update from sparkleup

diary/2020-05-24.html

@@ -44,12 +44,17 @@
 <dt>Was there a bit of a journey or story to you uncovering your identity? If so, would you be comfortable sharing with us?</dt>
 <dd>I mentioned character development and growth when it comes to what makes a good story, and I think that that also applies to our lives outside of fiction. My story of self-identification has its own arc, its own pitfalls and high points, and its own character development, even for those who were perhaps at one point seen as antagonists. At points, the act of transition was deliberate and considered to an almost fractal level of detail (my journey to starting HRT being a good example), while at times it was taken with a lightness of heart that seems almost maddening in retrospect. My journey to gender affirmation surgery began with a friend mentioning that they had surgery, me saying &ldquo;holy shit, you can just <em>do</em> that?&rdquo; and then calling up an office and scheduling a consult within a week. As a bit of self-promotion, I wrote extensively on the process in my most recent interactive-project-slash-book, <a href="https://ally.id/book"><em>ally</em></a>, which is perhaps one of the things I have made of which I am most proud. I hope you&rsquo;ll consider checking it out!</dd>
 <dt>How do you think being transgender and polyamorous has inspired or affected your stories? Have you written transgender or polyamorous characters into your works?</dt>
-<dd>I have come out probably five or six times throughout my life &mdash; gay, genderqueer, trans, polyam, ace, etc. &mdash; to the point where I&rsquo;m all but convinced that life is the process of continually growing and coming out </dd>
+<dd>
+<p>I have come out probably five or six times throughout my life &mdash; gay, genderqueer, trans, polyam, ace, etc. &mdash; to the point where I&rsquo;m all but convinced that life is the process of continually growing and coming out. This leads to an awful lot of dealing with the inherent coarseness of identity. After all, identity is psychopathological: we only <em>feel</em> identity when it is something that we struggle with (or, as mentioned above, something we see others struggling with.</p>
+<p>Because of this, most if not all of my writing focuses on identity. I jokingly describe <em>Restless Town</em> as &ldquo;sad queer furries in Idaho&rdquo;, because just about every character in those stories is dealing with identity, many of them queer identities. Often this is taken as a given, since I really like stories in which minority identities are treated as No Big Deal™, but it always plays <em>some</em> role. I&rsquo;ve been told I write too much about gender, and been accused of writing parables, and you know what? I&rsquo;m okay with that. It&rsquo;s what&rsquo;s important to me, and I think that it&rsquo;s important to others as well.</p>
+</dd>
 <dt>You run and operate Hybrid Ink, do you think your identity has inspired what you choose to publish? If so, how so?</dt>
-<dd></dd>
+<dd><a href="https://hybrid.ink">Hybrid Ink</a>, as a publishing house, is explicitly focused on LGBTQIA+ stories. It&rsquo;s in our tagline, in our mission statement, and in everything we focus on, so, not to be glib, but yes, and that&rsquo;s very much the point :)</dd>
+<dt>Do you feel like the issues that affect the outside world involving your identity affect your writing or publishing within the fandom or not?</dt>
+<dd>I struggled to answer this at first, as I would like to say that I am a flexible enough writer to be able to separate myself enough from my work, such that I can write any story. I really don&rsquo;t think that&rsquo;s totally true, though. As I&rsquo;ve worked through my identity, and as I have seen it challenged politically and socially over the years, my writing has shifted drastically to this aforementioned need to show it normalized. There have been times when I have been tempted to take out my frustrations on my characters and write all sorts of horrible situations of them dealing with transphobia or the like, but every time I start a story like that, I immediately realize that that&rsquo;s just not what I need. What I need is a bit of proof, however fictional, that happy queer people exist, and that this is okay.</dd>
+<dt>Do you have favorite queer authors and has their literature affected your writing in the fandom?</dt>
+<dd>Hmm! A few, I think, though with some of them, I don&rsquo;t know their identities, but they have still written formative works. Jen Durbent, who wrote Hybrid Ink&rsquo;s first publication, <em>My Dinner With Andrea</em>, is a pretty big inspiration for me. Ditto Blue Neufstifter/Azure Husky, whose microfiction works have often left me in awe. In terms of works, Max Gladwell and Amal El-Mohtar&rsquo;s <em>This is How You Lose The Time War</em> has had a huge influence on both my queer-writing-ness and personal style, and Hanne Blank&rsquo;s <em>Straight: The Surprisingly Short History of Heterosexuality</em> has very much influenced my non-fiction within this realm.</dd>
 </dl>
-<p>Do you feel like the issues that affect the outside world involving your identity affect your writing or publishing within the fandom or not?</p>
-<p>Do you have favorite queer authors and has their literature affected your writing in the fandom?</p>
 <p>If you could convince everyone to read a single book, what would it be?</p>
 <p>Tell the guild where it can find you, to follow you and read your works!</p>
 <p>Any last words for our readers and guild members?</p>