You Could Win a HOTSHOT ARC

PLUS: Notes on writing past identities and an AMA

My forthcoming book, Hotshot, debuts in…seven weeks?!?!?! What?!

Right now you can enter to win an ARC (Advance Reader Copy) on Goodreads. Yes, you have to have (or create) a Goodreads account, but the odds are good, and it’s a physical ARC, so you’d receive it in the mail. If you win you can email me (revirybles@gmail.com) and I’ll send you a signed bookplate.

My book’s publication date has a far off future event for so long (I sold it on proposal waaaay back in 2019, and turned in the first draft in August 2020) that it’s hard to believe it’s now less than two months away. I keep thinking about my younger self: That nineteen year-old who pulled into the wildland fire company compound in Eugene, Oregon. A community college dropout, still a teenager. A survivor of sexual assault, abuse, and a total badass who was steeped in self-loathing and couldn’t see her own potential.

It’s hard to believe that was over 25 years ago, in the spring of 2000. I identified as bisexual but had no language for the discomfort I felt when it came to the expectations of being a girl. A woman. There was no “nonbinary” back then, and my upbringing had been steeped in homophobic undertones. I hated my body and was actively bulimic. Some nights I’d walk the streets of Eugene, high on whatever substance I could get my hands on, listen to music, and wish I lived in one of the nice, warm family homes, whose windows emanated light into the darkness. Other nights I spent with my best friend, a brilliant person who was also a drug dealer, snorting Ketamine he cooked to powder in his cast-iron pan. Sometimes I’d go hang with the college students I’d met the summer before, when I worked for OSPIRG, always bringing some MDMA or pills along because I didn’t think my company was enough for them to want me there.

A whole different life. A different person, but the same.

In the past few weeks I’ve been interviewed twice, and during one interview we discussed how queer Hotshot is. It’s a book about a young woman, but written by a nonbinary person. About a queer person who loved women but was scared to love women because what was love without the performance of satisfaction and desire? What was love without feeling oneself from the outside, through someone else’s gaze? Without a wall between one’s true self and the whole world?

Never once in my book, outside of the introduction, do I use the word “nonbinary,” yet my struggle as a nonbinary person infuses the book. Any nonbinary person will recognize this, but others may not, and that’s okay.

There’s a tension I feel when referring to my past self as “she” and “her” and “girl” and “woman,” and I’ve decided to let that tension live in me like a live wire, sparking and curling in on itself, because that is the tension of living in a society that refuses gender expansiveness, that polices gender norms no matter what party leads us into the future.

The tension exists regardless.

It’s part of being queer, being trans. Being different than whatever standard is set as “normal.” People die for this, spiritually, emotionally, physically. People are killed for this. For being themselves. I won’t go into the many oppressive laws being enacted by this administration, because it was happening before, too. Sometimes it feels like we’re moving backwards in time, but then I speak with the people I love and remember how strong we are. The waves of forward and backward movement. I lean forward, into myself, and gather my courage.

So, seven(ish) weeks out from publication, I let this tension exist because it has always existed and will always exist. But at the same time, I ready myself for my book’s release. I hand this book to my younger self, so she has language for her experiences.

Next week I begin recording the audiobook. I can’t wait. I’m so excited to give my book a voice. It took me so long to find my own.

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Some Book Recommendations:

Please pre-order my book– if you do, send me a picture of the receipt (at revirybles@gmail.com) with your physical address and I’ll send you a hand-painted/collaged postcard! Bonus if you order it from your local indie bookstore!

• Tourmaline wrote this beautiful book about Marsha P. Johnson. I mean, the cover is gorgeous, but the book itself is beautiful, too.

• Forest Euphoria: The Abounding Queerness of Nature is now in my TBR pile. I haven’t read it yet, but I know I’m going to love it.

What are you reading?

AMA (in the comments) about writing and publishing.

Do you have questions about writing and/or publishing? Ask them in the comments below and I’ll answer!

And don’t forget to enter the Goodreads giveaway (and/or add my book on Goodreads)!