A Transgender Journey: Grimoire - The Decade Question

[Sarah]

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Greetings everyone! For many years on this forum you've known me as Nero, and, obviously, recently I requested my username be changed to Sarah. So, hello, I'm Sarah, in fact, quite literally. I'm only revealing that Sarah is my real name because, as a transgender woman, I have revealed both of those facts to the world through a memoir I recently published to Amazon, detailing the past decade of my life and a series of pertinent events that took place leading up to the day I finally came out of the closet. The book is titled, Grimoire - The Decade Question.

For years I kept a journal, writing off and on in it, mostly poetry, as I fought through various bouts of depression and negative events. That journal became my grimoire - a witch's book of magick; I have dabbled for some time with Wicca. I always wanted to do something with those poems, so a few months ago I transferred them to the computer and compiled them into the beginnings of a book. I sent that file to a few friends, and one in particular told me that my full sentences were better than my morbid, often confusing poems. That set me on the path to now, where I started another document, but this time I started writing chapters. I didn't know what to write, so I wrote about myself. I wrote about all the bad things that happened from when I first began questioning my gender identity at 20 to the day I came out - actually my birthday, when I turned 30. It's not about transitioning, which I am doing now. It's about getting there - a part of being transgender I think is overlooked: that private part where you hide the truth about how you really feel, how you continue living a lie, and how that almost destroys you.

Grimoire is not a book for children. If it were an album, there would be an Explicit Content warning on the cover - so I'll put one here - I talk about many things and events that are probably not topics of discussion in polite company. I try to remain civil, but sometimes an obscene word felt warranted. Currently the book is available only in paperback and hardcover - the reason for this is that ebooks are a real pain to format, and while I do have an ebook version, Amazon kept messing up the formatting when I'd upload, so I'm hoping I can hire a professional service to format it for me, but later; currently there's no affording that.

Thank you in advance for just reading this post. Thank you in advance to the admins for letting me post this. And, if I've interested you in my tale such that you give Amazon your money for a copy - I swallow the printing costs too, so I see less than 25% of the profits - I want to give you a big air hug through the internet, and say the biggest thank you, to you. Thank you! Thank you so very much!

Edit, for anyone reading this in the future: My book is no longer available. Thank you.

[Rachael]

I hope that this does really well and wish you all the best in your future journeys. :3

[Sarah]

Thank you so much Rachael! I really appreciate you letting me post about it here. I'm not active on most social media so self-promotion is a challenge.

Also, while Amazon says "This title has not been released" - well that's Amazon being slow, technically it has, it's just Amazon's system slowly updating. I know a couple of friends have pre-ordered. It might be I'm in a printing queue or something, I'm not sure, information regarding what happens on their end is lacking at best. I'm also an impatient Virgo so I did jump the gun a bit posting about it now. So thank you to anyone that even looks at it!

[Enjay]

It's a brave step to put something so personal out there. I hope this does well for you and I hope that it is helpful to those going through a similar experience and to those not going through it but who are open to learning and understanding.

[xenoxols]

I hope this does well. It's always good to see more trans voices.

[Sarah]

Thank you both for your kind words! I've lost - or more aptly, shed my shame of who I am by telling this story. And, Enjay, you are absolutely right. I wrote this first as a result of trying to get my poetry out there, but secondly because I want others to know this journey is probably the hardest thing you'll do in your life, and it is hard for a reason: if it wasn't hard, it wouldn't be worth it. So really do hope I deliver two things: hope and understanding.

[PSTrooper]

Neat I will have to check it out soon.