Throat-clearing, an Introduction, and All That Jam

So I’m me. That’s when you say, “Hi me! Nice to meet you!” Or something like that.

Sometimes it’s awesome to be me, sometimes it sucks hard. I work my ass off and believe in what I do. Spent the better part of life trying to accomplish what I think’s important, living with a sundry of split notions. Masculine and feminine. Mind and body. Inside and outside. I’m seeing more and more how these distinctions are unreal by looking closer at what is real. And I’m moving on.

I work in the secrets trade. The word for people who do what I do is secretist. Try it on. Get comfy. I provide a discreet service, at a cost. It happens in a time and place of elegant appointment. That’s all I’ll say for now. Don’t wanna spoil your dinner. These days, I’m happy with work. I don’t know if I’m getting better at what I do or caring less. I suppose I care about what I do, but less about everything else. I’m relaxing into it. Loosening up.

When I was young, I was in a band. Somehow that’s still a part of me, even though it doesn’t show like it did. Nothing makes people swoon like being in a band. I guess I’m trying to make you swoon a little.

I spent my adolescence depressed to the point of suicide. Spent the better part of my twenties having panic attacks. Found my calling while falling. Spent the better part of my life searching for perfect love. Even after I found lasting love, I spent the next few years trying to disentangle myself from my imperfections. That’s a long fucking while dancing with nostalgic ghosts, dreaming acetylcholine angels on beautiful dopaminergic wings flying to the gates of heaven, only to cross the celestial threshold back to the hollow feelings of waking life.

I like clothes. I never have the money to get the designers I like, but I have a good eye and find decent pieces for what I can afford. I catch people looking. I’m never quite as polished as I want, nor as authentic as I want to be in my look.

I paint. I write. I’m very sexual and often don’t know what to do with that.

I dunno what else to tell you. That’s me.

So …

If that sounds familiar, that’s because it’s from the first chapter of my first novel, Everything Fails. I’m told that about a thousand people have read these words, but I can only reliably count about fifty. There’s a lesson in there, albeit perhaps not a very helpful one.

I open this ‘newsletter’ odyssey we’re embarking upon with the first chapter of my first novel because that really was the seed of my proper writing career. I’d written a lot before that, beginning in fifth grade and stopping only briefly between 2006 and 2009 (I had a lot going on then). I didn’t understand it then, but I was waking up to my true self, including parts I’d neglected, forgotten, or hidden from.

That book happened because a friend of mine, Jenn Toone Taylor, asked me to write with her during National Novel Writing Month in November 2013; and, just as important, because my wife, Julie, convinced me I could do it. Up until then, I’d been a short fiction writer (and have kind of returned to that) and all my attempts at writing a novel had failed completely. But this one did not. It poured out of me, followed by five others in rapid succession, such that by May 2015 I had six completed books. (You can read all of those for free on Tablo Publishing’s website, by the way.) But let’s not get too far ahead here.

After writing Everything Fails (which I thought would be a weird, standalone first novel and nothing more), I tried to write a few other novels and couldn’t make any progress. April rolled around and NaNoWriMo started emailing me about Camp NaNoWriMo, and I thought I’d try that again. I was really tied up in gnosticism and thought I’d try to write about that when it occurred to me how I could do it as a companion piece to Everything Fails. So I wrote These Are the Things I Know, and it did not turn out like that at all really. Over that summer, I started to get a sense of what this strange world of the Thirty-Second Century (or the 32C as I often abbreviate it to) was like. A major recurring character (named Knot) showed up and I saw how this could be a series of books. That’s when the name Secret of Secrets showed up as a kind of label for the whole massive meta-novel, with each book being both just a segment of that work and a completely freestanding novel (that was the idea, anyway; your mileage may vary).

Tablo was a sponsor of one or both of those NaNoWriMo events, and so I was an early adopter of their platform. It’s a super intuitive site for me, so it’s been really quite a lovely place to store and distribute my books. It used to have a social media component to it (kind of), and that was when and where I dipped a toe into the world of promoting my writing and talking with people about it. That went well enough. It was a very limited audience, everyone being a writer themselves, and so there was a baseline commonality that helped. In the back of my mind was this idea that I might eventually move on to Twitter, but. More on that in a bit, I guess.

There was briefly this website called JukePop serials, and they would literally fucking pay you for the first chapter of your serial. You retained all the rights, too. It was awesome. But they quickly stopped paying for them, so I stopped using the site. And was exclusively on Tablo.

Tor UK had this open submission policy, and my thought was, I’d finish the third book–The Grand Story of Not–then submit all three of them. But I choked. Got scared or whatever, and didn’t, and by the time I found the nerve, they’d closed the open submission. Bummer.

There’s this whole other bit where I hired a writing coach, but we’ll save that one for another time.

But around 2015, I felt like I wanted to try social media. I hate social media, by the way, so I looked for ‘alternatives’ to the majors. Of those, the one that stuck (and man alive, how) was Ello. What’s Ello? I’ll defer to one of my celebrity crush’s responses, who said: “It’s like this other thing that doesn’t exist.” And it may as well not. Ello is hidden in plain sight. It’s a known secret, but one no one really cares about. So it’s kina perfect for me.

I’ve met a lot of very cool people there, and if you’re reading this, there’s a strong chance you are one of them! So at this point in our little journey, I’ll spare you from too many details about Ello, both because they are vast in number and you may well know them already anyway. (If you’re not from that lonely island, check it out at ello.co. I’m located at ello.co/tvansantana.)

Anyway, one of those awesome people is Sarah L. Crowder (the ‘L’ is always gonna be there, at her request), who is also doing this substack thing. You can (and should) check her out. She told me about how Elle Griffin was using it, and that kina hooked me. (Check out Elle, too, at The Novelleist. And pay the lady, okay?)

So that’s how we got here! Where we go and for how long isn’t just up to me. It’s up to you, too. So don’t be shy. Tell us in the comments, over on Ello, or wherever what you’d like to see, do, experiment with.

I am … verbose, so there will be a whole lot of content. There already is on Tablo Publishing (something like 15 novels and dozens of works-in-progress) and on Ello (over 11k posts and counting). If you want me to slow my roll, just say so. I’m just trying to make sure you get your money’s worth–and I do hope you are giving me your money!

I’ve based my pricing structure on Netflix’s because I think it’s important for us to examine how and who we value, especially in the world of creative work. So I’m asking you to value me in the same amount as you would a faceless corporation who doesn’t really know you or want to know you. I will hit you up for more money, but not often, and it will be tied to specific projects. And do not feel guilt. I mean, feel whatever you want, but please do not give me money because of guilt or some sense of friendship or loyalty or whatever. Pay me because you believe in what I’m doing, that it’s valuable to you (or perhaps just to exist in the world), and because you can comfortably afford it.

If you’d like to get to know me better, Ello is probably the easiest place to do that currently, but I’m open to exploring other avenues as this goes on.

One thing I have for paid subscribers is videos of me reading my work. The first one is the first chapter of Everything Fails, “Does This Sound Familiar?” (Jeez, T, laying it on thick, aren’t we?) So that’s a big thing for me that I’ve never done before, in part because I am transgender and so my voice and appearance is extra sensitive for me. I’m nonbinary, too, so if you’re impelled to put me in a gender box in your mind, don’t sweat it, but know that’s not how I see myself. My pronouns are they/them, if that’s a thing you want to know, but I also answer to she/her with no issues. He/him stings a bit, so I’d really rather you not do that, if we’re gonna be pals. But I’m not gonna lose my shit over it or anything. I’m 45 and have a pretty sturdy ego, so.

Anyway, that’s where we are. Gimme a shout! Introduce yourself to me and each other. And whether you do or not, you’ll be hearing from me again in another day or two.

And seriously--thanks so much for doing this with me.

Xoxo,

T

Oh, and if you want a hardcopy of Everything Fails, just ask, and I’ll send one your way.

AIS 0001 - Adventures in Secrecy with T Van Santana - Issue 1