Ask me at literally any previous point in my life and hands down, I say books.

I’m unsure how much of it is codependency and how much of it is being too old that makes me now immediately think, “Oh, definitely Warhammer bits. my husband would love that shit.”

He’d also know how to sell them, is what keeps me in this answer. Which sounds like I don’t know how to sell books, which sounds Bad to any agents who might check out my blog this week, which—

I shot out my first real queries for WEM.

This time, this book, this querying I have more tools at my disposal. Stuff I didn’t know about and/or couldn’t afford the previous times I’ve done this, shot my book out into the world barely a moment after it managed to breathe on its own. Query tracker being the one I can’t believe I ever tried to do this without. So far, it’s been great to go in, look at the line of their rejections, see mine just slowly approaching the kill…

That’s twisty. I’ve already gotten a few form responses, though. A couple personalized ones, too. Guess that’s good.

I am fluctuating wildly between two states.

The first state is boring, and classic. Woe is my stupid dumb hands that typed this crap, blah blahblah.

Then there’s this new one, where I plan.

WEM is good. I know it is. I think it might just be my debut.

In fact, at not only my most ego-testicle (ha) and optimistic, I think it ought to be. I believe, fully, that if WEM does not get published, it is because I did the getting-it-published part wrong, and not because it should not be out there.

One part I plan is “the Call.”

In “the Call” as I imagine it, an agent approaches me less like either a superstar or a turd and more like a human being they might like to work with. One question they always ask is, “Where would you like to see your career going?”

I know the answer to this immediately. I want my books to reach the quiet level of fame where folks see them checking out at Rite Aide. Really.

But also, admittedly, I want to have the space and approval from a capitalist hellscape to spend real time, here.

Why?

I am only ever myself when I am writing. I am only ever real when dealing with shit that ain’t.

At least once a year, I write a book. Often, these days, it is good. I want to publish that shit. I want to make money doing what I love, isn’t that the dream?

It won’t be a lot of money, they say, here. After all: bookends youtube has told me it is an agent’s job to ground us.

Yeah, I say back, duh. I write Science Fiction.

We chortle over this.

But really. Why, then?

I could say this in such a surface level way, but the truth of the matter is that beyond how my writing makes me feel, there is a way that reading has always bled the poison free of me that I’d like to contribute to.

As a child, my life was hard. I’m not exaggerating. Some children have these blessed childhoods where they are not often afraid, and mine wasn’t that. Throughout my childhood, though, there were always books. Books, and often in those books, reflections.

None were exact. Yet I’d hear Meg whine and be this brilliant sad creature and I’d freeze. Sigh, look up, and feel the wonderment for a moment of the truth: I had survived.

Not survived A Wrinkle in Time, sure. Yet there I was, in the pages. Madeline L’engle had predicted me and thought me worthy of a journey. Unknowingly, she foretold a reality in which I lived through this. She didn’t know I needed to see it, but I did.

If there is one thing I can give back in any kind of grand way, it’s that. I want awkward queer kids like me, crouched in the Science Fiction section, to pause. To exhale, and think, “Wow. I made it through this.”

It’s the greatest gift I could give to this whole hard world.