A New Novella About Love, Identity and Transformation
It’s February.
Let’s talk about love.
Not the kind of love we might experience with another person, but the kind of love we can only find within ourselves.
Welcome to a discussion on my latest novella, “Finding Love in a Time of Change”. I’m going to give some insight into what this story is about, and the inspiration behind it that stems from my own life experience.
First, “Finding Love” is about a guy by the name of Lou Viaje. Lou is only a few months into his transition as a male, and we find him struggling with his gender identity and his search for love. It’s a literary fiction piece about one man’s journey into himself after an experience with transphobia. It takes place in Cincinnati, Ohio, and explores themes of self-love, self-forgiveness, and friendship. I love the story and I hope, when it becomes available, that you will, too.
Let me tell you a little bit about how this whole thing began…
Year 2023- I was living in a small, one bedroom apartment in the city. I didn’t much care for it. It sat right on the corner of a busy intersection and the noise about drove me insane (inspiration for the apartment setting for Lou in the story). I was preparing my second novel, Sentient Rising, for publication. I had also had top surgery that January, which completely changed my outlook, my mood, and provided the impetus for this story.
Although my novels contained a side character who was transgender, I wanted to write a short story where the MC was trans. I needed to. And with everything quickly shifting and advancing politically to attempt to drown the voices of transgender folx, I felt our community needed it, to.
And when the world needs something, you heed the call.
Because I was already working on a full-length novel and also working a second-job at the time, I decided to spend a couple of hours every Sunday evening, writing this story. It was also a pledge of deeper commitment to my dream of being a writer. Why spend a Sunday evening watching TV when I could be writing?
Fun fact: all first drafts I have ever written have been long-hand. This has not changed.
Every week I sat and I wrote about Lou, pouring into his life much of my own experiences, some uniquely his own. Each time I wrote, I felt more and more catharsis, as though I needed the healing experience of writing about what it is to be transgender in this country, at this time in the world.
From the scenes where Lou commiserates with friends about being single and whether he could ever find love, to the descriptive experience of giving himself his testosterone injection, I began to see the story unfolding and forming into something very special.
What I came to discover about writing a transgender MC was that the experience had to emphasize the normalcy of being trans. Our day to day lives which are not unique to the lives of others. We all want love, trans or not. Many of us, cisgender, gender-queer, non-binary or trans alike, struggle with dating. The desire for romantic kinship is not reserved for cisgender people. The desire for a life of contentment is not reserved for cisgender people. Transgender people are not things to be objectified, envied, hated, or shamed.
Our alikeness is in our humanity.
After about a year of off again, on again writing, I completed the draft. I found a beta reader to give it a test read and was pleased to learn the story wasn’t a complete shit storm. There was something in there worthy of a reader’s time.
I cleaned up some issues the beta reader had with the story. I asked her if she’d read it one last time. Here’s what I got back:
Thanks be to the Muses!
With the help of Grammarly and some additional proofreading from a friend, my aim is for this story to grace the pages of some literary magazine somewhere. That will be a process of its own. It will take time. But it sounds like I’ve got something here, and I am looking forward to the day I can share it with you.
Thoughts? Impressions? Have you read any stories about trans characters that delve into their day to day lives? If so, I’d love to hear about them.
More on this some day soon.
Thanks for reading-
Jay.