given the current state of publishing, the oncoming AI apocalypse and (waves hands around at every fucking thing) it feels like the only sane response is to just do the weird shit. The quirky, unmarketable, deeply personal, uniquely human shit. Because fuck chasing after what sells.

I guess that’s my end-of-the-year message, to myself and everybody else. Write what you need to write. Be who you need to be. In a world of soulless AI slop and algorithmically-bonsaied, internet-optimized content, be wild and defiantly unclassifiable. Be human.

See you next year, beautiful humans!