Tomorrow: Princess

When I wrote Train Track Princes, I had no idea I was creating the beginning of an extended universe with characters crawling all over. What's published and what will be published tomorrow (This Dissonant Princess -- Gemma's story) is only a small glimpse into what has become an insanely detailed setting and group of characters.

A list of Google docs presently unpublished and connected to the TTP:

• Leia BABEY

• Matt POV

• Grayson edits

• The Queer Subjects of a Prairie Truckstop Town

• Garrett 24 POV

• Matt Spelling POV (different than Matt POV)

• Kite & Jamie

• Lysander POV

• Ruh Roh

• The Middle of the Knight

• EMT POV

• TDP Deleted Content

• Spelling Brothers Prequel

• Grayson POV

• Garrett & Ev

I decided I was done looking after this, but my point is that the expanded universe of Train Track Princes has become so large that I have characters crawling around everywhere. I never could have guessed that my intial idea: "What if one kid saved another one from committing suicide?" would go on to become one of my bigger creations, especially being such a short book itself.

One such expansion, of course, is Gemma Spelling. At her Train Track Princes conception, she was a sassy thirteen-year-old who knew maybe a little too much about certain subjects, the youngest and only daughter in a hyper-Christian family who's policed in a very specific sort of way. I knew at the time I created her that there was so much more in her head than the couple of lines she got in her older brother's book.

I already knew Gemma struggled with eating in a similar way to her brother Garrett. I already knew she was angrier than she perhaps let on. I already knew she was on the cusp of rebelling, though at the time of her conception I did not know what kind of rebellion she would go for.

There is an unpublished book between Train Track Princes and This Dissonant Princess that follows Grayson Spelling, and in this book, her transformation begins: Mom-approved clothing is cast aside in favor of Hot Topic pieces. She knows things she probably shouldn't. She seeks validation in dangerous places. This is the chrysalis before she becomes who she is in her own book.

In her own book she is angry, talented, and wounded. She's both confident and self-loathing. She walks a fine line between the two, and all around her are the fires she has started beneath her tightrope.

I don't think this book will be as popular as Train Track Princes, in part because the protagonists of Train Track Princes are male, and queer male couples are read at a much higher rate than queer femmes, but also because their flaws are more forgivable: Garrett and Evergreen suffer quietly for years. Gemma has been kicking and screaming the whole time.

I don't even know where I'm going with this, to be honest.

All this is simply to say: This Dissonant Princess comes out tomorrow.

And this: I love you, even when your flaws are loud.