In 1982, after I’d come out but before I headed forth to major in women’s studies*, I was in training to be a licensed practical nurse (LPN) and got crossways with the program and dismissed from it.
That provoked my parents into deciding I was never going to make anything of myself until I kicked the drug habit they were sure had ruined my life. Surprisingly, I did not agree with them.
We compromised: they proposed a high-end ritzy fancy expensive personal-makeover facility that focused on rehab but was supposed to examine ALL the ways in which a person could grow or was being kept back from being all they could be.
Me, I wanted the skillset to grab the world by its collective lapels or collars or whatever, shake hard, and tell it a thing or two about gender and sexual orientation and related shit. (I was what we now call genderqueer, but in 1982 there was no such word as “genderqueer” so I was on my own with explaining all that).
This book takes place over the approximately 2-1/2 weeks in the institution that were the result of all that. It should be entertaining suspense regardless of whether you give a shit about LGBTQ+ issues or psychiatric patients’ rights issues. Maybe I’m less together and more messed up than I think I am, and need more help than I think I do. Or maybe the institution isn’t as benign as they like to make out that they are. Who is impaired, who is dangerous, and in what ways?
Seeking additional advance readers in exchange for feedback and critique.
- For those of you who have any familiarity with my prior books, this one comes directly in between GenderQueer: A Story From a Different Closet and That Guy in Our Women’s Studies Class.
PM me or shoot me an email at ahunter3@earthlink.net if you’d care to snag a PDF and promise to give me feedback
God I hate querying. I wish instead there was some kind of conference, where authors could attend and list what their book was about, and agent and publishers could list what they were interested in, and then there were classes or whatever you want to call them, focused on different subjects or genres or whatever, and people from all contingents could attend and discuss. And in all of that, a chance to connect with a potential lit agent or publisher.
Be that as it may, I’ve done — I think, so far — a slightly better job of treating each lit agent (that’s whom I’m querying) as an individual target of my efforts and really tried to make a pitch to them. It’s harder work than mass-blasting them all with the same, although I’m still doing a lot of that as well of course. But more individualistic / tailored than I’ve done in the past at least. Looking for something they’ve said that I can reference and elaborate on in a custom portion, etc.
I’ve had some really nice responses as beta reviewers have replies with comments. It sounds so far like YES what I wrote has general-audience appeal, never mind whether they give a shit about genderqueer issues or psychiatric-patients-rights issues. That’s really important.
I have received some very favorable and supportive beta-reader feedback on Within the Box, some of it from SDMB folks, and I appreciate it.
Still would like a few additional beta readers. At this point, my focus is on how to bill this particular book: LGBTQ fiction? LGBTQ nonfiction? Suspense fiction? (There is no suspense nonfiction genre, oddly enough, which is actually what it is). Memoir? Narrative nonfiction? Something else?
Please note that if your inclination is to advise me to not shoehorn my book into any of these reductionistic categories, you’re totally preaching to the choir. But the lit agents don’t agree with us, by and large; they’re almost contemptuous of authors who can’t toss their book into a genre category. Maybe they visualize us as setting out to write a book that fits genre X; maybe some authors do exactly that; I didn’t.
I’m thinking psychological suspense. I’m open to other possibilities though.