by Thomas Kearnes

I shouldn’t complain. I’ve had a banner year in fiction, and it’s set to end on yet more triumphs. Since the start of this year, I’ve found homes for nearly 35 short stories, flashes and essays. That’s more than double what I managed in any other year. There have been other, more subtle signs that my reputation is growing. I worked long and hard for this. I should be enjoying the ride. Still, I’m nervous as hell.

Most of my upcoming debuts are in gay-themed publications. Indeed, by year’s end, I will have appeared in such venues seven or eight times. Until this year, I appeared in only one or two in a given year. I believe this perfect storm of story debuts is a good opportunity to take stock of my enormous ambivalence about being a “queer writer,” my relations with my fellow queer writers, my relations with queer men in my real life, and most importantly, how my status as a minority writer might influence my business strategies in the future.

Presently, I have three short stories set to launch soon at ManLoveRomance (MLR) Press. This venue has been in operation over five years and boasts some widely known names in queer fiction. Indeed, the gentleman editing my work is an author himself with over a dozen novels to his credit. Alas, MLR specializes in gay genre fiction. Current stories featured include prison-sex fantasies, a gay werewolf saga, a romance set at the dawn of HIV’s predominance, and so forth. All these stories proudly hew to the traditions of their respective genres. Why did this editor select my three literary short stories, you ask? Well, he believes my fiction was fresh and uncompromising, and it would be a fun experiment to see how MLR readers responded to it. Of course, I’m flattered a writer/editor so plugged in to queer fiction believes my work to be compelling enough to risk alienating his venue’s readers, but I dislike being a literary guinea pig. Still, what if my fiction is embraced by its audience…?

I face the opposite problem with another story slated to debut mere days from now. I have one of my patented “junkie chic” flashes soon to be available in PANK’s “all-queer” issue. Unlike MLR, this line-up of queer fiction promises to be esoteric, concept-driven and intellectual if last year’s issue is any indication. Indeed, if you measured the intelligence of us all, mine would likely be one of the lesser scores. I’m proud of my story, but I’m disconcerted over the possibility it will stick out from the line-up like a sore thumb. And unlike my sale to MLR, I have no idea why the editor (a personal friend/colleague) chose it. I’m too chicken to simply ask.

Lastly, another flash recently completed its run at a fledgling venue called (with brilliant simplicity) Gay Flash Fiction. To my surprise, a reader and the editor began discussing it in the thread below the story. I jumped in to thank them for their comments. I learned precisely why the editor had chosen this story and his hopes that more socially conscious gay flash gets written and submitted in the future.  He praised my bravery in tackling the topic I’d selected. (It’s flattering, but I also get unnerved when called brave. That sort of designation comes with obligations, I’ve discovered.) So, perhaps my luck will hold out with PANK and MLR.

As you no doubt gathered from the title, I’m planning an essay too long to be published all at once. If Gay allows it, I’d like to take you, my peers, back through the major milestones in my career and how the homosexuality of myself (and often my characters) colored my perception of these achievements. I’ll discuss how my real-life encounters with other gay men shaped the way I fabricated new ideas, my reaction to sharing such intimate moments with a readership, and what responsibility I feel in being an “ambassador” of gay culture to a portion of these readers.  I’ll discuss my strategy of sometimes writing stories in which sexuality is a moot point or the characters are heterosexual. Most importantly, I’ll discuss how my sexual orientation and my passion for storytelling intersect and how this both inspires and frustrates me.

Alas, it will likely be November before I can continue. If you have any questions you’d like me to answer, leave a post in the thread. No holds barred. Next time, I’ll start with my first published flash that coincidentally appeared in a gay venue, and then I’ll continue from there. In addition to informing all of you, I hope this essay helps me understand my motives for writing what I do and the decision-making process I use to market that work. You don’t know where you’re going till you know where you’ve been.

 

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Thomas Kearnes is a 30-something-old author and artist from East Texas. He is an agnostic and an Eagle Scout. He has published or will publish fiction in Blithe House Quarterly, flashquake, Bound Off, Wicked Hollow, Southern Hum, Underground Voices, Harrington Gay Men’s Literary Quarterly, Forbidden Fruit, Mad Hatter’s Review and Citizen Culture. He has published or will published photography in Bathtub Gin, Skidrow Penthouse, Events Quarterly, Tattoo Highway, Fiction Attic and Noo Journal.

Read some of  Thomas’s incredible stories in PANK.