When it comes to writing and pursuing your art, day after day, night after night...I’m always stressing how important it is to be ‘comfortable’ with your particular set of skills. The more comfortable you are with your work, the more the writing itself will sort of fade into the background. Don’t worry, that’s not a bad thing. Hehehe! It just means that your natural ability will grow out of that level of comfort to the point where nothing is forced or focused on in a literary sense by your readers. Finding that comfort zone in your work will cause your audience to completely forget that they’re reading a story at all, and they’ll just find themselves immersed in the emotions and the environment that you spent all that time and energy putting together for them. That is a blessing! Believe me!

But that comfort zone has to be ‘found’. You can’t just decide to hop up one morning and figure that you can write a masterpiece from scratch without any previous experience. It takes time and practice to find and define your voice. It’s a lot like finding that really comfy position to sleep in when you go to bed at night, you know? Hehehe, you’ve got the blankets just right, the pillows just right, you’ve found your little groove in the mattress...it’s a place that simply feels like ‘home’, and everything is awesome from there.

So...what does this have to do with the ‘niche writing’ title up above? Let’s get into it!

To be a niche writer means that you simply write fiction that is often directed at a certain target audience or demographic. For example, if you’re here on a GayAuthors.org to write gay oriented fiction...then you’re a niche writer. That doesn’t mean that straight men and women can’t read, enjoy, and appreciate, your work...it just means that your main audience is going to consist of readers who are mostly a part of, or are interested in, the LGBTQ+ community. They are the ones who are most likely to be here searching for the kinds of stories that you want to tell. Also, if you write gay fantasy? That’s a niche within a niche. If you write gay fantasy erotica...then you’re dealing with a niche within a niche within another niche. Hehehe, and so forth and so on. The path narrows itself down pretty quickly, and if you go TOO deep down that rabbit hole, you’re going to end up with only a handful of readers left to hear what you have to say. And not everybody left over is guaranteed to like your story as much as you might want them to. Well written or not. But...if that little niche is where you feel most at home, let’s see what we can do to expand on some of the themes you’re working with and maybe see if we can grab a few more people along the way.

The one thing that I always try to get creative minds to remember whenever they’re starting something new is the idea that, at our core...our very center...we all have more in common than we could possibly imagine. All of us meaning humanity in general. We all have a need to feel safe, feel loved, form genuine friendships, search for comfort, have a desire to succeed...these are parts of life that everybody can relate to, no matter what kind of story you’re writing. So this is where we begin.

Ask yourself what your story is going to be about. Not what happens in the story or who the characters are...but what is the actual story about? The other stuff is equally as important when it comes to filling out an engaging project, but you have to put yourselves in the mindset that these are all just fancy, personal, variations on the same handful of themes that applies to us all. Love, loss, vengeance, greed, temptation, family bonds, betrayal. As long as you can discover, emphasize, and deliver on these core ideas in your story...people will be able to latch on and understand it on a deeper level. It doesn’t matter if it’s hetero fiction, homo-erotica, science fiction, fantasy, horror, comedy, or tragedy. If the core elements are present and displayed in an effective and comprehensive way...anyone can read it and get the message. Even if you’re working with a very small sliver of a niche concept that they may not be used to. If you can get them to read it, you can get them to love it. Point blank, period.

For me, personally? I write about gay teen romance, and I present it in a way that inspires heavy nostalgia and memories of first love. Heavy crushes, teen angst, fear of exposure, raging hormones...whether my readers are attracted to the idea of teen boys experimenting with those early feelings of companionship and sexual desire or not...it doesn’t matter. The core elements are what make the stories so heartfelt and relatable. These are feelings that we’ve all felt in some way when we were younger, and drawing from that brings what should be a very small niche topic to a much larger mainstream audience. Why? Because they GET it! They remember it. It connects to something on a much deeper level than just a few naughty escapades that exist, mostly, on a (hopefully entertaining) surface level of everything else that I’m trying to do with the story.

I mean, you understand that, right?

For example, if you guys love movies anywhere near as much as I do...you might have seen “Sleepless In Seattle”, “The Notebook”, “Pretty Woman”, etc...which are all romantic comedies. Well, since the majority of their audience is heterosexual...people just write it off as being ‘normal’. But in reality, they have a niche audience as well. A very LARGE niche audience, sure...but a niche audience nonetheless. They’re not written for someone who is looking for a gay or lesbian relationship in their entertainment, and yet...they rest upon certain touchstones that everyone can relate to simply by being human, and therefore can accept and allow ourselves to enjoy them just like their target audience can. I want all of us to keep that in mind as we continue on with this article. Just because something is perceived or labeled as being normal, doesn’t mean that it’s not a niche concept. I enjoy a bunch of Disney animations that might be made for kids, I enjoy movies that are made for teens, I enjoy movies that are written for artsy movie critic elites too. Your work is no different. Get those core elements to shine through, and readers will get it. Trust me on this.

I can honestly say that I’ve never gotten more attention for my writing than I did when I started writing gay teen fiction on Nifty, and then on GayAuthors. I wrote PLENTY of other stories before that, I even drew my own comic books with my own characters and storylines in Middle School and Junior high. But the teen romance was where I found my home. That’s where I got my most responses and support, and I fell in love with it almost immediately. Getting comments and emails is my reward. It’s like getting a paycheck, you know? Makes it all worthwhile. However...from the time that I was in the second or third grade...my biggest flare was for science fiction and horror. I was exactly like one of those “Stranger Things” kids...with the comic books and the Fangoria horror magazine subscriptions and the Star Wars toys...that was what I used to write all the time. But I wasn’t sure that any of my practiced skills in that arena would ever be of any use to me when it came to writing to what I write now. How could it? People wanted stories about teenage boys falling in love. Nothing else.

Naturally, after about a year of doing that and nothing else, the urge to go back to my roots and try something new kept nagging me...and that’s when I decided to give it a try. What’s the worst that could happen, right?

Again...writing gay teen romance was already a niche position for me to get into. It would really narrow my fanbase down a LOT if I added a full blown vampire story into the mix. I didn’t know if anybody would read it at all. But still, the ideas wouldn’t leave me alone. So I started taking notes and eventually took the plunge. The worst thing they could do is hate it, right? Hehehe! Thus, “Gone From Daylight” was born.

Now, I’ll be honest...it was like pulling greased teeth with a pair of piers to even get a majority of people to even LOOK at that story at first. No matter what I told them about it, no matter how quickly the fanbase was growing surrounding the series, no matter how much I begged and pleaded for them to just give it a CHANCE...they refused. Hehehe, some people still refuse to this day. “I don’t like teen vampires, Comsie! Nope! Not gonna do it!” BUT...there were a few that I convinced to just give the first little section a read, and if they decided they didn’t like it, I wouldn’t hold it against them. I understand that it’s a niche project that people tend to avoid like the plague, and that it’s not necessarily for everybody. I’m ok with that. Still, I continued to promote it and get them to at least be curious enough to see what all the fuss was about. So they checked it out, despite their earlier protests.

Many of those people became some of the BIGGEST “Gone From Daylight” fans on the entire site! Hehehe! I hate to say, ‘I told you so’...but….I told you so! Because the story has elements of everything that I ever wrote or thought about growing up woven into the storytelling. The sci fi, the horror, the comic books...and it felt like a real homecoming for me. I had so much FUN writing those first three parts of the story. However, the main element was now surrounding my newest passion for gay teen romance, and “GFD” reads like all of my other stories do, just with a bunch of extras thrown in there. I emphasized the core elements to make sure that the story itself was relatable and engaging for everybody who decided to look into it and give it a shot. It doesn’t matter whether they like vampires or not...that’s not the point. It’s a story about love, about abuse, about finding yourself, about friends being more like family...things that hold meaning for all of us in some way.

That’s how you take a smaller niche story and get it to appeal to a larger audience. It doesn’t matter if you’re writing about younger characters, older characters, or putting them in a different part of the world, or in a different time period, or if it’s fantasy and magic...if you can hold on to those core essential parts of the human experience and bring them to light in your fiction, you can write something that has a real punch to it. Everything else is just creative decoration.

Keeping that in mind freed me up to write pretty much anything that I wanted to write from that point forward. Thank God that it worked out as well as it did, or I might have had a lot of my best ideas ever go to waste! LOL! Since then, I’ve been able to continue writing my gay teen stories about romance and high school and coming-of-age tales that still captivate and bring in new readers all the time, but...on TOP of that, I’ve written stories about angels, aliens, werewolves, zombies, ghosts, and more...but they still read like most of my other stories. It’s a much more narrow passage for readers to venture into when it comes to my particular niche, but once they get a taste for stories like “Shelter”, “Savage Moon”, “Skylight”, “Boys Of Widow Lake” (Only Available As Ebooks), and others...they never get enough. Why? Because they focus on the same essentials as all of my other stories. It’s just a matter of finding the threads that bind us all together.

A 21 year old college kid in Michigan, a 16 year old surfer in Australia, and a 30 year old farmer from Zimbabwe, all want love. Friends. Family. Security. Status in their community. Make that your focus when you’re writing. All three fans will be able to pick up your story and share a certain level of understanding with you upon the first read. That’s what we all want as writers, isn’t it? To be heard and understood? To bond. To connect. This is how you achieve that.

Naturally, the further you dig into your niche, the more you isolate yourself from a wider readership. That’s not a bad thing, mind you, just match your expectations with your reality as you go down that rabbit hole. Maybe you have a foot fetish. Not a lot of folks have that, but if you can get them to give your story a look and you want to add that into your writing...they might be into it. Who knows? But, if by some chance, they aren’t...you still have character development, a loving story, and witty dialogue, to carry things forward. That way, they’ll indulge in your own personal interest for the sake of continuing the story. If you want to write about furries, if you want to write a fanfic about anime characters, if you want to write a horror/thriller/mystery with a gay couple...do it! Go for it. Seriously. You might as well. And when you write and post it, keep those main human connections in the foreground where we can all see them. You’re bound to expand your audience in no time. Write your stuff your way. And don’t let the ‘niche writer’ tag throw you too far off of your game. Find your home and OWN it! Some ideas might take a bit more effort and strain when it comes to promoting your work, but you just remember what we talked about here, and pull them into your world by latching on to what brings us all together most.

For all of you who might be writing in a very specific genre, are looking to appeal to a very specific audience, or might be feeling a little intimidated by the idea of getting started on something that you’ve convinced yourself that nobody else will read or enjoy...just write it your way and highlight those basic human wants, needs, and desires...and see how you do. You might just be surprised at how many fans you’ll find along the way.

Hope this helps! Best of luck, you guys! And I’ll seezya soon with more! Happy writing!