I grew up believing I was “bad at being a girl” and when I got older I was “bad at being female”. It took me forty seven years to figure out that I was both neurodivergent (AuDHD among some others, thank you very much) and trans. Because growing up Gen X in a small Iowa town bullied to the point of it being large part of my cPTSD, I sure as hell didn’t fit in.
You want to know where I did fit in? The barn where I boarded my heart-horse until our move. This barn didn’t care that I didn’t ride. This barn didn’t care that all I did was ground work. I loved horses. I was a good boarder. I paid my bill on time. Sure, I was quirky and odd, but a lot of people at the barn are. That’s part of the horse world, really.
I’m not going back.
I’ve thought about this a lot because living where I do (very rural Missouri), I go by my very gendered deadname in town. In town, I’m just one of many living on a homestead, who tries not to be around people. Sure, I’m a little odd, but as long as they don’t know I’m transmasculine, then they can just think I’m really bad at performing femininity and that’s not uncommon. Hard to have time for styling your hair or long nails when you’re doing farm chores and if my clothes aren’t fashionable, well that’s okay too.
I’d love to be out in town. I’d love to be known by my name like I am online. I’m probably blurring those lines a bit just by writing this blog, and there are some who say that I shouldn’t be doing this on my writing blog. Except, my writing is full of queerness and found family and cozy and yes, horses and joy.
I don’t want to backslide any more. I went back to my deadname at college after the election, and it damn neared killed me. If I had any doubts that I was trans, any at all, the amount of rage and grief that action filled me with, burned those doubts to ashes. I am furious that I have to hide my true nature from hateful people. I am not going back because after nearly fifty years on this planet, I know who I am and I’m not bad at being a girl. I’m great at being me.
In 2018, (I didn’t know I was trans yet), my world was changing. I was caring for my mother after the medical community abandoned her to die, and I was burning out. Bad. I decided to write the stories I wanted to read, those horse stories for people who never grew out of being a “horse crazy kid”. I imagined them as wine and barn books for forty-something ladies. I called them equestrian women’s lit, and the barn was a haven. Five friends, two of them the lesbian couple who runs the barn. Dealing with single parenting and infertility. A rocky marriage and a relationship unsure of its next stage. Life stuff, really. The kinds of human stories that I’d like to think we can all relate to.
I published Steady on Course and fourteen more books in the series. (Steady on Course is just 99 cents and available at most ebook outlets if you’d like to give it a shot.)
I share this because writing this series gave me the courage not to go back…to writing cis het romance, which is what had burned me out on writing so badly. I went on to write a companion series, Cardinal Oaks, featuring a sapphic couple one member of which we meet in the Noble Dreams series.
I dove into my fantasy, now which in addition to disabled characters, also features queer characters. (See the “click me” in the lower right-hand corner of your screen? That’s a portal fantasy serial featuring a transman in a sweet gay polycule and UNICORNS, and I guarantee you the next books I have planned include other LGBTQIA+ characters).
And yes, I shifted my romance writing, too.
I’m not going back.
I encourage you that if you’re not going back to do a couple of things. First, contact your congress critters and let them know that they need to support protections for LGBTQIA+ people and if they don’t, you’ll take your vote elsewhere. If, like me, you’re represented by people who very much do not represent your values, let them know the same thing, too.
Second, if what I’ve said resonates with you, if you think you’d like my writing, then I strongly encourage you to check out Muse Happens, my membership group. I’m a disabled trans person who has been under employed for over a decade. If I can reach 50 subscribing members at the lowest paying tier ($5/month), then that will allow me to cover my mental healthcare costs as well as pay for the special food my senior heart-horse needs every month. (She’s 25, which is old for a horse, and she has more years in her with some TLC.) I need help, because I don’t want to go back.
