Genre: Young Adult Fiction/Gay & Lesbian Fiction

Age range: 14-adult

• Where are your books available?

Amazon.com, Foglightpress.com, independent bookstores, and by special order at chain bookstores.

• What is your favorite genre?

Young adult so far. I taught high school for ten years and just love the teenage animal. Kids are so alive and full of potential and they still have hope for the future. As readers, teenagers don’t play around with niceties— they’ll tell you straight up what they think about something and I can take their reactions to my books as completely truthful.

• Why did you self publish?

I didn’t plan to, at first. I was picked up by a publisher soon after I finished my first book in the Foresthill High series and we were under contract for a year. Then, right before getting ready to go to press, there was a dreaded three-month silence where no one would return my calls or emails. A few weeks later I got my manuscript back in the mail with a letter saying that the company was going bankrupt. I went back to the drawing board and sent out a new batch of queries and got a lot of great feedback on my book. The main issue for the publishers was that my audience was too niche and too difficult to market to in their minds—one finally admitted that they just couldn’t make money off of it. I knew my audience first hand and felt that I could find them and that they deserved to have a book series like this to connect to. Thus started my self publishing venture. 

• What is the most frustrating thing about being self-published?

The most frustrating thing is being a one-woman show—writer, marketer, promoter, publisher, errand girl, etc. If the book sells, it’s completely on me. If the book doesn’t sell, it’s completely on me. I am a bit of a control freak, so that works out well for the most part. But there are some days that I want to fire my boss and then I realize it’s me. I whine for about fifteen minutes or so, maybe rebel for an afternoon by going to the movies, and then get right back to the computer and do my job. I remind myself that my mission to reach youth has got to be more interesting than my petty gripes about yet another trip to the post office.

• What has been your best marketing idea?

My best marketing idea was an “Each One, Reach One” campaign that I conducted during July 2005. I highly publicized to everyone I could think of that I would donate a book to a gay youth organization for every book that I sold that month. People like being generous and I could allow them to be generous by buying books from me. I then sent my best customers emails with responses from kids who were given the books. It was an all-around great idea because it was centered around giving instead of selling. When you act as a contribution to society, people often feel led to contribute to you.

• What was your worst marketing idea?

Doing nothing. The best way to not sell books is to not market them. I have had times of low sales because I just didn’t want to be creative, or go out to do readings, or spend money on travel. It’s hard to decide in which direction to spend your marketing dollars—I have been pretty conservative, sometimes choosing to not spend at all because I don’t have faith that it will result in anything.

• What is the best piece of advice anyone gave you regarding your writing?

Love your readers. Think about them first, not the beauty of your own prose. Being clear and attentive to your audience shows them that your writing is a gift to them, not homage to your own ego.

• What is the worst piece of advice anyone gave you regarding your writing?

Anyone who has ever told me that there’s only one way to write. For example, you must do a plot outline before writing a book or you have to follow the rules of convention all the time. People who say such rigid things to writers is like keeping a stable of wild horses in a small pen. They’ll either bust out anyway or kick each other to death. I prefer to let them run all over the place and then tame them later.

• What is the one thing people understand least about your writing?

It’s not a choice, it’s a calling. It’s what I’m here to do. If people don’t like the topics I choose or the content that I cover, then it’s really about them, not about me. I just want to provide a voice to the voiceless and that’s what I’m doing. I want to bring people together and show them that we’re really not so different from each other.