It's a Date!

There's been a delay -- my book will not, as previously indicated, come out in January -- but I do now have an official release date! GenderQueer: A Story from a Different Closet will be published by Sunstone Press on March 15, 2020.




So here's what the delay is about: if you pick up a nonfiction book, you're likely to see a block of text on the copyright and dedication page that tells you how the Library of Congress has categorized the book. Libraries and other institutions make use of this.

It's called a "CIP Block".

Here, for example, is the CIP Block for the book Guns, Germs and Steel by Jared Diamond:


Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Diamond, Jared M.
Guns, germs, and steel : the fates of human societies / Jared Diamond.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN-13: 978-0-393-31755-8
1. Social evolution. 2. Civilization—History 3. Ethnology. 4. Human being—Effect of environment on. 5. Culture diffusion I. Title
HM206.D48 1997
303.4—dc21 96-37068
CIP
W W Norton & Company, Inc. 500 Fifth Avenue, New York N.Y.10110
www.wwnorton.com
W.W.Norton & Company Ltd., Castle House, 75/76 Wells Street, London, W1T3QT


Sunstone Press is a publisher that does release nonfiction books that are purchased by libraries and is therefore a participant in the Cataloging in Publication program. More info.

Since I hope for my book to be acquired by libraries and to become assigned reading for women's and gender studies programs at colleges, it seems very much in my best interests to have my book enrolled and given a CIP block.

Well, the Library of Congress apparently doesn't always move with great alacrity when a publisher sends in a manuscript. And that's what the wait has been about.

Between now and March 15, I should be getting a listing on Amazon for advance orders. I'll keep y'all informed.


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Bookstores and Libraries and Community Centers, Oh My!

Having given approval to the formatted manuscript and the covers (back and front), I've now effectively switched effort-gears from "getting book published" to "getting people to read the book", even though it hasn't rolled off the Sunstone Books presses yet.

At this phase, where the book's availability is predicted but still slightly off in the future (January 2020, for benefit of the curious), the focus is on women's and gender studies programs at colleges, and LGBT community centers. I can be booked to speak at such venues even before it's possible to show up with a stack of the books on the table in front of me.

I actually did some of that in 2016-2017 when I had previously thought my book was on the verge of coming out. I thoroughly enjoyed the experience. Learned a lot, too. When I next have an opportunity to present, the presentation is going to be more closely focused on my specific type of gender identity and what it brings to the table. People like the "Gender 101" introductory material but I think I can encapsulate it in a much smaller portion of my talk.

Later, once the book can be purchased, I will add libraries and bookstores to the list of targets.

To be sure, a library or a bookstore, theoretically speaking, could also have a presenter or speaker before their book is available for purchase. But in the case of bookstores in particular, my research thus far indicates that they aren't much for "events", or at least not the kind of event that revolves around a gender-variant person discussing gender identity. Some of the new age and mystical / spiritual book stores do host events but they're most often focused on chakras and healing and the sale of gems and oils and other non-book substances that they market along with books on the subject. University bookstores generally don't do events at all, of any sort, and the remaining balance of independent bookstores mostly want the author's book to be available for purchase first.

Meanwhile, my publicist, John Sherman of Sherman & Company, is going to have an additional focus: getting my book reviewed. That, surprisingly enough (for me at least), is something that needs focused attention before the book's release date. Some important reviewers won't review a book once it comes out.



My day-job skills as a FileMaker database developer are again serving me well, just as they did for the querying process. For this publicity effort, I have 11614 records in my database (with many of them containing multiple contact persons to fire emails or snailmails or phone calls off to). Of those, 864 are college campus women's and/or gender studies programs; 412 are LGBT community centers, a mixture of on-campus and independent. Then I have 1552 academic libraries and a whopping 7263 public libraries, any and all of whom could theoretically acquire a copy of my book for their shelves. I have no experience pitching this possibility to libraries, but with any luck I will learn as I gain experience. Then I have 32 LGBT-focused bookstores (a declining phenomenon, unfortunately, although part of the decline may be that the subject matter is more mainstream and more often carried by mainstream bookstores), and 1351 other (generic) independent bookstores. The independent bookstores and libraries are dual-opportunity: they could book me to speak, and purchase copies of my book to stock and sell as well. Finally, I have 139 reviewers, bloggers, booktubers, and individual people who asked me to alert them when the book becomes available.

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Summarizing a Life

As a consequence of my mother dying and an unusually high volume of other friends', relatives', and associates' lives coming to an end within the last year or so, I've heard a lot of summaries of people's lives, condensations of who those people were around some ongoing themes or primary accomplishments.

I've been doing this all my life. Or all my adult life at any rate. I started when I was 21.

Trying to explain being a person whose body is male and yet whose persona is feminine. Trying to become understood by other people in those terms. Trying to get people to add that to the list of possibilities and accept it as a valid identity.

I've had limited traction. I've put a lot of energy into it but it has mostly gone into spinning my wheels without propelling me very far forward. I've had limited effect. Perhaps I am not very good at what I set out to do; perhaps I lack the talent or the appropriate skill-set or something. I don't have a significant following of people listening or reading what I have to say on the subject.

I've occasionally seriously considered putting this down and walking away from it. I mean, the problem with being Don Quixote is that you do not merely fail to defeat your windmills, you don't even get the satisfaction of having the windmills become aware that you're making the attempt. It gets discouraging.

When I was 22, at the end of a year in which my initial efforts had caused me to be detained in a psychiatric facility and disenrolled from college, and in which attempts to "find my people" had gotten me nowhere, I began to question whether these ideas really made sense, or even if they did, whether they were anywhere near as important as they'd seemed when they first came into my head. I came out of that period of questioning convinced of two things: I didn't have to do this, it was not my duty; but yeah, they made sense of my life and they made sense of society around me, and without them there was a boiling meaningless chaos, and so I was inclined to continue to hold onto them, and in believing in them I was driven to continue to try to communicate.

Many years later, at the end of my 30s, my plans appeared to have collapsed around me with no significant progress made: I'd come to the New York area again seeking to "find my people" but the lesbian gay and bisexual scene such as it existed in Manhattan in the 1980s was just starting to open to transsexual (now called transgender) people, very few of whom were coming to participate; and I didn't find a space in which I could explain my own situation and find anyone with similar identity or experience. I'd also latched onto the idea of majoring in feminist studies: I'd write about this stuff and interact with classmates and teachers and I'd connect with people instead of just finding kindred souls within the pages of feminist theory books! But that hadn't quite panned out either, and now my graduate school career was over with no PhD or teaching position in sight. But I'd obtained an MSW in social work along the way and landed a job and figured over the years I'd make professional connections and get to inform policy makers and write grant proposals and create relevant services to bring my people together somehow. But the social work organization had disbanded and I'd been cast adrift and, finding myself unable to get a job offer in social work, had taken an office job developing database software. Lucrative but not relevant to my "mission". And I'd connected romantically with people several times only to always have them unravel, leaving me concerned that I couldn't maintain a relationship or that I wasn't a desirable partner. So I started to think of myself as someone in early retirement, a social activist driven from the field with nothing to show for it.

Over the course of my 40s I retraced my steps, mental ones and actual physical locations, trying to get a clear sense of what had happened in my life and whether or not this was still something I wanted to do, and if so how I was going to proceed. It took awhile but increasingly as I looked back on who I had been and what I'd attempted, I saw it as worthwhile and began to think about what to do next.

From the self-examination activity there came an autobiography, and at it took form I began to think "this is what to do next; show people what it is like, don't theorize about it, show them!" And from the autobiography came the distilled and augmented story that I'm trying to market as GENDERQUEER: A STORY FROM A DIFFERENT CLOSET. My memoir and coming-out and coming-of-age story.

Five years into the process of trying to get it into print, I still don't have much to point to except a massive pile of rejection slips (mostly digital, and hence a virtual pile in an email program's folder). It continues to be frustrating.

I've had an occasional success though! Firstly, back when I was a grad student I got an article printed in an academic journal, and it has generated discussion and affected some of the people who've read it over the years. It's some of my best writing and I'm quite proud of it. Same Door, Different Closet: A Heterosexual Sissy's Coming-out Party

Secondly, I've twice had signed contracts with publishers who were promising to publish this book. It didn't happen, but that's a different situation than if I'd been querying for five years and never gotten a serious nibble.

I blog and I post into Facebook groups for genderqueer and other gender-variant groups and/or LGBTQ-in-general groups. I don't have the audience I wish that I had, with a multitude of followers subscribing and commenting. But I reach a few people.

And I've had the opportunity to speak to some LGBT groups and to college women's studies / gender studies classes on campus and in some other venues (including BDSM lifestyle conventions, interestingly enough) and although my audiences have not been huge, I've had people come up to me later and say how relevant my presentation was, and that they've never had those thoughts or feelings validated in that way before.

Anyway, I am now on the cusp of turning 60. It seems increasingly likely that yes, this is going to be "what I did with my life". My life's work. My primary lifetime project.

So... if you encounter someone like me -- perhaps someone who wanders into your Facebook group and says "I don't know what to call myself... I was thinking maybe genderqueer, or perhaps nonbinary... my body is male and I don't think it is wrong, and I don't want people to think of me as a female person, I'm not... but who I am, my identity, is feminine or femme or like basically I'm one of the girls or women" -- do me a favor and tell them about me. Tell them I call it being a "gender invert". Refer them to some of these blog posts. And if my book is published by then, tell them to read my book.


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Update on My Get-Book-Published Endeavors

I wrote a book about being genderqueer and I'm trying to get it published.

Those of you who've been reading my blog for awhile now are well aware of that, but I have recently joined several Facebook groups where I may not have mentioned that, and I'm now echoing my blog in more places in hopes of reaching a wider audience... and it's been awhile since I blogged about the book itself. Most of my recent posts have been about some aspect of gender or genderqueer experience.

Anyway, yeah, it's a memoir (nonfiction, my own story), a coming-of-age and coming-out story, about 97,000 words long (probably about 325 pages, give or take). And I've been querying literary agents since 2013 and small publishers (the sort that you can query directly) since 2015.

Here's where things are at at the moment:


THE REQUEST FOR A FULL


Every rare once in a while my queries to literary agents have resulted in a request to see and evaluate the full manuscript, an event known in the world of authors and author-aspirants as a "request for a full". It's akin to when sending in your resume results in an actual job interview. I've had six of those so far.

The most recent was from Lucinda Karter of Jennifer Lyons Lit Agency (or, more precisely, from her assistant Jadie Stillwell), on November 17 of last year. I sent in the full manuscript and didn't hear a peep, so on December 8 I sent a follow-up inquiry, just asking for confirmation that they actually received it. They had; Stillwell apologized for being behind and said they hadn't had a chance to look at it but would get to it in due course.

At some point in the spring, I went back to querying lit agents, if only to distract myself from the waiting.

Eventually, the 8th of March rolled around, and it had now been three months since I'd heard anything from them and four months since I'd queried them, so I sent a follow-up email, inquiring if I had perhaps missed a critical piece of correspondence. On March 20th, still not hearing anything, I repeated that inquiry, and on March 30th I got a somewhat formletterish "thanks for the opportunity to read but unable to fully connect with the characters and will have to pass" rejection letter.


THE DOLDRUMS


One of the literary agents that I subsequently queried wrote back to say my proposal looks interesting but that they have a policy of only considering material submitted to them exclusively — so did anyone else have it? Of course they did. So in a back-and-forth exchange of emails we established that they'd be happy if I waited until any still-outstanding queries were rejected or else timed out with at least six weeks elapsing from the time I queried them, and then subsequently didn't send any other queries out until they'd had a chance to make their evaluation. That point will be on April the 12th, two days from now. I'll let them know on the 12th that they now have exlusivity and then an additional six weeks will tick by before their exclusivity-window expires.

It's a long shot but all inquiries to lit agents are long shots. I decided to go for it. But it's meant not doing anything as far as lit agents are concerned from week to week and (at this point) month to month.

It's hard to feel fired-up and like you're doing something towards getting a book published when you're just sitting around waiting for a calendar date to crawl by.

Meanwhile, with the publishers, I'm in the same damn situation: there was a publisher I wanted to query, one that was highly recommended on the queer / nonbinary / minority orientation and sexual orientation and intersex FaceBook groups as a good solid publisher for LGBTQIA titles. They, too, have a policy of exclusivity. So I had to wait until the previous publisher submission (to Kensington Books) expired from lack of activity and then sent them my query, which they've now had since January 23. They want 90 days to evaluate manuscripts, so they've got exclusivity until April 23, another thirteen days from now.

So I've been sitting on my thumb, metaphorically speaking, not sending anything to anyone and watching the damn calendar.


BROAD OVERVIEW / REVIEW OF THE SITUATION


I have twice had a publisher sign a contract with me to publish this book. Generally what happens when a publisher signs a contract with an author is that the book goes into print. In the first instance, the publisher, Ellora's Cave, went out of business and revoked all pending books. In the second instance, with NineStar Press, the editor wanted to cut the first third of the book entirely, and we were unable to establish a working relationship. (I experienced the editor as heavy-handed and insulting, and I gather that he found me arrogant and impossible to work with). So I asked them revert my rights back to me.

This is extremely frustrating, as you can probably imagine. The relief and excitement and joy of having a publisher pick up your book, the anticipation of seeing it listed on Amazon and perhaps on a book stand in a book store, the enthusiastic planning of promotional talks and book-signings and lecture tours and all that... ripped out from beneath me.

I was going to write that this isnt fun any more. That's misleading: it was never any fun, this process of trying to sell agents and publishers on the idea of publishing my book. I detest this entire process, just as I hate doing job searches. I have said in the past that trying to sell myself like this ranks right up there with cleaning all the toilets in Grand Central Station with my tongue. So "isn't fun any more" isn't the applicable phrase here. What's changed, I think, is that I won't be able to feel any of that relief, excitement, anticipation or joy when I finally do once again have a publishing contract. At this point I don't think it will seem real until the damn thing's actually in print and I am holding a copy in my hands. Maybe not even then.

"Well", you may be thinking, "why don't you just self-publish?"

It's an easy enough process to create a print run of my book. I even have a routine that allows me to print the whole book onto 5.5 x 8.5 format, two pages to a standard 8.5 x 11 sheet of paper, double-sided, so it can be whacked neatly in two with an industrial sheet cutter and bound. I could get bids and go with the cheapest bid, and that's before I even look into companies specifically geared to help authors self-publish.

Electronic printing is even more effortless, and free. I can generate a PDF at will, and Amazon (among others) will readily help me convert it to other standard eBook formats for paid download.

None of that is at all difficult. Most of that is not relevant.

The difficult, and relevant, part of what makes publishing different than mere printing is distribution and publicity. Running off five thousand copies of my book (and/or generating an eBook for electronic distribution) doesn't get it into people's hands. It doesn't get it reviewed. There are human activites that successfully overcome those barriers, promotional activities. I'm not good at them. If I were good at them, this would be a very popular blog with hundreds or thousands of weekly readers. It isn't. I'm not.

I'll still have to gear up to plan and execute a promotional campaign even with a traditional-model publisher, unless I get a large publisher on-board (unlikely); but even a small publisher makes the book "authentic" to the world of reviewers and opens up opportunities for distribution and consideration. I'm particularly interested in seeing it picked up as reading material for gender studies, LGBTQ studies, feminist theory, and other related academic course work, and hopefully also to find shelf space in LGBT community centers and support group meeting spaces and whatnot.


READINGS


One thing I have been doing more of lately is attending authors' groups where people bring samples of their work-in-progress and read from them and get feedback from the others there. I've been attending the Long Island Writers' Guild and the Amateur Writers of Long Island in recent weeks. Of the two, I like the format used by the latter somewhat better, as they allow up to 1800 word samples to be read and spend more time discussing each selection before moving on to the next. I've enjoyed them both, though.

The feedback I've received is encouraging. The people say my writing in general is vivid and effective, the characters and their behaviors and dialog strongly drawn, the paragraphs and phrases well-constructed. That's not to say I haven't received useful criticism, of the sort "you could do more of this up here before he says that" and "I found it a bit confusing when it jumped to this next scene, is that supposed to be later the same week or what?" and so on. But the overall takeaway is very good: my writing does what I want it to do, it works. At least in 1800-word chunks. (I still yearn for more feedback on the entire book as a satisfying or less-than-satisfying whole).


STATS


total queries to Lit Agents (counting requeries): 1171

Rejections: 1092
Outstanding: 79

As Nonfiction, total: 944

Rejections: 866
Outstanding: 78

As Fiction, total: 227

Rejections: 226
Outstanding: 1

total queries to Publishers: 30

Rejections: 22
Outstanding: 1
No Reply 3+ Months: 6
Pub Contract Signed, went out of business: 1
Pub Contract Signed, rights reverted: 1

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