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Happy Hearts Day

As those of you who are reading/have read She’s Not the Man I Married know, Valentine’s Day has always been some kind of locus of confusion for me & Betty. We’re in much better shape now than we once were, though when we’re planning dinner, or just having the “So what do you want to do for Valentine’s Day?” conversation, there’s still this silent thing that hangs in the air.

That silent thing is what gender Betty is going to be, which she’ll be perceived as, & how exactly I’m supposed to interact with that gender.

Mostly now I try to go into Valentine’s Day assuming that the person I’m with will be seen as female, which pretty much wrecks the PDAs that I prefer. Sometimes the reality that I really miss having a male partner lands squarely in my lap on Valentine’s Day, too, so I have to wrestle with the guilt and fear I still fear in having a trans partner. The thing is, I still don’t know how to be romantic with her if I’m not feeling masculine-ascendant myself; I don’t know how to be female with a female partner. & This year, maybe because I’m feeling vulnerable because the new book is out there, or because we’re going to have “the big talk” about Betty’s transness with some important people in our lives, I’m feeling a bit – intrepid.

Sometimes I just think Valentine’s Day should be tossed altogether. I mean all it does is make single people miserable and puts a lot of pressure on couples that are newly together – well, on all couples, I think. I mean how many of us are the types in the jewelry ads, having dinner & being presented with the new diamond solitaire? No one I know is like that, but kudos to anyone who is. But for me, this year, despite a planned dinner at our favorite Italian restaurant, my feeling is:

Down with Cupid!

Continue reading “Happy Hearts Day”

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9th Preview of She’s Not the Man I Married

Well, we’re almost there, folks: the official pub date is just two weeks away, and I know many of you are already reading or have already read She’s Not the Man, but for those who aren’t, this is the last preview I’ll be putting up. It’s from my Preface:

This book is a sequel to My Husband Betty, at least in that our story and my reasons for thinking about gender take up where it left off. Mostly it is a love story, our love story, which, like any other, is not typical. It is the story of how a tomboy fell in love with a sissy, how a butch found her femme, how a boyish girl met a girlish boy. Who is who is not always clear and doesn’t always matter. In some ways, that’s the heart of this book: the idea that a relationship is a place where people can and do and maybe even ought to become as ungendered as they can. It comes from my very specific dislike of Martian men and Venusian women and the adversarial ideas about relationships that permeate our culture. While I am not interested in a genderless world, I am curious about the ways that gender can be manipulated in a romance, the ways it can be controlled instead of controlling our roles.

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The Year of Magical Genders

When I started writing She’s Not the Man I Married, I was thinking of Joan Didion’s The Year of Magical Thinking, which made me think about driving up a mountain road in order to see something a ways off, & the way the road curls around the mountain, so that every time you go around a bend you get a slightly different perspective of the thing you’re trying to see.

I think that’s what this book does. I hope so, anyway. That very same aspect of it also makes choosing excerpts to read aloud kind of difficult, as right in the middle of a narrative about one thing I tend to go off on a huge tangent about shoe-buying or faghags or something. It’s thickly layered, in a sense, so that it’s hard to just pull a piece out that doesn’t loose something in the excerpting.

So now that the first review has come up, and the word “repetitive” appeared in it, I can’t say I’m surprised, but I’d argue it wasn’t unnecessary. Ineffective, maybe, but I was doing it for a reason. “Humorous” and “self-deprecating” are much more accurate.

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First Event

We leave for First Event today, and are really looking forward to experiencing this legendary trans conference. Just so you know – and because I probably won’t be answering emails for a bit – this is what I’ll be doing at First Event:

on Friday:

  • a reading from She’s Not the Man I Married during the luncheon
  • a trans sexuality workshop open to all

on Saturday:

  • a workshop for partners/SOs only
  • the keynote speech during the Awards Banquet

Betty will be with me, and we’ll otherwise be around, so do say hello if you see us.

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AMS, PGW, Avalon & Perseus

The big news in publishing is that AMS (American Marketing Services), the company that owned one of the biggest book distributors in the country, PGW (Publishers Group West), filed for bankruptcy a couple of weeks ago.

It’s huge news because PGW’s distribution services effectively enable tons of small independent publishers to get their books out there, publishers like Soft Skull (who published Charlie Anders’ Choir Boy) and Cleis Press (who publish some of Tristan Taormino’s books) and McSweeney’s (who publish things like The Believer magazine and authors like Dave Eggers and Nick Hornby).

I’ve been very lucky in all of this, because my publisher, Avalon (APG) has been purchased by Perseus Books, who have their own distributor and a reputation for giving independent imprints room to be – well, independent. Avalon was the umbrella group for both Thunder’s Mouth Press (who published My Husband Betty) and for Seal Press (who will be publishing She’s Not the Man I Married). That is, I dodged a bullet because APG was first in line to be purchased, which is not true for other smaller independent presses like Cleis.

The final impact of AMS filing bankruptcy is yet to be seen. What’s being predicted is that many small publishers will just disappear without a distributor that serves their needs, and also because many of the moneys they were owed will not be paid to them, or because any buyout of AMS will mean investors will be able to buy for pennies on the dollar. It may turn out that Perseus will help PGW, which is good news indeed: PGW was created decades ago in a publishing environment that was much friendlier to growth than the current one is.

All in all it’s a huge mess with too-numerous legal battles to follow.

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8th Preview of She’s Not The Man I Married

Excerpt from Betty’s Afterword:

I walked into a meeting with Helen recently and someone we both know said, “Betty, I didn’t recognize you. I thought you were a woman,” when she first saw me. She was looking for “Betty” and all she saw was “some woman” with Helen, instead. She meant I didn’t look trans and that made what I see in the mirror more real. It was a backhanded compliment, of course, but the nut of it really struck me. More and more, I really do look like a woman.

Jeebus, does Helen know this?

Yes, she does.

It’s odd, this life of ours, and I’m terribly aware of my culpability in said oddness. It is our life, though, and there is no one on the face of this earth that I’d rather be with than Helen. She really is the girl I always wanted to meet. And wouldn’t you know it? I met her . . . and she liked me back. And we got married. And I feel like a lottery winner. I’m amazed that she feels even remotely the same about me—the guy who looks like a woman a lot these days. But she does.

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Pre-Order Signed Copies

Since people have asked, I’ve set up a PayPal link so that folks can pre-order signed copies of She’s Not the Man I Married. From what they tell me, although the publication date is 3/1, the book will ship on 2/1. I can’t promise I will get you one before Amazon can, but they can’t get you a signed copy and I can!

Please try to get me your order by 1/22 if you want one in a hurry – but of course there’s no deadline otherwise, as I will continue to sell signed copies through this site.

(Apologies to the Safari users out there – the links aren’t working yet but will be shortly.)

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New Year’s Revolutions

I used to be one of those people who wrote down my New Year’s resolutions & sealed them into an envelope that I stored away to find & open the next New Year’s. Amazingly enough they did me no good like that, a private forgotten stash of good intentions.

So this year I will announce my intentions to the world, or to whatever tiny percentage of the world reads this blog, & see if that does me any better.

I, Helen Boyd, do resolve to undertake these resolutions resolutely:

  1. I will lose another 10 pounds this year.
  2. I will try not to worry myself to death over the reviews of SNTMIM, and instead actually take a minute to enjoy getting published again.
  3. By the end of the year, I will be on some path that will lead to making money in jobs I don’t hate.

Three is enough; for anyone who knows me or has gotten to know me through this blog, these three make up quite the tall order.

So what are yours?