How I Secretly Got Published
Ever since I was a teenager, it had been a dream of mine to have my writing published and get paid for it. That dream came true two years ago, and I told only a handful of people.
That’s right. I’ve been a professionally published author for almost two years.
It didn’t quite happen as I’d always imagined, with one of my huge fantasy manuscripts getting picked up by Tor Books or HarperCollins. Like most authors early in their careers, I was first professionally published in a magazine.
In fact, my first professional publication credit wasn’t a fantasy piece at all. It wasn’t even fiction.
Getting Published
Back in 2021, in the early days of realising that I was trans, I wrote a creative non-fiction essay titled Turn Me Into a Girl! The title comes from a website of the same name which was pivotal for me in my journey of figuring myself out.
I submitted Turn Me Into a Girl! to a few places before an online magazine called HerStry expressed interest in publishing it in their Rebellious Bodies series. I officially became a paid, professionally published author on 27 December 2022.
The whole thing felt amazing. I was in disbelief for several hours after receiving HerStry’s email expressing interest in my piece. I’d received a few writing scholarships in high school, so I knew I had what it took to be a professional creative writer, but being paid for a specific piece of work I’d created was just incredible.
That’s amazing! Why didn’t you tell anybody?
Outside of my immediate family, I only shared Turn Me Into a Girl! with a couple of friends.
“I was honestly almost gonna cry on the bus reading it.”
Kate Silvey
The truth is that Turn Me Into a Girl! is an incredibly personal piece that—at the time—I wasn’t comfortable sharing with people I actually know. It dives deep into my experience with gender dysphoria over the years, particularly throughout my childhood, and is basically a window with a direct view of my soul.
So I kept the whole thing a secret for almost two years. Now that I have some distance from its publication, I am more comfortable with people reading it.
If you’d like to take a look at the piece that made me a professionally published author, click the link below.
Read Turn Me Into a Girl by JP Talon.
I am also currently seeking first readers for my new novel, Transcendent. If you’re interested in learning about the project or becoming a first reader, you can do so here.