Ember White

Author. Publisher. My transfem novella "The Drunk, The Gambler, and The Lover" releases on January 14th!

[emberwhite]

Reading Detransition, Baby is like hunting for croutons in a salad, but you're also trying to gain 150 pounds.

[emberwhite]

"Sometimes the wonder over the object of a crush is indistinguishable from the simple relief that you are still able to leap into one at all."

[emberwhite]

At the t-girl zine release party

[emberwhite]

Sometimes i think im alone when i see emotions turn into scientific words like "dissociate." There, in that experience, you have tragedy, you have beauty to find, narrative and art, and to simplify it all under one mass-produced word is to kill that emotion and potential for all the good that comes from the bad; it is to reduce it to a no, to a stop, to a minor annoyance of others who suggest to not over-complicate things; ghosts live in the past, yes, but wounds scar in the future, and bodies keep the score.

[emberwhite]

"Many people think a trans woman's deepest desire is to live her true gender, but actually it is to always stand in good lighting."

[emberwhite]

"The past is past to everyone but ghosts."

[emberwhite]

"Anyway you make an offer, when your love is ripe or when the balance has completely turned between the two you are choosing from. But a girl is not asked. She is expected to make her choice, and yet she cannot choose, she can only answer ‘yes’ or ‘no.’”

-Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina

[emberwhite]

The more I live in The Great PNW polycule the more this comes true.

[emberwhite]

Not a question but I received a free ebook version of you book and have since bought TWO physical copies (one for annotations, one to keep plain).

I was talking to one of my FAVOURITE teachers who has several degrees in classic literature as well as feminist critical theory, and Dostoyevsky came up. We were talking about good translations as she doesn’t know any Russian and I’m only learning (I definitely don’t know enough to read classics).

Anyways we were talking about his style and prose and I mentioned you and your book to her! (You usually are brought into the convo whenever I inevitably end up talking about Dostoyevsky)

The his was a couple weeks ago and I went in to talk to her during my spare and she was reading your book! I dunno if this is a weird thing for me to leave an ask about but I just thought it was super cool! :)

AWW, that's adorable. I'm really happy you took to the book, and I hope it eventually finds its following over the years.

[emberwhite]

I got called ma'am going into the corner store by a guy outside asking for cigs. I got called a gay faggot on the way out by same guy.

[emberwhite]

After ive made my millions making shitty airport fiction and the disturbing thought of not spending enough time with my wife and kids starts to hit, you realize its time for the 4th tequila. Life does not truly begin until the 4th tequila.

[emberwhite]

Moving into the Greater PNW polycule is kind of like...

There once was a little girl who held a very pretty flower. One by one, other girls would come along and tell her how worthless her little flower was, how it was of no value, and how useless it was to carry around. Some of them would even then ask, "little girl, little girl, why don't you give me your flower since it is so utterly useless? In fact, allow me to dispose of it *for you*."

[emberwhite]

"The dream reveals the reality, which conception lags behind. That is the horror of life—the terror of art."

[emberwhite]

Last night's look. I was told, "you look like an evil billionaire's trophy wife." Hm.

[emberwhite]

I have no idea what to do with my life, so I guess I will just read.

[emberwhite]

There is scarcely any passion without struggle.

[emberwhite]

Author photo.

[emberwhite]

Do you think you have the correct opinion?

I'm currently looking for reviewers for my new transgender novella I just released called The Drunk, The Gambler, and The Lover. It's about how people see you for what you aren't and the life of isolation, loneliness, and addiction that comes with it, a faceless existence. It's about that one day you realize you have been lying to yourself for 20 years and the great unraveling that follows, a conversation about writing, art, and self-acceptance.

(It's in stores or whatever, but just ask me in the comments, and I will give you a free copy. Even a simple star rating goes a long way to support indie authors.)

[harpyjack]

Several things I want to bring up.

Why does this book not mention in the product description that these characters are transgender? Why does it describe them as degenerates instead?

You have the book in the LGBT+ category but that doesn't tell me who you're writing about.

Second off — you don't have pronouns in your profile (not even on your Twitter page!) and you write both transmasculine and transfeminine perspectives. Nobody is asking you to out yourself, but as a transgender writer myself I'm hesitant to offer to review your book given what I see here.

[harpyjack]

I really want to know why this person advertising to transgender people felt that spending the time setting up the ability to Blaze this post was more important than listing pronouns in profile.

[emberwhite]

Hi, I'll try my best to answer your questions.

I didn't list transgender in the product description for two reasons. First, I'm trying to give elicit feelings from the experience of disassociation and dysphoria throughout the book so by when it is revealed as a surprise at the end hopefully the transference of feeling from author to reader might better happen. Second, books like Detransition Baby and Nevada often receive negative reviews on sites just because they are advertised as transgender. It's incredibly difficult to get a publishing deal because of this and tough to advertise to the general public, and as an indie publisher, I'm trying to mitigate that risk as much as possible. I just don't want to attract that kind of negative attention. I've had previous bad experiences advertising my trans kids book.

I chose the word degenerates not because the characters being gay or not but because of the drinking, gambling, and womanizing.

Lastly, I'm writing from the transfem perspective. I chose a really girly name, so I assumed people would just go with "she."

Let me know if there's anything else.

[emberwhite]

Update: I've decided to add the word "transgender" to the book's description on Amazon and other stores. I wanted that part to be a surprise for the reader, but looking at the critical reviews, some don't seem to get the point of the book without knowing this ahead and drop it before getting to the end despite only being 87 pages.

Updated Update: It's been one month and no negative reviews citing "gender ideology" or "transgenderism" yet! My fears and anxieties were exaggerated for the first time in a long time, and they're usually right, not this time, however.