Updates, I Have a Few

As promised, announcements! This post will be split into two parts, covering two very different updates. I’ll start with the bit that I think most everyone is more interested in.

Final rewrites on the long-awaited next Daniel Faust novel are done. In the can, wrapped up, finished, and I have an appointment with my ever-reliable editor Kira to go over them starting in April. As soon as she’s finished, it’ll be out and in your hands. No teases, no long pre-order periods, no malarkey.

I can’t apologize enough for keeping you waiting so long. As I’ve explained before (you can find old posts about this), the dawn of the pandemic was my brain’s cue to shut down for a bit and generally force me to come face to face with increasing levels of burnout and neglected mental health issues, and I needed to handle my shit before getting one more word down on the page.

I’m pleased to say that with modern chemistry and a damn good therapist, I’m back to work. And working with a more healthy, sustainable mindset than before, which should help me to both deliver regular books and better ones going forward.

Will it have been worth the wait? Gosh, I hope so, but that’s for you to decide. I can only tell you that it’s got action, violence, laughs, adventure, kissing, more violence, and visits from some very, very old but familiar foes.

My next book up at bat will be, naturally, the next (and also overdue) Harmony Black novel. Never Send Roses has been plotted out and I’ve gone so far as to reserve editing time for it in advance, as a show of confidence that I’m back on my feet. The outline’s done, and it’s going to be a blistering occult-spy chase that picks up right where Black Tie Required left off.

Not to leave the Sisters of New Amsterdam mythos behind, the next project on tap is a sequel to The Hungry Dreaming. There’s not much I can say about this right now, save that Nell, Tyler and Seelie will be back for a new adventure in NYC, along with the usual (and a few unusual) suspects.

Am I back at work? To quote John Wick, yeah, I’m thinking I’m back.

This marks the first half of the big update post. What remains is purely personal, so if you want to bail, now’s the time. Goodness knows I almost bailed on writing it — repeatedly — but my therapist had a poignant insight (as she so often does.) To wit: “Hiding yourself, burying yourself…it’s a form of psychic death. I get that you’re afraid, but you know your audience. They won’t abandon you.”

I’m a very private person, by nature, but sometimes there are good reasons not to be. So. Here we go.

Today is the annual Transgender Day of Visibility. Normally I would make a hopefully-amusing-but-supportive comment about seeing folks. Today is something a little different.

Hi. I’m trans. After spending my entire life in the closet, today I’m coming out. (Which makes this the scariest day of my life, even counting that one time when I was on the It’s a Small World ride at Disney and the ride broke down for nearly an hour. Nearly an hour with that song playing over, and over, and over, surrounded by dangling mannequins, and did you realize a ton of those dolls don’t have FACES? And people wonder how I ended up writing horror. Anyway, I digress.)

Really, that’s the gist of it, but I understand some folks (very reasonably) may have questions, and I’ll try to have answers.

Many of my earliest memories are of suffering from gender dysphoria. It is a level of pain that may be difficult for those who haven’t felt it to understand (which is not a judgment of any kind — I’ve never had kidney stones, for instance, and I certainly can’t grasp what that feels like outside of other people’s descriptions.) Suffice to say that when you hear about people, especially young people, being pushed to the brink of suicide over unresolved dysphoria, please understand that it is not an exaggeration. There were a number of points in my life where if I had chosen differently, if I hadn’t had cherished friends to get me through, I wouldn’t be here today.

To condense a very long journey into a paragraph or less, I finally reached the point some time ago in my adult life where it was just…time. So I sat down with my family of choice, the people of my heart, and shared how I felt. I was — have been, still am — unspeakably blessed to have their support. A bit later, because these things need to be carefully considered and tried out and tested, I officially changed my name to Heather. Hi. I’m Heather Schaefer. Hello. Nice to meet you.

Not that it’s a recent meeting, really. All that’s changed, and I cannot emphasize this enough, is that I’ve altered my outer life to match my inner one. I have always been the same person, inside, where it counts. Every book of mine that you’ve ever read was written by Heather Schaefer, they just had a pen name on the cover. (Or to put it in a much cooler way, you know how Batman is the real person, and Bruce Wayne is the mask? It’s like that. With less punching and more hugs.)

To put it another-another way, I’m the exact same person you’ve always known except my hair is a lot curlier and I dress a little like a stern-but-fair English Literature professor.

So, considering I’ve been cruising along just fine for quite a while maintaining the masquerade, and I have nothing to gain but a great deal to potentially lose from coming out, why am I coming out now?

It’s no secret that certain talking heads in the endless (and endlessly tedious) Culture Wars have decided to make trans people the #1 enemies of society. Which, if you’re old enough to remember, is staggeringly reminiscent of when the exact same people decided to make gay and lesbian folks the #1 enemies of society back in the 80s and 90s. Same talking points, same recycled bigotry…but then, they wouldn’t do it if it wasn’t effective, right?

I can’t help anybody by sitting in the closet. Nobody but myself, playing it safe. A lot of people don’t have a choice in that matter, but I do. So here I am, coming out to show you that hey: if you didn’t already, now you know a trans person! Me! And I’m not scary or dangerous or weird — well, okay, I’m a writer, and all writers are weird — but you get my message. The best means I have to make a stand against bigotry, and to stand up for people who need it, is to just to be out and to be myself. Which leads to the second reason for coming out.

I believe that the best art comes from authenticity. Authenticity in the work itself, in the artist, and in how the artist relates to the world. And while I feel I bring that to my stories, every single time I interact with you all as readers while passing, pretending to be someone I’m not, no matter how well-intentioned, just felt…wrong. Deceitful. Which is not something I ever want to be.

So today’s the day to set things right and be myself, in view, all of me.

Which is not without risks. My old mask was a safety net, considering a not-insignificant portion of the population views trans folks as anything from an acceptable and fun target for bullying to murderously hating us. I may lose readers over this. Might lose business opportunities. I hope not, but I’d be painfully naïve to think otherwise. But writing and storytelling and creating is what I was put here to do, it’s my purpose in life, so authenticity in the pursuit of artistic and personal improvement is always the right choice to make.

I hope you’re cool with that, and I hope we can still be friends.

You might have questions! I’ve anticipated a few:

— So what changes, going forward?

Nothing whatsoever. Like I said, the me who wrote all my books is still the same me. Always has been, always will be.

The only thing that’s different is on my end. My world is a lot more dangerous, now. And a lot more beautiful, more fulfilling, happier. And a lot more me.

— Will your books start being released as Heather Schaefer?

Nope! “Craig Schaefer” is my established professional brand, and changing that would be nightmarish. First there’s the cost of revising covers for a ton of books and coordinating new covers with two different publishers. Then there’s The Holy Amazon Algorithm, which reacts very badly and weirdly to any dramatic changes. Just think of it like any other writer who openly uses a pen name, like the books that Stephen King writes as Richard Bachman. Same with social media and such; I’ll be updating my bios with a clarified description, but addresses and websites and such will all stay exactly the same. Super easy.

— Did your delay in releasing books last year have anything to do with your transition?

Nope, that was exactly as I described it: pandemic depression and severe burnout due to working myself into the ground (which was, itself, a symptom of untreated depression.) Drugs and therapy turned me around and got my head on right again. As right as it ever gets, anyway.

— In Red Knight Falling, Harmony Black uses a Glock 22 and mentions switching the safety off, but that model of handgun has a trigger safety which is not the same—

I know. I KNOW. Please stop emailing me about it, I am begging you.

— What does that have to do with anything?

Nothing, really, just wanted to bring it up.

To thank you for reading this far, here’s a picture of our Aussie dog Major. Major is a sweet fifty-pound potato boy who loves to give kisses and snuggle. This particular photo was taken when I got up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom, came back two minutes later, and…yeah. It’s fine, there was plenty of room on the other side of the bed.