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This is number sixty-eight in the blog series, “My Life in Erotica.” I encourage you to join my Patreon community to support my writing.
I DESIGNED A BOOK for a client and got it online for him. Without going into detail, it was a long and painful process that he will never pay me for—regardless of his good intentions.
Three months later, he received his first royalty statement and contacted me immediately to cry about having made only $17 in the first month his book was on sale. Everyone wanted his book, but no one was buying it!
I looked at my own royalty statement from the same vendor for that month and shared in his disappointment as I had sixty titles offered and only made $60 more than he did!
There are lots of factors that go into book sales. One, which I have taught to my clients for years, is that once the author stops selling the book (like to write another) the book will stop selling. I’ve found this true even of some top-selling authors. They sell books at conferences and shows they attend and speak at. They sell books through social media. They sell books in every format and every outlet they can track down. They hold autographing events to sell books. And when they stop to go on a month’s vacation to finally get started on that sequel, they return to find their sales have dropped dramatically.
The problem is most authors (including me) are poor salespeople. They are not happy selling their books. It feels egotistical and uncomfortable. And it takes time away from the actual business of writing the next book. (As does editing, rewriting, and polishing.) We humbly list our books on sales sites and go hide in the basement writing the next blockbuster while people decided if our latest offering is good enough to invest $2.99, $4.99, $7.89 in acquiring for their personal library.
In 2007, two other authors and tech geeks got together with me to create a new publishing company called LongTale Press. It had a unique mode of operating that invited people to submit a portion of the book and then have readers vote for or against it. If it got enough votes, we would enter a publishing agreement.
In order to get things started and show that we were capable of editing and publishing books, we each agreed to launch a book on the platform, publish it, and put it up for sale. The book I put up was For Blood or Money—the first of my novels to be published in eBook and paperback.
An agent friend of mine pulled me aside at a writer event soon after we started the business and warned me that “You can be an author or a publisher. It’s almost impossible to be both.” I soon found out how true that was.
We did accept a book for publication and it had a modest success. But we each had other projects we were working on. I had a new book I was writing. One of my partners got a new job and a new relationship. The other was pressed with a tight release schedule at work. And I was laid off, struggling to find work for a 60-year-old.
We were all writing our next novels. We weren’t selling books. And the books didn’t sell.
In 2009, I acquired the assets of LongTale Press and started publishing books on a shared cost/shared revenue basis. Once again, I had modest success, but continued to maintain my principal ‘job’ of writing new books. In 2015, I closed the press for new clients and returned authors’ works to them to distribute elsewhere. Now I only edit and design books for hire.
And publish my own. After all, I had all the mechanisms in place to publish. Why not start releasing my own books on a regular basis?
Nathan Everett’s For Blood or Money, the first of my books to be published, is available in eBook from Bookapy, and in paperback from most vendors.
Ah yes, the glamorous life of an author.
I like to eat and am fortunate to have Social Security and a modest IRA from my days in the high tech industry. I live in a travel trailer with a total area of 225 sf. Alone. I eat a lot of packaged meals. And I sometimes pull the trailer from place to place to see interesting things.
I spend six to ten hours a day in front of the computer, writing, editing, and publishing my books. And mostly, I’m pretty happy. I’ve had some scary health issues, but they turned out okay. I have a dent in the back bumper of my truck, but it doesn’t affect the way it runs. And my books, still sell.
I started this blog a year and a half ago with the explicit intention of promoting one of my backlist books each week. I’m not much of a salesman, but half the battle is simply keeping books in the awareness of the readership.
The life of an author is not filled with glamour. Artist David Kramer recently shared this about art, and it is as true about writing.
“Artists are not like athletes. We cannot win Gold. We cannot ‘beat’ other creatives. We cannot come first. Sport is objective. Our craft is subjective. Creating to ‘be the best’ is a waste of energy. Instead, create to connect to the people who need you. Because they’re out there. Create in your way, because there is no right way. Take the pressure off, and focus on your unique brand of magic.”
So, why do authors write?
There is no universal answer for this. For most, it isn’t the money. In 2022, a full-time author had a median income of $10,000 per year from books in the US. Not quite enough to live on in most places. Considerably below Federal minimum wage. If coupled with non-book (editing, designing, patronage, articles, blogs) income, that number doubles, but is still not a living wage. And that is for full-time authors. The vast majority of authors of the 2,000,000 books a year published in the US are part-time authors with other employment.
There isn’t a lot of praise that comes from being an author. I have books that have sold nearly a thousand copies and have fewer than twenty reviews. I believe readers simply do not comprehend how valuable their reviews can be.
An author’s work is not respected, and is often considered “not real work.” It is half a step above (or sometimes below) “Would you like fries with that?”
I gave a copy of For Blood or Money to a friend when it first came out in 2007. It wasn’t selling and I had a bunch of them in my office. He read it and the next time we met he exclaimed, “It was just like reading a real book!”
WTF!?? He still didn’t offer to pay for it.
Oh, boohoo. So, if it is such a miserable life, why do it? God loves you and you can sit on your hands.
Many authors will say they do it for themselves and don’t care what other people say or think. It’s an entertaining hobby for them and, like a butterfly collection, some other people will be interested in looking at the specimens. I think the percentage of such authors is fairly low. Lower than their comments would indicate.
There is, however, something in the creative mind that demands release. We’d like AI to do our dishes and laundry so we can focus on writing, rather than doing our writing so we can focus on dishes and laundry. The story doesn’t require AI to be realized. It is inside the author demanding to be told.
I’ve often used the phrase, “I don’t write for a living. I write to live.” And I also strive to make my stories available for people who read to live. That is why all my books are available for free online reading, either at SOL or on my website. Nearly all my book sales are to people who have already read or are in the process of reading the online version for free!
And I want to tell you, whether you buy a book, leave a comment, review the book, pass the book on to someone else, send me an email message, or simply enjoy reading it in your own private silence, thank you.
It is nice to have made the connection.
Wow! We are ready to start the second half of the year. Who knows what strangeness might enter my mind for the next blog post?
This is number sixty-seven in the blog series, “My Life in Erotica.” I encourage you to join my Patreon community to support my writing.
MY EDITORS LAUGH when I tell them a book is nearly finished.
“One more chapter. Two at the most,” I say.
“Right,” they laugh.
Seven chapters later, I send them the final draft. It is just so hard to get to the end! For lots of reasons:
1) Too many unanswered questions.
2) Too rushed or abrupt to end.
3) Too many people asking, “But what about…?”
4) Too many things I intended to say earlier.
5) Too long a timeframe from the climax to “Happily
ever after” to skip everything between.
6) I don’t want to rush the characters’ relationship. They should have a chance to enjoy this.
That last one is more often the case than not. My characters are real to me and I don’t want to cut down on their enjoyment in order to move the story forward. This care for my characters manifests itself at times when I’m writing the all-important first love scene between the two. I’ll get halfway into it, then just before consummation, I’ll take a break for a day or two so the characters have a chance to enjoy what’s about to happen.
And still, I get comments from readers at the end of every story, no matter how hard I’ve tried to end it satisfactorily.
“That’s all?”
“What about the abuses you alluded to in college?”
“That was abrupt.”
“Finish it already.”
“Can’t wait to hear what happens next.”
I’ve commented about listening to reader feedback in previous blog posts, so I won’t go into that again.
So, when we’ve told the story we want to tell, how do we get to Happily Ever After—or in some cases, Happily For Now. That’s the ultimate goal of erotica, or at least of romantic erotica. The reader paid their money and it's time to feel good.
While the dramatic death of one partner might be a logical conclusion to a story, it is seldom if ever an HEA conclusion. To get to that conclusion, we have more story to tell. It can’t fairly be told in a paragraph.
I make an event log titled GETTING TO HEA. It could be expressed as a PERT chart (Program Evaluation Review Technique, developed by USN in the 1950s.) if one wanted to go deep into the analysis. In my instance, it is simply a list of things that have to happen in the story (including conversations, actions, world situation, etc.) in order to get to my happy ending.
For example: I’m currently writing a new story about an Olympic gymnast. I know the story has to end sometime after the 2032 Summer Olympics. In order to get there from the current point in 2028,
1. Three years have to pass as he travels the world seeking training from great gymnastic coaches.
2. He has to fail to make the team without actually failing as a gymnast.
3. He has to resign his life to the daily tedium of his work as a trainer and massage therapist.
4. He has to run into his old friend. (Sidenote: she has to be the only one left of her acrobatic team, one having left and one retiring.)
5. He has to realize that he’d be a lot happier helping his acrobatic friend than competing as a gymnast in the Olympics.
6. They have to audition for shows with a new act.
7. The director of the new show has to be his former lover.
8. He has to reunite with his former lover and find fulfillment in a favorable opening of his new act with his new partner.
9. HEA.
You would think with this chart of activities that are known, I should be able to sit and write it in an afternoon. In fact, I think 2-9 could be covered without rushing in two or three chapters. The problem is point number one. How do I deal with three more years of his life before he gets to the things he needs?
Fortunately, I’m not writing in a diary style. I don’t have to account for every day. That is a trap of that style of book. You can’t just skip three years and have him resume as if he hadn’t left off. Even in the plotted story, a blank period always leaves the reader wondering what went on during that time. Just starting a paragraph that says:
I decided to go to Japan first. Three years later, I couldn’t believe how time had flown.
How many of you would put down the book at that point? Raise your hand.
No. Without creating a detailed diary, I need to focus on two or three things that were significant in that time and tell their story, perhaps looking back from the point I was trying to get to all along.
The point is the author has to figure out how they are getting to HEA and then plot a strategy for getting there. In writing this blog post, I may have stumbled upon my strategy for resolving my current dilemma. One thing I know, though, I won’t just skip it. I won’t condense the timing and make it three months instead of three years. I won’t simply abruptly say, “They lived Happily Ever After, for now.”
What I will do?
I will spend some time working on the story instead of blog posts!
Ah the trials and tribulations of being an author. Sigh! If I didn’t love what I’m doing, I would no longer do it. And I will continue the blog, even though I’ll be traveling for the rest of the summer. Next week, “About Being an Author.”
This is number sixty-six in the blog series, “My Life in Erotica.” I encourage you to join my Patreon community to support my writing.
I SPEND WAY TOO MUCH TIME working sudoku puzzles. It’s a filler when I’m eating a meal (or waiting for one) in a restaurant. When I need to take a break from writing, I work sudoku puzzles. Most importantly, when I go to bed, I turn off all my devices and work a sudoku puzzle. I have learned important life lessons from sudoku.
I mean really! And they affect my erotica.
Let me see if I can pull those two threads together for you.
I have worked my way through the Mensa book of sudoku, Level 2 of Truly Nasty Sudoku, and Brown Belt Sudoku, second degree. I know what a Gordonian Rectangle, an X-wing, and a swordfish are. They are solution techniques for sudoku puzzles. And the puzzles are getting harder as I progress. They require more logic maps to solve them.
As a brief side-track (as if this whole section isn’t a side-track), I have a friend who is a brilliant mind. He is an electrical engineer and if I named some of the systems he invented while working for two of the largest tech giants in the world, you would just say, “Wow!” He also works sudoku puzzles. But his approach is very different than mine. He thinks sudoku is a game! He works the puzzles in ink. His daughter once asked, “What if you make a mistake?” His answer was, “Then I lose the game.”
NO! Please. To me, sudoku is not a game. It is a puzzle to be solved. If I make a mistake and ‘lose a game’—often the case when I’m working a puzzle late at night and falling asleep in the process—I erase the puzzle and start over!
Yes, erase. I work sudoku on paper with a pencil. I make marks, small numbers, and erasures.
But success often depends on what order I solve the steps. I can’t approach sudoku randomly. There are methods of identifying the ‘only one choice’ answers. There are methods of examining rows, columns, and boxes, of looking at the possibilities for individual numbers, and ways to separate triples from doubles.
Choosing the right place to start, however, often determines whether I succeed in solving the problem.
That’s just like writing!
Before I started writing Nathan Everett’s The Gutenberg Rubric in January 2008, I had compiled several hundred pages of esoteric research over a period of thirty years. I knew everything that went into the story. Most impressive amongst the collection was every scrap of information I could dig up on the Library of Alexandria and its destruction or disappearance.
I was excited about that research and started my book with Ptolemy the First making the City of Alexandria the capital of Egypt after Alexander the Great’s death and division of his empire.
You know: Start a story at the beginning. Of the first 40,000 words I wrote, 25,000 were descriptions of how the Library of Alexandria was founded, flourished, spread, was destroyed, was moved in secret to Carthage, then Rome, then Constantinople, and finally to Nemrud Dagi in Anatole.
They were the first words I cut when I began rewriting in November of 2008. The manufactured history of the Library of Alexandria was not the thriller of racing time, biblioterrorists, and homeland security across two continents in an effort to find and preserve a second book supposedly printed by Johannes von Gutenberg.
Instead, I started the book with the first act of biblioterrorism that caught Keith Drucker in the rain of shattered glass from the atrium of the library where he’d been evaluating old manuscripts. It was a much better starting point. The book flowed well from that point on. The history of the Library—as well as the history of ink, the legends surrounding Gutenberg’s legal and business dealings, the exact proportions of lead, tin, and antimony needed to create a dimensionally stable alloy for printer’s type—was revealed in dribbles as Keith and his girlfriend Maddie go from library to library, just one step ahead of the terrorists.
I found the right starting point.
The Gutenberg Rubric eBook is available from Bookapy. The trade paperback is available from other vendors.
Starting at the beginning is a logical step in writing. But when I wrote Devon Layne’s Living Next Door to Heaven series, I had to restrain myself from writing any sexual material involving any of the major characters until the second book because they were all under fourteen. After having the first chapter rejected four times, even after I scrubbed it, SOL’s webmaster approved it for release and explained the automated system had rejected it based on the description, which talked about kids.
I felt the entire story would be lacking if I didn’t start with the kids, though. Still, it didn’t start with birth. I chose a significant moment that would establish Brian’s relationship with Heaven immediately, even though it was not sexual or romantic.
I saw a cartoon recently from Grant Snider that described what he called “The Story Coaster.”
Like much erotica, the illustration shows way too much deep backstory, lengthy prologue, and exposition before finally getting to the climax at only about a quarter of the way through the ride. From there on, the author is trying to figure out a) how to make it longer, or b) how to end it all gracefully.
I have been told—frequently—that I need to get some action right up front while not giving away the whole storyline. I fail at it as often as I succeed. But usually, I manage to find the beginning of the story I want to tell instead of reciting tons of backstory that I need to know in order to write the story, but the reader doesn’t need to be told in order to enjoy the story.
Of course, there is a plethora of authors who take the action-first advice and open with a sex scene. I find it is better in my books to build a lot of sexual tension between the characters, but to make them wait to get to the main event. Typically, my readers have to get through half the book before they are rewarded with sex. Once again, it’s something I strive for but am not always successful at achieving.
If I fail at solving a sudoku puzzle, I erase it and start over, choosing a different starting point based on what I learned the first time. The same is true of my erotica. All of my stories get rewritten, but the second draft is all about finding the right starting point for the story. Based on what I learned in writing the whole book, is the first sentence that I loved so much really the right first sentence to start the book?
Much of the craft of writing erotica is just general writing craft. Next week I’m going to deal with another important aspect: Getting to “The End.”
This is number sixty-five in the blog series, “My Life in Erotica.” I encourage you to join my Patreon community to support my writing.
I’M NOT BEING POLITICAL. Honestly. Of course, I can’t say I’m not interested in politics because if you don’t take an interest, you are basically saying “Whatever everybody else wants is fine with me.” A lot of times I seem to have characters who float along with the tide of whatever comes along. They don’t make decisions and let the women in their lives rule. I see and hear ‘alpha males’ cringing at that thought.
But despite sometimes dealing with what could be political issues, I try to be fair in representing them and not generally campaign for my own viewpoint. Take, for example, the generation gaps.
To many people my age, there are only two generations: Boomers and Millennials. So, everything that is wrong with the world today is because Millennials destroyed it, cancelled it, promoted it, or lived it. This viewpoint tends to ignore the fact that we Boomers raised the next generation to be what we wanted them to be.
On a visit with Jim, a fan down in Arizona, we had a rather intense discussion regarding whether the current generation of young people were generally disrespectful, lazy, and ignorant. We had different perspectives. And I find I’ve had that same conversation with others with varying degrees of passion.
I think it’s important first to take a look at the seven generations since 1901. They’ve actually been described and defined in sociology by birth date.
1901-1924: The Greatest Generation. Defined by participation in WWII.
1925-1945: The Silent Generation. Defined by living through the Great Depression at a vulnerable age.
1946-1964: Baby Boomers. Heavily influenced by Vietnam War, integration, and civil rights.
1965-1980: Generation X. A generation of prosperity, home ownership, and a bridge to technology.
1981-1996: Millennials. Grew up in the internet age and are known as the first global generation (as in not specific to the US).
1997-2012: Generation Z. Grew up with heavy demand for college education. Also known as Digital Natives.
2012-present: Generation Alpha. Heavily influenced by COVID-19, a true 21st century generation to whom personal technology and AI are givens.
Okay, now that we have these out of the way, how do we handle these age groups in writing erotica?
In 2018, I published Devon Layne’s Drawing on the Dark Side of the Brain. It’s the story of a group of Digital Natives, born about 2000-2001. In studying the characteristics of these kids, I made some startling discoveries. They were mostly the children of what they called ‘Xennials,’ a mix of early Millennials and late Gen Xers.
Difference 1, as recorded by Jett Black: Most of his generation didn’t have sex until last year of high school or in college. His grandfather, a Boomer, had been in the generation that coined the term ‘free love.’ Along with women’s liberation, they also were sexually liberated, though most held very traditional opinions of marriage. The Xenials had practically invented the terms ‘hook-up’ and ‘friends with benefits.’ Jett’s generation saw it all online but had little experience with actual physical sex.
Difference 2: Jett’s parents bought their music on CDs they played in the car or on their stereo. Jett bought only the specific songs he wanted and played them through his iPhone earbuds. His grandfather had a stack of vinyl records and a turntable with big room-filling speakers.
Difference 3: While Jett’s parents were mostly raised in an environment of “Go play outside,” Jett and his friends spent incredible amounts of time on their devices. And no wonder. When Jett arrived home at birth, his room was equipped with a digital monitor that was always tuned to by his parents. He learned his ABCs from YouTube videos. His parents learned them from Sesame Street. By the time he was ten, he had his own iPhone. He and his friends were ‘connected’ from childhood to adulthood and shared everything with each other—as long as they weren’t in the same room IRL (in real life).
Of course, there were dozens of other differences, but those were called out in the first few pages of the book. In writing about this group of Digital Natives, I had to get into the mindset of the kids of that age. I had to deal honestly and fairly with that generation.
Drawing on the Dark Side of the Brain is available on Bookapy.
I have to be honest with you: Being fair with people can be exhausting. I make a lot of shit up when I’m writing, but I spend hours and hours researching ideas and concepts. That informs some of my opinions in ways I didn’t expect.
For example, I was the first person in my family to go to college and get a degree. (My oldest sister was in college just long enough to get her MRS—about six months.) I got scholarships, grants, and a ministerial discount for being a preacher’s kid. Despite all that, I took out a thousand-dollar student loan for my freshman year, and another thousand the following year.
When I realized that I could come out of college $4,000 in debt, I panicked. That would be equivalent to $30,000 today—a bargain for a college education. I stopped taking out loans and got student work study that would carry part of the load. I moved into a one-room apartment over a Styrofoam factory ($45 a month) where I worked 20 hours a week and bought my own groceries instead of eating in the school cafeteria. And it still took me over ten years (in addition to the four-year deferment while I was still a student in undergrad and graduate school) to pay back that damn loan. I paid more for that $2,000 loan than I paid for my first house.
With everything that was happening in my life, I count it a miracle that I woke up to the fact that I’d be so deep in debt if I continued to follow the advice of both the school financial office and my banker. And even my parents, who had nothing financial to contribute to my continuing education.
By the time Gen X and Millennials came along, a vast shift had occurred in society. We had fully entered an age of technology and the minimum entry-level job requirement for anything that touched that industry was a bachelor’s degree or higher. By the time Millennials came of age, home ownership had become an unreachable goal for most. The cost of their required college degree had risen to $13-26,000 per year! Millennials’ parents were unable and unwilling to help foot the bill, so the college tuition loans could easily top $75-100,000 by commencement.
So, we come to the issue that faces the country today. An issue that I refuse to take a stand on in this blog, but feel the reality needs to be dealt with fairly.
I discovered I had several misconceptions regarding the issue of student loan forgiveness. I hear things like $62.8 billion in loan forgiveness and I immediately think, we’re going to give away $62.8 billion to these college students who couldn’t manage their debt like I did! But we’re not. Though there are various programs for debt repayment that depend on income, by and large the loan forgiveness is made only to those who have already completed ten years or more in payments. During that time, most will have repaid the amount of their original loans plus reasonable interest. Many will still, however, owe almost as much as they started with, or in some cases more.
So, the write-off of student debt is of future interest payments.
And, by the way, that interest is not paid to the US government. It is paid to the banks who funded the original loans—without security. Hmm. How many times have we bailed out the banks for just that?
I’m obviously not an accountant and I know there are lots of different bookkeeping methods and there are even more levels of need. I’m also aware that we would not have the number of doctors we currently have without the loans they took out over the years it takes to get that education. We would not have anywhere near the number of computer programmers—keeping the internet, cell phones, software and operating systems, and air flight computers functioning—accountants, teachers, architects, politicians, lawyers, and preachers that we currently have.
I’m not saying we should or shouldn’t forgive student debt. I am saying we need to fairly consider what it costs and what it gains. That’s being fair regarding generations, just as seeing how much sex they have is.
I got a little long-winded with that one, but I don’t want to revisit it, so I had to get a lot out in a single post. I deal with these subjects because they are issues the characters in my books have to deal with. The main character in my current WIP was born in 2005. He’s near the end of the years for those digital natives and is faced with how to earn a living while preparing for the Olympics. Next week, I’ll talk about “Knowing Where to Start.”
Enjoy!
This is number sixty-four in the blog series, “My Life in Erotica.” I encourage you to join my Patreon community to support my writing.
A CALL FROM A FRIEND got me thinking about the use of ‘they/them’ pronouns for a per-son. He’s a pretty open and I might even say liberal screenwriter, so his confusion on the subject puzzled me. In a 40-minute phone call, we seemed to have reached an understanding.
But I hear the question more than I like to admit in this ‘age of enlightenment.’
I heard a comedian recently who said, “I’m a comedian and my pronouns are he-he-he.” Yeah, it was very funny. Maybe you had to be there.
I think the confusion is less significant than alarmists want to think. We authors have been using ‘they’ as a singular pronoun for a person of unknown gender for more than a hundred years. The use of singular ‘they’ emerged in the 14th century! It wasn’t even criticized by rigid grammarians until the mid-19th century. In the 21st century, most writing style guides accept it as a singular personal pronoun.
“But it’s so confusing that a guy wants to be called ‘they’ when he’s obviously a ‘he.’” Really? When did they tell you they were a guy? It’s not that confusing if you’re minding your own business.
However, it is equally inappropriate to use ‘they’ when you know the gender and your audience knows the gender. It is used strictly for a person of unknown or non-conforming gender.
I think that some of the confusion originates in the acronym LGBTQIA+: Lesbian, Gay, Bi, Transgender or Transsexual, Queer or Questioning, Intersex, Asexual or Androgynous, and (+) any other non-conforming identity, gender, or sexuality. In this acronym, we conflate sex (transsexual, intersex, and asexual), gender (transgender, queer, androgynous), and sexual preference (lesbian, gay, bi)—all three of which are remarkably different. But we lump them all together largely for the convenience of white cisgender heterosexual males.
Don’t get upset about the term ‘cis.’ It’s not an insult. In Latin, it is the opposite prefix of trans and is not an acronym. So, a cisgender male identifies as a man. A transgender male identifies as a woman. Cis=on the same side as birth assigned sex. Trans=on the opposite side of birth assigned sex.
Back to the use of ‘they’ as a singular pronoun. Like I said, we’ve been using it that way for hundreds of years. For example:
“Someone left their backpack in the office. Will they please return to claim it.”
No English speaker would think twice about this construction. We know exactly what it means. We don’t know either the sex or gender of the person who left the backpack. They are needed in the office.
So, that covers the first use. Sex or gender unknown, use ‘they.’
The second use is for a person who is known, but whose sex or gender is non-binary. If you simply make an assumption due to observable characteristics, you have an equal possibility of being right, wrong, or just offensive. Typically, people self-identify. That’s why a common question in today’s polite society is “What are your pronouns?” When a person does not fit in with either birth assigned gender or observable behavior, they will likely identify with ‘they/them’ pronouns.
When I released Devon Layne’s Double Take, the first of the five Transmogrification of Jacob Hopkins series, it started setting personal records for readership of all my stories with nearly 10,000 active readers. In chapter 45, I revealed that the cute petite girl claiming Jacob as her boyfriend was transsexual.
I lost over 3,000 readers that day and endured an incredible amount of vitriol from those parting. None of them were actually missed that much. My favorite attempt to politicize it:
“God created two sexes. Democrats created all the rest,” was one comment.
Wow! Democrats must be the oldest political party in the world. I had no idea they were so influential to the ancient Greeks where we find transgender, pansexual, hermaphrodites, and asexual persons among both men and gods! Not to mention hetero, lesbian, gay, bi, bestiality, and possible intergalactic crossbreeding. This is nothing new!
The entire five-book Transmogrification of Jacob Hopkins series including Double Take, is available on Bookapy as a collection or individual volumes.
I hear the sarcastic questions in my head.
“So, you must believe in men going into women’s restrooms.” “You must be all for transgender athletes unfairly competing against women in sports.” “You must…”
No, I don’t must. First off, these are two completely different issues. The first is covered by all manner of existing laws that prohibit public indecency in restrooms as well as other public places. Remember that transgender means displaying the characteristics and behaviors of the opposite gender from birth assigned sex. If a person identifies with the opposite gender to the extent of hormones for secondary sexual characteristics and behavior patterns of the opposite gender, then yes, they should be allowed into the restroom of the gender they identify with.
“NO! They have to go the restroom of their birth sex.”
I love that one because I always pull up a photo of a friend of mine. He’s a little overweight, but has a nice beard, dresses sharply, is employed in social services, has a lovely wife, and has two great sons.
“So, this is the person you want going into the women’s restroom?”
“No! That’s what we want to prevent!”
“But this person was born with the assigned sex of female.”
“It’s dangerous!”
The last time I checked, there had never been an assault initiated by a transgender person of either sex in a public restroom. Compare that to the number of cases against senators and congressmen.
Well, what about transgender athletes?
I say this is a different situation. This should not be a question of gender identity. There are physical biological differences that separate genetic men from genetic women in sports—a physical competition. Those differences are exactly what Title IX was set up to protect with equal opportunities for both. I have no difficulty with the transgender athlete referring to herself as a ‘she.’ As an athlete, however, there is a biological advantage to a trans female over a cis female.
Yes, you could apply that to a lot of situations and I’m sure people will attempt to, even when it’s irrelevant.
Finally: It just sounds strange to use 'they' for an individual. Like I’m supposed to say, “They is going out tonight?” It sounds stupid!
And you would be stupid to attempt to use it that way. Substitute ‘you’ for ‘they.’ “You is going out tonight.” Yep, stupid. You see, we are quite accustomed to using a plural verb for a pronoun that could be singular or plural. (Or maybe you can go back far enough in time to separate the difference between ‘thee’ and ‘thou,’ which isn't a difference of singular and plural anyway.)
‘You’ is a pronoun that can be either singular or plural and we always use the plural verb with it. We have no problem with it at all! Like ‘you,’ ‘they’ takes the plural verb whether used as a plural or a singular pronoun.
The only thing standing between you and accepting ‘they’ is your own stubborn entitlement to make judgments about other people. Just stop it, okay?
This could go on for a dozen posts, but if you haven’t gotten the point yet, eleven more posts won’t help. Next week: “Just Being Fair.”
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