I’ve been writing since, I dunno, seven? nine? years old, or as long as I can remember, basically. There wasn’t a time when I didn’t want to be a writer. Mostly it was fanfic, episodes of my favorite TV shows (featuring me as a prominent star, of course), or TV shows I’d dream up, or Hardy Boys stories (I couldn’t stand Nancy Drew). I knew nothing about fanfic back then; I wouldn’t find out about it for years yet, not until I started going to SF cons. Suddenly a whole new world opened up for me, like-minded people who wrote stories about their favorite TV shows and books!
Fanfic back then was ‘zines (mimeographed ‘zines), and I couldn’t afford to purchase any of them. But I knew of them. I knew I wasn’t alone.
Thing was, most of the ‘zines I came across were Star Trek fanfic, and while I loved Star Trek, I couldn’t stand Kirk. When I discovered slash fanfic (underage as I was, gasp) it was mostly Kirk/Spock, which is where the term ‘slash’ comes from. Because I couldn’t stand Kirk, it never had any appeal for me.
Then I grew up, moved away, got married, had a kid, went back to school to get my degree… all of the things you’re supposed to do when you’re not a child any more. And I rediscovered fanfic, specifically slash fanfic, and I discovered that slash fanfic was no longer just Kirk/Spock. It was everybody/everybody. And so I started writing again, after more than fifteen years away from it.
I was lucky, I fell into a juggernaut fandom in the early 2000s and hooked up with some stellar editors who taught me I had a LOT to learn. And learn I did, so much so that I was accepted into a prestigious writing workshop (Viable Paradise) in 2017. And there, I learned a lot more, a whole lot more. Mostly I learned that I probably didn’t have it in me to be a real, published author. There’s a lot to it these days, promotions and social media and requirements that I’m not sure I want to deal with. I just want to write, you know? When my daughter (a phenomenal singer) came home from her first day of high school and told me, “Mom, I don’t want to do choir. All I want to do is sing and they’re expecting me to fund-raise and do stuff I have no interest in!” I thought there might come a time when I would understand her POV better, and that time was 2017.
I didn’t stop writing original fic, just as I didn’t stop writing fanfic (though the pandemic curtailed a lot of both, for some reason). And with the help of some of those stellar editors, I sent out a few stories here and there, never with any big hope but never without some. Finally, I found a place for a story I wrote back in 2018, based on a true story about myself. The story is called Something In My Eye and it’s psychological horror. It’s being published March 5th by Black Hare Press (an indie press based in Melbourne, Aus) under their Hell Hare House imprint. It’s just a novella, coming in at around 9000 words, but I’m very proud of the fact that I managed to finally sell something professionally. If it’s popular, they’ll reprint it in one of their anthologies. Even if it isn’t, I don’t care, because fifty-odd years of wanting has finally come to fruition.
If you’re interested, you can view the story here: https://readerlinks.com/l/3183686.