Hi! My name is Sare and I’m gender fluid. I thought I’d mention it. My newly chosen pronouns are ze, zir, zirs. I present as a woman and I’m certainly woman-shaped. And on the inside it’s not quite so clear cut. I feel like both a man and a woman. Honestly, most days I feel more like a man… but without ever actually abandoning woman. It’s more like an 85%-15% split in favor of the gender I don’t seem to represent.

And mostly I don’t care.

You know, I’m woman enough to not feel a horrible and grating sense of inner dissonance, and I might just have lived my life quietly without having to really be aware of what was going on inside myself. And even if I was aware of it (as I have been for a bit now), I wouldn’t necessarily have to share that with anyone else. But I am in a privileged position, and with privilege comes power and responsibility, which I can flesh out for you in just a sec… but this is why I’m saying anything at all. Do I feel I need to, on my own behalf? Meh. Not really. But then there’s this power and responsibility, which goes like this:

So, I am a moral leader. I therefore have a moral responsibility to speak truth to power, when I see it, when I can, when I’m called to do so. So for me in my situation, I have a responsibility to be honest and above board and so pave the way and help to normalize this for others who don’t have the moral responsibility to come out.

Second, I have privilege that I must use for those who do not. That privilege comes in a few forms: One, I seem to be a white woman. (Eh, I’m actually hispanic, but I pass as super white bread.) Two, my job will not be threatened by coming out. (Neither job: not as a priest nor exorcist, and not as an author.) I may get some odd looks, but I’m not going to fail to get a parish job I want because of this, I’m not going to fail to get published because of this. I’m not going to be defrocked or barred from performing the sacraments because of this. I won’t be censured because of this. Three, my jobs may actually receive a boost from this, and that is straight up privilege. At least in liberal church circles, I already have a street-cred boost for having a trans marriage partner and staying with her (sad, but true) and honestly speaking, being real about this is only going to add to that. And as for my writing… heh.

Heh.

So, a funny thing about my writing. I know it looks like I’ve written a metric tonne of heterosexual erotic romance… but here’s a funny little factoid.

I stopped Loki of Midgard (as a series) right before I queered the hell out of it. I’ll return to it soon, and write it how I know it needs to be written, with all hell queered out of it, among other things. (Is it suddenly going to become oh-so-queer? Well, compared to the rest of het romance, probably, but compared to the rest of reality, not so much.) Is it going to be easy to pigeon hole? Nope. Nope. Nope.

I stopped writing Debts of Honor (as a series) right before I queered the hell out of it. Granted, there was a little side story of Emile Warwick who I very strongly identified with, that was delightfully queer, but that was a very small bit. Just like Loki, I’ll return to it soon, and write it how I know it needs to be written, with all hell queered out of it, among other things.

Venus In Effigy seems to be totally straight het erotic romance… except for that one minor side romance that was queer as all get out. Eh, but here’s a fun fact: when writing that story, I mostly identified with the male lead, and only occasionally with the female lead. And likewise, my spouse’s issues were occasionally written into the male lead, but most with the female lead. And so in my mind there was straight up gender swap, though it wasn’t clearly evident in the writing.

All that is to say that even if I don’t get an actual reader boost because of my being a queer author, being more honest with myself is going to help me to write what I need to write, how I need to write it, and (most importantly?) actually finish some stories.