The indie author life is a strange, winding path—especially when your work doesn’t sit neatly on the “nice little shelves” that platforms like Amazon KDP or traditional publishers expect.
If you’re writing heavy queer, sex-forward, no-fade-to-black erotic fantasy (and no, it’s not porn—there’s an actual plot), the road gets narrower fast. Amazon’s algorithms will likely shove you into the “dungeon” just for daring to say cock more than a handful of times, while somehow letting established authors slide by with scenes far more graphic than yours—so long as it’s buried after the first 15% and they already have a loyal following. Translation? Soften your work until it’s palatable for the masses, or risk obscurity. Not gonna happen.
I write for myself. My stories are far from tame and could make your mother clutch her pearls, but there’s no point in apologizing for being me. Writing is my one creative medium—it’s where I live, and it’s what I do. I can’t just “pop on the scene” with the budget for a professional artist, nor do I know many who can. This is the art I make. Words are where I put everything.
Then there’s traditional publishing. If your manuscript doesn’t conform to the market’s comfort zone—if it’s queer, explicit, genre-bending—it’s already a harder sell. Add in being a queer author, and the list of “acceptable” boxes gets even smaller.
And the community? Well, that’s another minefield. Facebook’s reach is laughable. TikTok’s algorithm learns you one week and forgets you the next. X (Twitter) feels like shouting into an empty room. Instagram? Another Meta playground with the same visibility problems. Reddit could be an option—if you enjoy navigating snark, self-righteous indignation, and hot takes about how you should be writing for “the market.” Even asking questions about publishing can feel like sticking your head above the parapet just to get shot at.
I’ll be honest—there have been days I’ve wanted to shelve the whole project. Not because the story isn’t worth it, but because the noise around how it should be sold, packaged, and labeled can drown out why I started in the first place.
But here’s what I keep coming back to: you have to be happy with what you put into the world. You can’t control who approves of it, or who decides you’re “doing it wrong.” It takes only one reader to make you feel seen. One person to remind you why you’re telling the story at all.
My writing belongs on a shelf, too—and if it doesn’t fit on the ones already built, I’ll do what I can, how I can, to build that shelf myself. EchoFyre: The Archive Awakens is just the start. If I have to peddle my work on the streets, or in some dark backroom on my knees, so be it. I don’t expect—or assume—that anyone will want to touch what I’ve written. And to those who do, I say thank you. I’ve always worked better in an environment that doesn’t accept me for what I am. After all, I was born this way.
And in the process, I am slowly carving out my own shelf: Recursion Erotica—a genre that doesn’t yet exist in the mainstream, but will.
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