Quasirandom: Blog

I should have read Naomi Kritzer's Catfishing on CatNet before writing They and They. There's a couple details I really wish I had /p/l/a/g/i/a/r/i/z/e/d/ paid homage to.

I've alluded a couple times to a past writing career as a commercial novelist. (These days, I'm mostly a copy editor, with occasional gigs as a technical writer.) I mostly worked for book packagers writing for tweens and teens under house names, and of that work, a) it's all long out of print and b) I don't own the copyrights. I do, however, own the rights to three books -- the only ones still in print. They are about as uncommercial as you can get.

They are collections of poetry.

And they've outlasted everything else. In fact, I'm looking at my latest royalty statement and, just as they have for the past couple years, they've earned me almost exactly enough to buy me a six-pack of hard cider every two weeks (which is about how long it takes me to drink a six-pack) until my next statement.

I'm sure there's a lesson to be drawn from this, but I'd rather spend the evening sipping this here cider in my hand.

(Anyone have a favorite cider to recommend? I'm always looking for new and interesting cideries.)

Three things left out of They and They because there wasn't enough space or it was slowing things down too much:

1. Ed's DJ handle is Part LoFi.

2. The other genderqueer kids that Dana meets at Hanging Out, who form something of an informal support group. If this had been a novel, with more breathing room, they totally would have remained, with the way that Dana helps one kid ending up helping them in turn.

3. A scene of Dana explaining that their fantasy novel is set in a world with three biological sexes (male, female, and neuter thale) and five gender identities (three corresponding to the sexes, one 'between' them, and one 'beyond' them) -- and that the protagonist, Kel, is thale (pronouns they/them/their) with a body that matches Dana's own self-image. They then admit, to their fumbling embarrassment, that Kel is in many ways an authorial self-insert. It was realizing this that made Dana decide, even before Peter's critique, that they'd never submit the novel to publishers.

Another short novella about teenagers stumbling into love. This time, no magic, nothing remotely poly, and the burn is long and slow. While it's coded Caution for specific content reasons, in my mind it also applies for diabetic-coma levels of sweet romance a la Don Lockwood. Yes, the characters' pronouns can be a little confusing if you're not used to them, but honestly it's no worse than for any other same-gender couple. And besides, that's the least of Dana and Jamie's worries.

Neither lead is based on anyone specific, but aside from the triplet thing, I've seen different aspects of them in teens I've known and worked with. If I'm honest with myself, my volunteer work with transkids was already tapering off when COVID-19 broke out and the pandemic simply made it easier to drop the group entirely, and I regret this. I am, at least, still in contact with a few intersex kids (separate group), with plans to participate more actively once things lift and we can meet in person again.

And in the meantime, I wrote this.

A short portal fantasy about teens struggling to cope with sex and magic (which in my mind, after all, are just different manifestations of the same underlying phenomenon). All while running for their lives. Four chapters, posting daily.

Cascading dayjob deadlines have been consuming the brainage needed to finish revising the 4th Triad story, though I've worked out what needs to be done. I have, however, been able to work on shorter stories like this one. I wrote the first chapter a couple years ago, on my phone while lying in bed with insomnia, but only figured out last month where to take it from there. I hope you enjoy it.