Even though I didn’t expect it — When I came out as transgender in 2018, the first person I called was my American uncle. He’s the only relative I have in the United States I knew growing up as a child, since all the rest are now deceased. I am the only family member besides his wife…

How to identify them and get them fixed — For any writer who has tried the Kindle Vella platform on Amazon, you know there are pros and cons with the platform. One of the latest issues is stories being mis-categorized. When several of us reported the issue to Amazon, they attempted to fix the problem, only for it to…

How and why I celebrate — Despite attending church for a few years as a kid, I’ve always been an atheist. I’ve also known I was trans since I was very young, even if the language to describe my queerness didn’t exist yet. Yet, the holidays, especially Christmas, still hold a special place for me and…

The continuing saga of my ads being rejected — This past August I wrote about how Facebook had effectively banned me from running ads to promote my queer novels. I suspected that someone at Facebook took offense at the promotion of queer romance books, especially ones that contained sex scenes. However, I thought perhaps I might have a shot…

Stop listening to conservative media pundits and do your own research — When I come across anti-transgender rhetoric online these days, most people are parroting the same rhetoric that conservative media pundits like Matt Walsh and Tucker Carlson have been spewing. Many of these points are false or misleading, so I want to go through the most common ones and clarify the…

Because Halloween and created family go together like pirates and candy — It was finally October, and Pete couldn’t contain his excitement. Ever since they brought home Alejandro, the holiday he was most looking forward to was Halloween. Since his own parents had been so overprotective of him as a child, Pete had never once gone trick-or-treating. Alejandro wanted to dress like…

Why it Matters — I have always been an avid reader, since the day when I was four years old and a little phonics segment on Sesame Street clicked with me. By the time I was six, I was reading full-length novels, like A Princess of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs. Since I mostly…

Homophobia in social media advertising — I have been running Facebook ads on and off ever since I published my first novel in 2018. I’ve occasionally run into issues with their advertising review team, but none as seemingly insurmountable as what I’ve just experienced. Why was I running Facebook ads? Over the years, I experimented with boosted posts from my Facebook author’s…

Writing our own voices — I began writing fiction in 2015 and published my first novel in 2018. I’ve mostly written gay erotic romance stories featuring gay, cisgender men. When Amazon announced their new writing platform, Kindle Vella, in early 2021, I decided to dip my toe in the water and write a gay, transgender…