It’s beautiful how helpful people become when you’re venturing into my writing career. All week I have been given so many advice and suggestions about how to proceed with my path. Rather it’s advice about marketing and promoting or just general story ideas, I have been blessed to hear so many people who are willing to give their wisdom and knowledge.
One gentleman, a buddy who’s in the production, was gracious enough to give me advice on how to market and promote my current and future book release without spending too much money. He called it “The Broke Man Marketing Strategy” and found it to work about 80% of the time so I will have to give it a whirl when I get to Ohio.
Now, the best form of information came from my delightful bloke from the Green Line Café. This café is in Philadelphia that I strongly recommend visiting. The food is simple but delicious and the coffee, along with the other beverage, is wonderful – both caffeinated and non-caffeinated. Plus, it’s affordable and the atmosphere is so lovely and QUIET!!!! I got so much writing done within two weeks and I’m mortified that I only learned about this brilliant place when I’m about to leave Philadelphia. Such sadness…
Oh! Back to the “best form of information”:
The LGBT+ series is having me dive into fields that I’m not too familiar with. As a gay man, I am completely aware of the woes that surround me and my friends under the L, G, and B community. However, I’m not too familiar with the terrors and woes that trouble the transgender community. Truth be told, I wasn’t even aware of the problems that the community up until I read about the Netflix series Orange Is the New Black. (Laverne Cox is a wonder!!!) This gave me the idea of making one of the main characters a Caucasian gay transgender man thus beginning my research on the topic.
And, as you can imagine, I began to have a bit of a hydra problem. Every time one of my questions was answered, I ended up have two new questions pop into my head. This led me to an individual who was pleased to hear about my new series and advised me to seek out and interview people of the trans community. That way, I can the character more realistic and relatable to the public. He was even willing to talk about his experience as a Trans non-binary man and everything he had to deal with in his life – both good and bad. As a bonus, he educated me on “talking” and “addressing” the community when conducting an interview and listening to stories. I must say, I think I made a new fan…or, at least, an intrigued one.
Afterwards, I visited the LGBT Center at the University of Pennsylvania and was invited to a speaking event among the transgender community. (Something I’m really excited about!) I was forewarned that this approach would be far more professional than “bum rushing” an individual for an interview. Just like me and my community, they’re just as guarded.
I’m still going to write the outlines for one side of the series (the crime side) but I won’t write the other side (the trans man’s side) until I get sufficient enough information to make him three dimensional. This series is going to be SO MUCH FUN!!!
