The Stars Want Blood

Okay, so… we’re two weeks away. TWO WEEKS AWAY! I am going insane. Insane enough that I did have to take a sort of social media break. I am experiencing a great deal of physical and mental health issues right now (I am writing this message out as I receive my first dialysis treatment to keep myself distracted enough that I don’t have a panic attack.) I am very emotional about everything happening in the Starsverse though, enough that I most definitely want to cry 24/7. The way that y’all have shown up for me and my funky lil book will always make me emotional. So, if you’re hearing a weird noise from somewhere outside, it’s probably just the sound of me wailing. I’m not sorry about it.

Book Details

RELEASE DATE June 19th, 2024 (eBook, paperback)
GENRES Adult romantasy, dark romantasy, new adult, LGBTQIA+
LENGTH 166k words (she THICCC)
PRE-ORDER (eBook only) https://www.amzn.com/B0CTGNLZVS/
PRE-ORDER (paperback only) https://etsy.me/4c60uNE
GOODREADS https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/206116326

I Don’t Have a Catchy Title For This… Happy Pride!

Note, all names used below are fake.

It’s two in the morning, sometime in 2020, if I remember correctly. I’ve just gotten out of work. My co-workers and I liked to have these things that we called “union meetings” where, after the end of our shift, we just hung out in the parking lot for hours on end, just shooting the shit. Sometimes, we got weird with it (is there a video of us doing donuts in one of our trucks while me and several others sat in the pool we made in the bed of that same truck? Allegedly. Is there a video of one of my co-workers sitting on top of his truck cab with a fishing pole, fishing in the sewer, while some of the others worked on silently removing the tailgate from his truck to see how long it’d take him to notice? Perhaps. Did our boss once laugh at us about how we couldn’t have our union meeting because it was going to rain really badly so we stubbornly all hid in the beds of our trucks [note: some of us had bed covers so Lucas and Geoff snuggled in the bed of Lucas’ truck while I laid in mine and Jason, who did not have a bed cover, tucked himself into his fucking toolbox] just so that we could union meet out of spite? Maybe.) Actually, the thing that sticks out the most about this particular union meeting is that we all sat down. We all just usually stood. For months, we’d stood. But Lucas was tired, and sat down. It was revolutionary. (We all brought camping chairs the next night and then remembered we have trucks so we could just sit on our tailgates. Nobody ever said we were a bright group.)

So, we’re all sitting down. We start talking about sports. Lucas and Geoffrey are reminiscing about their high-school days of playing lacrosse and hockey. Jason is arguing with us that bowling is a sport. Casually, I mention how I’m considering trying out for roller derby because it seems really fun. All of the other conversation comes to a screeching halt. Geoffrey looks at me and says, “Is this you finally coming out as a lesbian?”

Now, for additional clarification, I should mention that I work in a diesel shop. Specifically, a shop for semi-trucks. I work with almost all country boys. Being politically incorrect and insensitive is kind of a hobby of theirs. And for additional additional clarification, there had been a long running joke about me being the shop lesbian. I was a cisgender, painfully straight woman. But I work in a diesel shop, I drive a Silverado, and when it’s not hot out, I am almost always wearing a flannel jacket. The lesbian jokes were never in short supply.

I’d never been with anybody before but cisgender men. I considered myself to be bi-curious, but not so much so that I’d ever really explore it. I just liked thinking about women. They’re pretty.

But, somehow, Geoff’s joke turned into a three hour conversation that was surprisingly deep and meaningful. We discussed the possibility that maybe, just maybe, I wasn’t as straight as I thought I was. Everybody was extremely supportive and gentle in pointing out the many red flags that proved that I was maybe a little more than just bi-curious. Highlight from this conversation that is not actually related to my epiphany but is too funny to not share:

Geoff: Listen… try being with a woman or with somebody that just isn’t a cisgender man. Maybe you won’t enjoy it. Maybe you will. But you won’t know. Like, I am very confident in saying that I wouldn’t like sucking dick. But do I know that, really? Maybe I do. I’ve never tried. I’m not going to, probably. But I can’t say with finality that I don’t like it because I’ve never done it. I think it’s worth a shot for you. And men? Gross. You need to broaden your horizons. I think you’d like it more. We all just want one thing. We say we don’t, but we do. We all just want—
Jason, suddenly staring off into the distance and whispering: A new tractor.

After that, I begrudgingly opened up Tinder and set my preferences to include other genders. I also learned, based on my swiping pattern, that Geoff and I have the exact same taste in women. We bonded over that. Tall redheads with hipdips… our beloveds. The following weekend, I went on my first date with a woman. I learned exactly how gay dates worked, seeing as it lasted thirty-two hours. And… yeah. Everybody was right. Women. Yes. Good.

Throughout the rest of that summer, I figured out that I am pansexual. It was kind of startling for me. I have always considered myself to be an ally to the LGBTQIA+ community. I was raised in a household that didn’t think much of it. My parents never really commented much on their thoughts, aside from being angry at all of the angry reactions to gay marriage being legalized. And they went to Pittsburgh once on a vacation and didn’t realize it was their pride weekend and ended up in the parade and sent me a lot of pictures of them with drag queens and of them wearing rainbow pins that said, “FUCK TRUMP!” Aside from those instances, they never really talked about it, but I always knew that they didn’t give a shit in general. They never cared about what others were doing in their personal lives, so long as it wasn’t harming anybody else. They just universally accepted everybody. In fact, there was no coming out for me. I just brought my first girlfriend over for Sunday dinner and introduced her to my family as my girlfriend and nobody batted an eye. There was no coming out because there didn’t need to be. It was accepted just as easily as if I’d brought a man home. But it startled me because for all of the many identity issues I’ve had throughout my life, I’ve always known who I was when it came to gender and sexual orientation. I’d never really questioned it before. How much about myself did I not know? I wasn’t ashamed of my orientation, but I was confused that I didn’t know about it until my late 20s.

And then… gender. I’m a woman. I know that much, at least. I’ve always been something of a tomboy, but I love dressing up and the color pink and purses and shoes too. So, why question that? But the more I started to think about it, the more I realized that I didn’t always identify with being a woman. Sometimes I did. But sometimes, I didn’t. I tried not to think about it too much because it stressed me out because like, I know I’m not trans. I don’t identify as a man 24/7. And I’m not non-binary, because sometimes I do identify as a woman. It wasn’t until about a year and a half ago that I discovered what it meant to be genderfluid. That, I think, makes sense for me. Sometimes, I do identify as a man. Sometimes a woman. Sometimes as neither. I respond to any pronouns. She doesn’t bother me. He doesn’t bother me. Sometimes, those feel correct, even. Though, I will say that whenever anybody uses they/them when referring to me, it makes me happy in an inexplicable way that the binary pronouns don’t. (That being said, if you’ve ever called me she/her, don’t feel bad about it! I do genuinely accept that as a pronoun of mine.)

Last year, I tried wearing a binder for the first time. I hated it. I’m large-busted, so it didn’t do a whole lot and was just uncomfortable. But I practically foam at the mouth at the thought of top surgery. I have a complicated relationship with my body in general, but I do feel like top surgery would probably make me feel a lot better about my body for a couple different reasons, one of which being that I think it’d be nice to be less obviously AFAB. I mean, my face and the rest of my body would give it away, but I still think it’d be nice. Something I think about regularly for the future.

As usual, I don’t really know what the point of this was. I wanted to write something related to Pride since it’s June. I thought it might be fun to reminisce about the time that Geoff made me gay (and Jason used that time to lament not having a new tractor,) or the way that I still don’t understand gender and have just accepted that I maybe never will.