Undertow

I wish I could share my queer short stories with you, the people who read this blog. Because they’re some of the best work I’ve ever done.

And if I’m being honest… they’re some of the hardest things I’ve ever lived through.

I call them queer fiction. That’s the label. That’s what they are on paper.

But the truth? They’re my life.

Every one of them is built around something I actually lived. The bones are real. The details around those bones… that’s where the fiction comes in. And that’s the part that takes time. Because I remember what actually happened. I remember the uncomfortable details. In some cases, I remember the trauma.

And that memory doesn’t give a shit about craft.

So I have to wrestle it into something that does. Something that reads like a story instead of a confession. Something that leaves you with something instead of just dumping it on your lap.

That’s been the obsession.

After the accident, my writing shifted. I walked away from the dark fantasy universe I was building and started writing closer to the bone. Nonfiction at first. Just trying to make sense of what happened to me. And somewhere in that process, these stories started to form.

All of them rooted in my life after coming out as transgender.

And yeah, I call them queer stories. But let’s be clear about something: I am not a spokesperson for the LGBTQ community. They kicked me out of the club the moment I admitted I like guns and freedom. Apparently we’re all supposed to think the same way, believe the same things, vote the same way.

I don’t.

So what you’re getting is my version of queer. A nonconforming, inconvenient, occasionally abrasive version.

My voice.

The other thing I did, and I did this on purpose, is structure these stories so that if you line them up in the right order, they tell the story of my life. Different names. Different setups. Sometimes different endings.

But the same thread running through all of them.

You won’t see it yet. Not from the outside. Right now it probably just feels like a bunch of disconnected pieces.

And yeah… you’re probably thinking, “Where are the stories?”

Fair question.

They’re out. Submitted. Sitting in queues. Waiting on editors to decide whether they’re worth publishing.

This morning, between 2 and 4 a.m., because apparently that’s when my brain does its best work, I finished the final edits on one of them.

It’s about a sexual assault I went through a long time ago.

I buried that memory for years. Then the accident happened, and it all came back. Clear as day. And every time I tried to write it, the memory got in the way of the story. Over and over again.

Because memory isn’t structured. It doesn’t care about pacing or tone or impact.

Storytelling does.

So it took a lot of passes to get it there. To turn it into something that works as a story without losing what it actually was.

But now? It’s a fucking story.

It’s one that hits hard. One that sticks. One that puts you right there whether you want to be there or not.

The grit. The river. That part’s real.

It’ll make more sense once it’s published. And it will be published. Maybe not this one first, maybe not right away, but these stories are going to find homes.

And when they do, I’ll link them here.

Or, eventually, you’ll see them collected in a book.

Working title: Undertow

Feels right.

Quiet on the surface. Something pulling underneath.

We’ll see where it lands.