It’s 2020. I have been on submission with Silk Fire for nearly a year without luck. I am powerfully frustrated (as I still am) with an industry that seems to only value my writing about gender and sexuality when I position it on their terms, not mine. A certain well-known British fantasy author has gone off on another transphobic rant. I post about how frustrating this is for trans fantasy authors trying to break in. I am too hesitant to name my desire–I want this book of mine to succeed–and so I point out how very few openly trans fantasy authors there are. I say a name and that they are the only one I can think of off the top of my head.

(It is a hot day. I’ve been in the sun for hours. I am trying to nudge the world towards being a place where there is room for me.)

I forgot to name an author. Immediately, one of their fans calls me out. I am erasing their work. I am marginalizing and oppressing them. I say ‘I’m sorry, I forgot.’ This fan and the other author I mentioned DM me, castigating me. I had considered both of them friends for a long while, other trans writers and readers dedicated to improving trans representation in the industry. I am horrified. I have grown up hearing how sinful I am. I have harmed my community.

Everyone knows you’re jealous of all the buzz BOOK NAME is getting.

Am I jealous? I’ve posted excitedly about this book since it was announced. I redouble my posting and buzzing. In the back of my head, I remember a conversation with an editor. Trans rep, huh? We’re publishing BOOK NAME. It’s a great book. Have you heard of it?

Yes, I’m excited for it. It looks like a great book. You know, I also have a trans book coming out with your imprint. I describe my book.

Oh. Huh. I must have been in the acquisitions meeting when we bought it. But I don’t remember it.

I feel awful. Am I jealous? The book launches as an instant bestseller. The author’s career takes off. I stay on the midlist, fighting for sales. Did I bring this on myself? I get an editor for my adult fantasy and lose her a few months after. I have to launch a book with my publisher on strike. My YA fantasy novel is pushed back a year due to delays I have no control over. This is how the industry works.

Transphobic harassment fills my notifications. I reach out to other trans people and allies in the industry for help. Some of them support me and keep my sanity from snapping. Many, many of them tell me to stick with community advocacy and stop pushing my books so hard. They like me so much better when I’m pushing theirs.

Did I want too much?

I want to be a fantasy author. I want the stories that move me to find their readers, to be loved and celebrated. I want my publishers to be excited about working with me. I want my books to be well-designed. I want my publicists to have marketing plans. I want my books to be edited well and in a timely manner. Plenty of authors have this; at least, some of this. I am three books in and have earned out two advances and basic professionalism feels like a luxury reserved for others.

What did I do to deserve this? The part of me raised in an evangelical-leaning church has the answer. I have sinned against Diverse Books. I did not subvert the Problematic Trope. I wrote Outside My Lane. I have failed Intersectionality. When I read Yellowface by R. F. Kuang, I found myself sympathizing in parts with June Heywood and her struggles with seeing the book she loved abandoned and uncared for by her publisher. My god. What a terrible person I am. I would probably steal a manuscript from my dead friend. Simply existing in this industry can rot your brain. June Heywood robs the dead. I feel a modicum of sympathy for a bad person in a literary novel. Surely this is a judgement upon me.

The part of me that understands the media business has the answer and it’s a better answer. I’m not an influencer with a big platform. I keep my personal history quiet and avoid using my biography as promotion. Morally-grey queer characters aren’t in style. Many publishers are making budget cuts and everyone who isn’t a lead author is getting screwed. It has nothing to do with me.

The narrative around Diverse Books goes as follows: once upon a time there were Bad Books like The Continent or American Dirt. Good People did Activism and received lots of money to write Good Books. Now publishing is Good. As long as we can still point at Bad, of course. Maybe that Latina author writing about internalized racism is as bad as the white author writing a racist caricature. Maybe a trans man writing about surviving abuse is as bad as a cis man who abuses people in real life. The more Discourse about Bad Books, the more Good Books we get. The health of authors (real people) is an acceptable price to tell the story of A Twenty-Billion Dollar Industry Is Not Problematic.

It is not a narrative about the economic barriers that prevent marginalized authors from developing their talents and ensure every story about that community is told by the most financially advantaged within it. It is not about how publisher consolidation makes it challenging to build promotional infrastructure that could create steady careers for authors outside the mainstream. It is not about how marginalized authors are incentivized to tear each other down over nothing in order to position themselves as authorities on their identities. It is not about how publishers exploit diversity activism for financial gain.

There is nothing useful in nitpicking through the narrative of a book to locate its sins. There is nothing useful in nitpicking through an author’s social media history. There is nothing justifiable in publishers mistreating marginalized authors, both by failing to promote their books and by promoting them as the sole voice of their people. Both June Heywood and Athena Liu are being mistreated by the industry and the tragedy of the book is that a movement to end discrimination in publishing has become a cash-in at the expense of the authors it was meant to uplift.

Instead of building long-term careers for marginalized authors, publishers acquire one or two books they will use the author’s biographical information to promote. They will then discard the author.

Instead of building a literary canon of black trans authors whose works will inform each other, as white cis authors do, publishers will pick one black trans author to have a career and decide the others are “difficult”

Instead of allowing trans authors to write a vast spectrum of stories, we are expected to write fluffy feel good romances lest someone be offended. We are then told the fluffy feel good romances do not sell.

No matter what anyone says about ‘problematic’ elements in Brandon Sanderson or Sarah J. Maas books, they are guaranteed careers for life. Marginalized fantasy authors, especially queer authors, are publicly abused in the name of ‘promoting diversity’ by the same fans who will say anything to support their favorite Big Names.

There is nothing I have done to deserve being mistreated by the industry I work in. The one thing I can point at is, well, I advocated for trans books very loudly in a way that did not always make me friends. But that needed to be done. Messy as it was. What the books that came out of that did for trans children is too important to ever regret. Am I jealous of some of the authors who make a lot more money than me? Sure, sometimes. But that emotion is meaningless. It doesn’t affect how the industry sees me. I don’t think about an ant being jealous of other ants when I step on it.

At the end of Silk Fire, Koré tells his father that happiness is the sweetest revenge. To pursue happiness–to pursue art, to pursue success, to chase desire–is no longer a shameful thing for me. I do not need to justify my desire to write as a form of activism, and I do not need to diminish my own value by abusing myself or internalizing abuse from others.

I believe my books have value. I struggle with this. I wish Silk Fire had a bigger fandom. After everything I have gone through to be a traditionally-published fantasy author, the fact that maybe only ten or fifteen people care if I put out another fantasy novel hurts. It hurts my ego, and it hurts the part of me that believed SFF was a safe space.

I will still put out that next novel. I will put out the one after that, and the one after that, and onward. Some college student will get a million-dollar-deal, and I will be jealous, and that feeling will pass, and I will write books.