A Broke Trans Dude's Self-Pub Literature Crawl

Of all the things I miss about being a person with occasional disposable income, indie bookstore crawls are at the top of the list. If you love discovering new literature by cool people and also cannot afford to drop $35 on a hardcover book you might not even like, I have great news for you: there is an absolutely BONKERS amount of literature being put out on the internet by trans folks, much of it available for cheap or free. Grab some lousy coffee and a tote bag and come see what you've been missing:

PERFORMANCE REVIEW (Aster Olsen)

sci-fi novella, pay-what-you-want on itch.io

Whenever people ask me for a good self-published book, Performance Review is my first recommendation. Before I read Performance Review, I was ignorant about self-published work. I think there’s a tendency in the aspiring writer to lionize publishing, as we must ignore its significant flaws in hopes of securing one of the vanishing paying gigs associated with the industry. The reality of traditional publishing is that it’s a deeply conservative and profit-motivated world, run by folks who will expect gratitude for putting pronouns in your author bio while also censoring anything in your work that might offend a focus group. Trans folks are inherently a socially transgressive subject, so it’s no surprise that authentic representations of our creativity that are grounded in our lived experiences rarely make it to print. Plenty of trans folks and indie publishers are willing to beat their heads against that brick wall to try and get more of our shit through, and god bless ‘em for it; for me, self-pub is starting to show more promise.

Performance Review is an excellent example of the kind of gem waiting for folks who are ready to dip into the world of self-published literature. It’s a dystopian story about a deeply dissociated person who works for a large tech company that provides a popular virtual-reality therapy to its customers. When online life begins to collide with the waking world, our protagonist is confronted with what their dissociation has been protecting them from. They have to navigate their growing understanding alongside the collapsing heat-fried techno-hellscape the world has become. It’s a compelling and propulsive read, and it’s also a deeply thoughtful exploration of trans isolation, identity and loneliness. It shook me up in the best way and the ending haunted me for days. Performance Review was one of my favorite reads of 2024, and it is still unbelievable to me that you can read it right now for free. You should do so.

FLUIDS (May Leitz)

splatterpunk/extreme horror, free audiobook on bandcamp

Horror writing is one of many genres that would benefit from more trans weirdos on the best-seller list. Gretchen Felker-Martin is already a busy lady, and her cis counterparts aren’t bringing it when it comes to good splatterpunk. Anybody can write something disgusting, but I’m not interested if you can’t give me something unique among the bloodshed. If I have to read one more doorstop of a book where some bravely featureless male protagonist’s sweet ol’ mom turns into a maggoty monster and sexually menaces him, I will simply fall asleep where I sit. 

This is why I read splatterpunk written and independently released by trans people. I know May Leitz primarily as a horror youtuber, so when I learned she’d written a creepy book I was excited to check it out. Fluids did not disappoint. It did frighten, nauseate and upset me deeply, but that is a win condition for extreme horror. And Fluids is absolutely a chilling read, a perfectly nasty tale of two lonely and messed up people who find each other on a dating site and escalate a faux-edgy flirtation into a deadly folie a deux. It’s a grindhouse story soaked in genuine emotion and grounded sorrow, which gives the copious gore the pathos it needs to land without feeling cheesy. I loved it and also I never want to read it again.  

LAST YEARS LETTERS (Jess Hutchison, Shane Stephenson, Mattie de Carvalho)

Visual novel, free on itch.io

What do we do about the infantilization of queer culture? I obviously agree that fluffy, sexless portrayals of queerness are not adequate cultural representation for folks like myself. I also dislike a lot of the spill-over cutesy-ness I experience as a big goofy trans dude who loves cartoons. But I bristle at the idea that all sweet-natured queer art is meaningless. Sure, Steven Universe has some annoying fans. It is still a beautifully animated and well-written kids show about exploring queer identity, navigating grief and generational trauma, and the complexities of unconditional love. It isn’t a bad show just because some adults with Problems made it weird.

Sweet things can be made by smart people, and a story doesn’t have to hurt to mean something. Sometimes trans and queer folks need comfort, because our lives are stupid hard. I experienced this when I randomly booted up Last Year's Letters after a particularly difficult therapy appointment. It’s a cozy game where three friends wander through a forest and reminisce about their transitions, powered by a simple hide-and-seek mechanic where the player discovers hidden letters in a pixelated forest. The letters are real notes of encouragement from anonymous trans folks, and they were exactly what I needed to read while processing some gnarly family estrangement bullshit. Listening to chiptune music and jogging around a pastel idyll while anonymous trans folks offered encouragement and humor made me smile when I needed it most, and reminded me that I am stronger when I am connected to a larger community of people who can help me with the burdens we all share. 

…hmm, that’s a powerful message. Maybe someone should make a cartoon about it?

CHARCUTERIE (Magnus Thorne)

erotic horror, pay-what-you-want on itch.io

This list would not be complete without some straight-up smut, and nobody is writing better horny prose than the transsexuals on itch. If I’m bored by mass-market horror, I am utterly numbed by mass-market kink. If trans folks are even included, we have to hope the author can write about trans bodies without making it feel overly exploitative or like a Very Special Episode of Fucking. There’s also a layer of publishers and editors who typically know nothing about trans bodies and the sex we enjoy. The work that is eventually released is often either outright offensive, ignorant about our bodies, or too timid to feel real. Those factors are enough to push me out of the pleasant suspension of disbelief that erotica relies on. If you can write more realistically about vampires than you can about trans bodies, you need to read more self-published smut. 

Speaking of vampires, Magnus Thorne is a writer I’ve been hooked on as of late, and Charcuterie was the first story of his that caught my attention. It’s both a sweet domestic romance and a scorching, aching erotic sequence about feeding yourself to someone you love. It has wild, hot bloody vampire sex with a trans dude. It uses language for a body like mine that makes me feel sexy instead of like a blow-up doll or a learning aid for cis people. Thorne’s prose is loving, lingering, and drips with the kind of hunger that makes erotica worth reading. If you love goopy, creepy porn and horny fucked-up trans folks getting exactly what they want, check his work out. 

(I also loved Sleep Study, a story about nightmares and dubcon/non-con monsterfucking that would fit neatly in Books of Blood. Check the trigger warnings because it’s a rough ride, but if you ever yearned to get railed by a cenobite, you might find what you’re looking for.)

SAM JONES RETURNS (BigNastyDemonFag)

sex and the city/and just like that fanfiction, free on itch.io

I couldn’t finish this without a shout-out to fanfiction, my sentimental first love in the world of self-published works. OK, full disclosure: I have never watched Sex and the City outside of a handful of episodes my friends have shown me, so I am not in a great position to explore the nuances of a horny fanfic about Sam Jones’s transsexual fuck-odyssey. But damn it, I really enjoyed this one. Any story where a big ol’ sweaty bear consensually ravages a trans dude into accepting his gender identity is likely to get my stamp of approval.

But aside from the enjoyable variety of sex scenes, this story has some surprising nuance when it comes to examining the way your previously-supportive relationships are affected when you come out as a trans dude. I appreciated the way it quickly dissected each character on Sex and the City, and how they specifically would be a bummer about transmasculinity. I expected to find it hot, I did not expect to find it cathartic. I asked folks on Bluesky to recommend some good self-published work to me, and despite my ignorance of the source material, this was still my favorite of the lot. Great work, BigNastyDemonFag.