Congratulations, your novel is now available!

I caught my breath. Before I could exhale, lightning struck and I was rocketed into an emotional storm of shooting sparks. Hollywood Pride was finally launched, ready to be read. Again, my breath hitched. In an eyeblink, I stepped into a time warp and landed back in the high voltage arena of Hollywood High School, the setting for my novel.

The story takes place when I was in high school. My main character Caroline and I both grew up nerds in a film industry family, rebelling against the mindset of powerful men who viewed teens as easy prey. Like Caroline, I left a college prep academy and began Hollywood High in 1973. She and I both were initially blitzed by the change, and navigated our way with peer tutoring and (to our surprise) joining a sports team. We were both horrified, and initially paralyzed, when we witnessed LGBTQ+ students targeted. Our high school opened our worlds.

The rest of Hollywood Pride is fiction — the characters, the plot, the conflicts. The novel tells Caroline’s story, not mine.

As an indie author, I had the choice of when to publish, and I chose now for several reasons. My country has a sexual predator sitting in the Oval Office. One dictum after another is flying from his desk. Trans doesn’t exist. Nonbinary doesn’t exist. LGBTQ+ is under fire. Books are banned for including LGBTQ+ characters and issues.

Meet a few of my characters, friends of Caroline’s at Hollywood High.

Toni — a Black trans girl determined to get an education, even though she’s “always afraid the wrong person will figure out who I am.”

Blake — “I’m a girl. But sometimes I feel like a boy and a girl, both at the same time.”

J.D. — a student at Hollywood High, living on the streets, gay, the novel’s silent hero.

But I wanted my novel to offer more than the ongoing cage fight that our Commander-in-Chief seems determined to perpetuate. While Hollywood Pride deals with targeting the LGBTQ+ community, systemic racism in education, and bullying, the story also offers several paths to becoming an ally. Ultimately, the novel is about self-discovery (in Caroline’s words, “I’m not who you think I am, and I’m not who I thought I was”) and the power of friendship (J.D. to Caroline, “I like your friends”).

I decided to self-publish — no agent, no traditional publisher — because I wanted to make my own choices, retain full autonomy. My inner lightning storm when I read the you’re-launched email was about more than the novel, because this novel is more than a story. It’s my response to the surge of hatred in the United States targeting the LGBTQ+ communities.

Then, my high-voltage storm was immediately followed by an emotional hush.

Self-publishing an indie novel feels like baring a piece of my soul, placing it under harsh lights, influencers polishing their fangs. I feel compelled to step forward for my friends, for people I’ll never know, for anyone who feels unsafe simply because they’re on the LGBTQ+ spectrum. I’m raising my voice, choosing to publish my views. Hollywood Pride isn’t only about my fictional characters; it’s me, just me, up for public consumption.

Public Consumption. Those two words catalyzed the next emotional surge: What if nobody reads it?

As an author, if you’re writing with the intention of publishing on any platform, then you’re hoping that people will read your work, connect to your story. Maybe some would be moved to write a review.

Write a review.

Those three mighty words led to the next lightning bolt. What if the overwhelming consensus was that I suck? What if my ratings averaged a negative-twelve out of five stars? What if they hated it, every review a grenade, all of them!

All of them.

The next electrical shock. What if all of them totalled zero? At that moment, I realized that my worst fear was NOT that people would think my book was lousy, that my writing was abominable, that my magnum opus was a disgrace to all novels. My Mega-Fear was that that my book would become available . . . and then nothing. A resounding thud of nothing.

When the email arrived saying that Hollywood Pride had launched, the lightning storm immediately launched as well. I spent a few days in the throes of the storm. Then a friend asked a simple question, and I found myself caught by surprise, standing on new ground.

“How many copies do you need to sell to feel like a success?”

My knee-jerk internal responses, in order of appearance (and immediate disappearance) were as follows.

First, I have no clue.

Second, of course, I’m gunning for a best seller, breaking all records to infinity and beyond.

Third, I need to get out my laptop, do some research, learn more about algorithms, make a plan, total immersion in Nerdville.

Fourth . . . and I stopped.

I breathed slowly, steadily. The jagged lightning bolts faded. The night sky calmed, moonlit with promise.

How many copies? The answer was One.

If one LGBTQ+ teen reads Hollywood Pride and feels less alone — if one LGBTQ+ adolescent feels more understood — if one LGBTQ+ adult feels validated — if one person in the LGBTQ+ communities feels seen, heard, supported, respected — if anyone, any gender, any sexuality feels more free to be the person they’re meant to be— then I’ll feel like a success.

On top of that, if someone wants to be an ally but doesn’t know how, if anyone has questions they’re afraid to ask, if they can wrap their hands around one of my novel’s characters who changes to become an ally — then I’ll feel like a success.

Sure, I’m going to try to reach as many readers as possible, to find more than one One. Each time I find a One, I’ll feel a step closer to what our world is meant to be. One by one, I’ll reach for the next One, trying to strengthen a community of Ones, LGBTQ+ and cis/straight, racially diverse, uniting in solidarity.

Together and One.

Like Caroline, Toni, Blake, J.D. and my other characters in Hollywood Pride.