Hey everybody! I remember mentioning in my last post about campnanowrimo that’s starting this weekend, and I thought I’d share with you all my project.
SUMMARY (that may or may not change later): Nirvana hates his dead name, Eliza/Elizabeth, but he has no choice but to accept it. He tries to come out to his parents as trans male while also liking guys, but not technically for sex, and he’s brought down and yelled at for saying that he’s not what he was born as. With the threat of being kicked out, Nirvana sucks it up and continues to go by his dead name because he doesn’t have enough money to get an apartment.
When a neighbor tells his parents that he’s going by something that’s not his birth name like he promised, his parents follow through with their threat and kicks him out. With nowhere to go, Nirvana ends up sleeping in his car for the night near his work, only to be found by his boss, Rhapsody, who not only gives him a place to stay, but friendship and acceptance that Nirvana craves that he never got from his parents.
CHARACTERS: Elizabeth/Eliza “Nirvana” Rivers, Rhapsody Woods, Anton Roberts, Riley Rivers, Karla Summer, Jordan Scott.
MAIN CHARACTERS: Nirvana, Rhapsody, and Jordan Scott
SUPPORTING SIDE CHARACTERS: Anton, Riley--Nirvana’s cousin--, and Karla
Nirvana: This image is what I see Nirvana looking like around the time he starts his transition. I haven’t found a good image to represent the result after he’s transitioned for a while:
Rhapsody: This is the best image that I can find to represent the beauty that my boy is:
And this is the image that represents what I see Jordan Scott being:
To tell the truth about this novel, I had to do a LOT of research to get everything I needed to understand what I’m writing about. I hate sounding fake about things I’m passionate about and it took me nearly a whole month to get everything I needed. Starting with Google searches for what insurance will cover the surgeries, therapy, and HRT, what you have to do so that the insurance will cover everything, the side effects of everything you take (in this case, testosterone, since Nirvana is a male trans), and the many video’s I’ve had to watch to understand how those taking T for this feel during the time they’re on it.
Letting you all know now, I’m not writing this novel to bash trans people. I completely support everything, and I’m hoping with this coming-out story that I’m not misrepresenting anybody in the community.
To let you know more about this novel, as said above, this is a coming-out novel and set around college/university age and Nirvana’s 23 years old. I’ll be writing most of what I had to go through to get Financial Aid to get into college, so that’ll be a personal experience there. On top of that, there’s a major romance sub-plot that can almost be seen as its second genre, because I’m writing a lot of romance in this. The novel includes not only a transgender character, but a non-binary, asexual, aromantic, homoromantic, and bisexual character, so I have a few new things added to this novel that I’ve only touched on in previous works I’ve done.
What I see the word count being for this story... around 150,000 or so words. It’s not going to be a short story, and I’m hoping it can be published in one book. It’s written in 4 or more parts--so far, I have 4 parts planned, but that may change later today. Each part will have at least 6 chapters and at most... 8-10 chapters? (this may change) but right now that’s what it’s looking like. So far, I have 17 chapters planned and I’m in the middle of part 3 of the supposed 4.
For the future of this book, I’m either going to self-publish or actually look for an agent. I’m not sure, but I have plenty of time to think about it and make my decision. I do plan on trying to get traditionally published.