Why I Write LGBTQ+ Fiction
In my twenties I wrote a LOT of fanfiction. I was a young, newly out bisexual at a time before same sex marriage was legalized. I felt like I was always walking the line between being out so I could find my community and not wanting to put information out there about myself that would make it difficult to get a job or healthcare. Add to that the complexities of bisexual erasure- the few gay friends that I had were adamant that bisexuals were either cowards or fakes- and I tiptoed in and out of the closet for three years before finally coming out.
So what do you do when you’re closeted, terrified and desperate for connection in the late-aughts? You join Tumblr, of course. And you find a community of LGBTQ+ nerds who are just as tired of not seeing themselves represented in books and films and television unless it was to depict pain and tragedy. And you start to read fanfiction that re-imagines popular media with characters who are more diverse, who represent different sexualities and mindsets, and then you start to write it.
That my friends, is how for a period of about four years I wrote a LOT of very, very gay fanfiction. And I enjoyed the community connection that it gave me- I made friends who were like me, who didn’t tell me I was going to hell and who didn’t link me to sermons in Facebook messages or tell me that I was just a coward. I enjoyed the writing and the ability to get feedback on my writing from a seemingly endless supply of enthusiastic readers. It filled a void that mainstream books and television and movies were not interested in filling.
That sense of community and inclusiveness is why the stories that I write are LGBTQ+ stories. I want to write the sort of stories that I want to read and that I desperately needed to read when I was in early adulthood. I want someone to be able to pick up a fantasy novel that isn’t rife with misogyny as a plot device, or settings with the same prejudices and heteronormativity that exists in reality. I want to write horror stories where all of the leading ladies have Final Girl energy, fantasy stories that re-imagines medieval settings where women are allowed to be figureheads and leaders and take lovers as part of their power trips.
I am in love with the magic of LGBTQ+ stories. I am in love with seeing Linus Baker in The House in the Cerulean Sea by T.J. Clune go through a perfectly absurd set of magical circumstances and fall in love and have the fact that he’s gay be as unremarkable to the story as the umbrella he carries. I am in love with the sapphic shenanigans experienced by Delilah Green in Delilah Green Doesn’t Care by Ashley Herring Blake and the soft, desperate romance of Silver in the Wood by Emily Tesh. And I want to contribute my perspective to that collection of stories. I want to make it so that a bisexual woman in her early twenties who loves rpgs and high fantasy stories can pick up a book about a fantastical, magical world and see herself represented on the pages.
