This was adapted from a recent newsletter. (Sign up!)
As promised, my new book, Transgressions, is now only 99 cents on Kindle!
Get it while it’s *flame emoji*. The pen name, Anastasia Fleur, is a French-ified spin on my mother’s maiden name.
Here’s me showing off the print version in front of our amazing DIY bookshelves #pandemichobbies.
If you’d like to help a writer gal out, there are many ways you can do so!
1. You can buy it. It’s cheaper than a soda!
2. You can review it on Amazon or Goodreads. It makes a big difference and some promo sites won’t let you advertise if you have less than 15 reviews. (I’m at 12 right now but the more the merrier.)
2a. I’m also doing a giveaway at Goodreads, giving away 100 copies. Sign up or share!
3. Talk about it with your friends. Always free, always helpful.
4. Choose it as a book club pick. I’ll totally join in if you want me to and address any salient questions about how to describe orifices without sounding silly.
5. Engage with my social media posts on Instagram, Twitter, or Facebook. This helps other people, who may not know about the book, actually see them.
Comment, heart, share, leave comments—whatever you’re able to. (I promise I won’t think you’re a creeper for doing so.)
6. Drop me a line. Honestly, I appreciate any encouragement. Your replies to these newsletters are a lovely relief in these isolating times.
Cheryl Strayed’s most recent Dear Sugar letter (subscribe here) was about a woman who felt she was a professional failure because she hadn’t, for example, had a book published.
Strayed’s response was for the woman to ask herself: “What if achievement was measured by you?” Not the gatekeepers, the institutions, the awards committees, and so on. But by the creators themselves.
What might “success” look like if it was free from the shackles of what we can’t control?
“Rejection mustn’t be the determining factor in whether you should continue to seek, do, and make, if that’s what makes you feel fulfilled,” she writes.
I thought that was a great reframing device and promptly made a list of all the seeking and doing and making in the five years since my first book was published.
I have written 250 advice columns.
I wrote a novel that I never sent out because it wasn’t up to my own standards.
I wrote a second novel that I thought was better and did send that out, which got picked up immediately, and then the deal fell through.
I then got an agent and am (9 months later) still waiting to see if I can get it picked up again.
I applied for two Creative Capital Award grants.
I started an Etsy store selling books and haikus.
I tried to make money on Medium and quickly gave up on that, though they then declared me a top LGBTQ writer.
I wrote dozens of articles about sex and identity and deafness for Vice and New York magazine and the Washington Post and others.
I submitted poetry to 10 places and succeeded 3 times and got paid $0 each time.
I performed at storytelling events, countless readings, panels, and events.
I wrote an erotica story for a podcast that fell through, then I started writing erotica for myself. Then my dad died and that put a halt to everything except cryptic death posts. Then I fell in love with a beautiful woman (during a pandemic!) and she encouraged me to put my stories together into a collection and that became Transgressions.
People said yes and plenty of people said no and here I am still, trying, trying, and trying.
“Seek. Do. Make. Repeat,” Strayed said. “A lifetime of that would be my dream.”
Yours,
Anna
