Thorn Wilde

Yeah, there's a lot of shady stuff out there. I feel bad for those authors and musicians...

I dunno, you've read and (I believe) quite liked some of the stories that are in this collection, actually, so I'd say you are in the target audience. I wanted to do a simple design for the cover. I find that the bare-chested muscle boys and flowery fonts you get on most gay romance covers get tedious in the long run. It's been done. I guess those covers attract readers, but... I think it also turns some off. The cover image is a free stock photo from a site I visit a lot (all my banners for my stories are from free stock photo sites).

The heart is for solidarity, my friend.

Depression is probably also involved, though I have these thoughts and feelings when I'm not depressed as well. Of course, even if I'm not depressed I usually still have anxiety, lol

It would be cool if some GA authors got together and started their own publishing company. As for visuals, title and synopsis, I'll let you judge for yourself. It was hard finding a title that worked, but at least it makes sense, lol! (I made changes to the Kindle one that haven't quite updated yet, since I decided to add another story to the book...)

I'll give you a new one: The Martian. Guy who wrote it self-published because friends asked him to. And here we are a few years later, with a bestseller and a movie starring Matt Damon.

Hehe, thanks Wayne. Yeah, there's some bad stuff. Remember that awful book cover I showed you, from the guy who was mystified as to why he wasn't getting more pre-orders? Definitely a lot of shit, lol! But lots of good stuff, too.

Thank you! I don't think she self-published... I don't know how she could have back in the mid 90s. But yes, she got an awful lot of rejections. Goes to show how little these publishing houses truly understand what people want.

Thanks, tim. That means a lot.

Thank you! And Happy Birthday!

You should! It'll have to go in your queue.

This is beautiful. Well done! ❤️

There is this overwhelmingly popular opinion that self-publishing, to some degree, isn't valid. It's what we do here on GA, of course, and putting out your work for free on the Internet for people to see seems to be acceptable and sometimes commended, but as soon as an author tries to make money from self-publishing their work—either by setting up a Patreon and asking for donations, or by publishing their work using services like Lulu and Amazon KDP and thus circumventing the traditional publishing process—a lot of people, and in particular other writers, become sceptical, sometimes bordering on hostile. There's this idea that people who self-publish just aren't good enough to be published by a major publishing house and, as such, don't deserve to get paid for the time and effort they put into writing. But is it really about who's good enough? And who decides? Some arbitrary authority, like editors, agents, and publishing houses who are out to make money off of what you write? Is the question whether your work is good, or whether they think it will sell? How much bias and prejudice goes into that evaluation? I think a lot of publishers steer clear of queer fiction, thinking it won't sell as well, and a lot of what you do find published wasn't even written by queer authors. It's getting better, sure, but I still believe the cards to be stacked against us. Yesterday, an event called PitMad took place on Twitter. This is an event that happens four times a year, where authors scream into the void. You write a pitch for your book to fit into one tweet, tag it with #pitmad as well as additional relevant tags for genre and demographic, and wait for editors and agents to like your tweet. Then you send your manuscript to them, and by liking your tweet they have pledged to read it. This rarely leads anywhere, of course. As with everything else on the Internet, it's a lottery. Was your tweet visible enough? Where did Twitter's algorithm place you when they were scrolling through tweets? And it's hard to market yourself, to try and make your book sound interesting in less than 280 characters. And without an agent, you're basically fucked. You don't get JK Rowling stories anymore. You can't just send your manuscript to a publisher. They won't even look at it. So there are more steps, more middlemen, more people who have to think your book is worthy of a chance, who have to think they can make money from it, before it's even seen by someone who can decide whether it deserves to be published. The market is oversaturated. It's harder than it used to be. There are also indie publishers, but a lot of them are sketchy. I've heard stories from authors who were asked to pay to submit their manuscript, pay for their ISBN, which is not how publishing is done. Most serious indie publishers close their submissions periodically because they get so many. At least by self-publishing, you get it out there, you have the chance to make a little bit of money from it. Some self-published authors have later been picked up by major publishers or literary agents. Some have managed to make a modest living through self-publishing. And yeah, when anyone can do it, you end up with a lot of bad stuff. That's not to be denied. But that's no reason to discount the whole thing. I wonder if a lot of writers believe they're simply not good enough. Most writers of online fiction never even try to get something published, indie, self or otherwise. Maybe that's where the hostility towards or dismissal of self-publishing authors comes from. Why should they do it when I don't? And of course, self-publishing comes with a necessity for self-marketing, which can easily be seen as narcissistic. I'm taking the plunge. I'm self-publishing a book of twenty-four of my short stories. All of those stories are available to read here on GA, though I have polished, edited and, in some cases, rewritten parts of them. I have chosen to believe that I'm good enough. That my writing is good enough. And I'll be pushing my book hard on Twitter. I've been writing all my life and I'm taking this into my own hands. It won't make me rich. It may not really sell at all. And posting about it may not make me any friends. But I'm doing it anyway. It will be available on Kindle and as paperback through Amazon KDP, and also as an eBook through Draft2Digital, to be released on Apple Books and Barnes & Noble, among others. It will be out on the 30th of September. I choose to think I can do this.

Oh, this is a great feature! It's good to be reminded of these stories, and it should be fun for new readers and writers, too. Maybe it'll inspire some of them to submit stories for upcoming anthologies, too.

Same. Never again for me either. Better to have some breaks between books.

This is lovely. Sad, but lovely.

Thanks, @Ron and @Headstall. I get these insecurities a lot, especially when I find myself in difficult social situations. Even when they're over, I can walk around feeling it for weeks. Anxiety sucks. It's good to feel like I have friends, so thank you. I think you're right here, about truth. I always say, truth and fact is not the same thing. Truth is subjective. We make our own truths. Sometimes they're truths about ourselves, destructive ones. Hopefully, those truths can be unlearned. I know I'm trying.

Happy anniversary! I think GA has changed a lot of lives over the years...

I'm in a situation where I feel like if I engage, I lose. No matter how I engage, the outcome will be the same. I feel like I'm being wilfully misunderstood. Like assumptions have been made about who and what I am, what I'm like, and no matter what I say or do, the people in question won't change their minds about me. And it makes me question everything. What if they're right? What if I'm the asshole here? I've tried dialogue, but feel like I'm met by a brick wall, utterly unyielding. I've tried to just pretend like nothing, let things be, keep going on the same, but I inevitably end up in a situation where I say something and it's understood as me being a dick. And at that point, the only thing I feel like I can do is extract myself from the situation and leave entirely, for the sake of my own mental health. Because whatever I do it's wrong. I can behave exactly like everyone else and still I'm wrong. I emulate others, it's wrong. I'm myself, it's wrong. I say something, it's wrong. I shut up, it's wrong. I apologise, it's wrong. I defend myself, it's wrong. I cannot be right. I cannot win. And so I start to wonder, is everyone else lying? The ones who say they like me, care about me, are they making it all up? Are these people the only honest ones, the only ones who dare say to my face that I'm a terrible person? Who's right, here? Who's wrong? Is my brain lying to me again? I'm not responsible for other people's feelings. But I am responsible for my actions. If they've just misunderstood, just created an image of me that doesn't correspond with reality, then there's nothing I can do. But if it's really a question of my behaviour, or who I truly am, then I should try to change that and do better. What can I do? I feel like I'm going crazy, questioning and second-guessing and reexamining everything again and again and again. The prospect of interacting with the people in question makes me feel anxious and sick and scared. I shouldn't care what they think of me, but what if they're right? And round and round she goes.

Thank you, Wayne!

Thank you, Parker. ❤️

Taking testosterone is kind of like going through a second puberty, so your voice changes. There's no guarantee that you're left with a good singing voice... And I'd have to train it from scratch. I have spent my entire life training my voice. A lot of that hard work would become undone. And I like my singing voice. I like the way it sounds and the way it makes me feel. My singing ability is one of the few things in life I'm absolutely confident in. Perhaps the only thing. So I have a lot of thinking to do... Thanks for reading and commenting! ❤️

i stand there, in the light pluck the strings open my mouth, let out my voice and sing they hear me watch me, eyes wide and after the applause and cheers proof that i was here how can i let this go? this feeling this joy my voice has the ability to touch people’s souls my voice is me and i am my voice if i do this if i change the outside to match the inside then this too will change my voice

Thank you! It is a milestone, definitely. Thanks so much for commenting!

Daniel's got himself an alpha! Woohoo! Hopefully, this will be helpful for him. And Shawn clearly isn't as straight as he thought he was, hehe...