I’ve been working on some promotional art and my book cover. Here’s what I have so far. The first picture is something I made using the art of the original book cover in which I decided not to go with, but I put a lot of time into it and thought I could still use it to promote…
“I Write the System” explores how society forces us into separate, binary genders. Intersex people and others who don’t fit into society often fall through the cracks and suffer great trauma, which for Jymi Cliche led to a life of dependence on the very system that abused him from day one, when he was operated on at birth and conditioned to believe he was female.
The book begins with Jymi at age four, exposed to the system for the first time through nursery school, where he knew right away that he’d never fit into this world. The story follows him through school, friendships, addictions, the mental health system, and too much trauma to handle at times. It wasn’t easy for him to rise from the ashes of the constant disasters going on around him and begin to put his life back together. He has dreams of being successful one day, but is still fighting Complex-PTSD, Bipolar Disorder, and a number of other severe diagnoses, along with being a non-binary trans man in the binary system.
Using dark humor and inspirational stories to balance the trauma and struggles, Jymi offers ideas for change and a message of hope. His memoir encourages the idea that in time, things can get better, even if it feels impossible.
Here is the cover… It’s an androgynous baby photo of me in the late 70’s and the layout is meant to resemble a political campaign poster, as well as a classic rock concert poster, and the colors are meant to resemble the pink and blue on the trans flag, but I don’t really like pastel and didn’t want it to look like a baby book, so I darkened it. It is also sort of meant to loosely resemble the American flag, which really doesn’t mean all that much to me, so I am okay with altering it, but I am talking mostly about the American government system when I talk about “the system”.
I’ve done about 14 edits on it and plan to do one more before I prepare to upload it for its September 11th release date…
My last post was about haters on the internet and whether it even makes sense to ask strangers their opinions on art or writing. It was stemmed from some hate I got about my book cover the other day. A bunch of people said they wouldn’t even pick up my book because the cover was “too busy”, “unprofessional”, and one person said they wouldn’t know what the book is about by looking at it (as if any book cover can really do that)… but it was eating at me because so many people emphasize that the cover is the first thing people see. If I get a professional publisher, I may not even be able to use it, but it’s looking more and more like self publishing is the most likely thing to happen, and I can live with that, but I don’t wanna scare people away with an unprofessional cover, yet I also felt my cover was nearly perfect for my book… maybe not perfect graphic design, but it felt right to me. It was what I envisioned… So… with the help of the basic Paint program, I added a few lines here and there and I think it’s better. Here is what I plan to go with…
Here is what it looked like before.
So, I just made a few adjustments, but I think it’s better.
I’m heading to bed because I already took my night meds, so I can’t do a full post about my show at The Armory yesterday, but I will when I wake up.
Here’s my new business cards though….
And here’s a song I wanted to share that I fell in love with…
Today was a struggle and I don’t remember much of what I did yesterday except that I probably did a million things. I’ve been pretty busy and that’s basically been good for me but the lady next door who sings opera noises every day was going on for five hours, and it was piercing my ears and driving me mad because it woke me up and I couldn’t sleep. I got out of bed and immediately checked my email and social media to find a lot of junk mail, no news from any agents, and a reply to a post I made about my book and book cover in an author’s group in which I didn’t ask for opinions, but someone said “You’ll get more clicks with a professional cover.” I felt shot down, and started to doubt my cover, which does have a few flaws. When I shared it on my page last week, some of my friends said they loved it, including some who I know would buy the book regardless of the cover, and they are my friends, so were they to be trusted to be honest? Some part of me thought they were, because I decided to post my cover in a memoir group and a group for trans men over 40 and asked them if they’d be interested in a book with this cover, and right away, two people in each group said no. One said it was unprofessional, two said it was too busy, and one person said no, because he wouldn’t know what the book was about from the cover; as if any book cover really explains a story! I felt shot down and immediately took down my post in both groups because the opera woman was still shrieking and I wasn’t in the mood for any more negative comments. My cat came up on the couch next to me and started crying non-stop. I shoved her off the couch and my rage was growing as the opera woman had been practicing since noon and it was after five. The noises kept getting worse and worse, and I could see her in the house right next to us in the room with all the windows open. I finally snapped and ran to the window. Part of me didn’t wanna destroy her spirit, but most of me just wanted the noise to stop. I have PTSD and it’s literally caused me to punch walls and break things. Just as I was about to scream “Would you shut the fuck up? You suck!” the guy downstairs from me literally yelled out seconds before me “Is that you who’s doing all that singing? You’re terrible!” and I chimed in “you should really get some sound proofing or something because I have PTSD and the noises are driving me into a rage every day!” She apologized and said she’d shut the windows, but I can hear her all winter when both our windows are shut. I dunno if it’ll make a difference but she’s been driving me mad for years now. Every Spring, I used to look forward to opening all the windows, but now I have to keep them closed to drown out as much as it allows. I don’t wanna crush her spirit, but I’ve honestly had violent thoughts, not that I’d act on them. I’m not a violent person, but the fact that I even fantasize about it makes me feel awful about myself and is toxic for me to have that kind of rage, so it’s about time she had a rude awakening as to how bad it is for the rest of us. There are all kinds of musicians in my building who do all make noise, but hers goes on for hours and it’s so high pitched it feels like nails on a chalkboard.
Anyway, I’ve been busy editing the book some more and I think I’m gonna keep the cover I made. I may take one more stab at designing the same basic thing, but if it doesn’t look better, I’ll keep the one I have now, which was my second attempt after the first didn’t feel professional to me at all. The second one didn’t feel like it was that bad though. I liked it and was bummed others didn’t, but I mean, I don’t know what their interests are or what kind of books they like or anything about them, and my art is an acquired taste. Like a lot of great art, sometimes people have to see it over and over before it starts to resonate with them. I thought the idea was cool, to show the flawed and rigged system through the claw machine, and pictures of me pre and post transition showing my gender journey over the years. I wrote a post on my own Facebook after being shut down, and my friends encouraged me to keep the cover unless I wanna change it, because it was my vision and it goes well with the book. One person also mentioned that I’m likely to mostly just get my fans to read it if I self publish, and so they’ll be the ones who will want it and love it, and while it may not exactly attract the masses, the people who most relate and most need the book will probably be drawn to my cover. So, it really just depends on if I get it published through an agent and publisher who may have other thoughts on it, but one of the things I like about self publishing is having the control to make my own covers and choose my release dates and stuff like that, which are part of the whole presentation for me, even if others don’t even recognize it. I really wanna release this new book on my birthday this year, which is the 20 year anniversary of 9/11. It’s to the degree that while I obviously wanna be professionally published, part of me hopes I get to do it all myself again since it was fun for me the first time around…but I’ll definitely take an agent and professional publishing if I can get it. It’s just not looking likely right now.
I have a Pride Sale going on at my Threadless Store for 15% off until the 23rd
That’s a couple of the items. You can get them here…
I got an idea for a new book that would be mostly fiction, although based on a true story about my cross country trip to see the Pope at World Youth Day in 1993. It would be called “Good Catholic Kids”, and would be sort of like a classic 90’s teen story about a queer kid with mental illness, coming of age type thing. Ideally, I envision this one as a film, but I think I wanna write it as a book, in hopes of it becoming a film, since a book is easier to get out into the world than a screenplay. Plus, I have a lot of details I wanna put into the story that would be hard to include in film, especially if it were low budget, so I’m gonna make it a book, but it was this photo I recently hung in my kitchen which gave me the idea to write the story. this was at World Youth Day in a desert in Colorado. We had to walk seven miles to get there and there was a sea of people, as far as the eye could see in every direction.
Last but not least, I got this awesome record this month to reward myself for all my hard work and stress and everything. It is an incredibly rare record and a miracle I found an unopened copy for a price I could afford (although was pretty much the only thing I could buy this month) but the CD version changed my life in the early 2000’s when it introduced me to the Boston underground hip hop scene which is the best out there.
I will leave you with a few favorite songs from the album… I highly recommend you try them, even if you don’t like hip hop, but especially if you like really great quality underground hip hop with “conscious” lyrics
I’ve had a busy day today. I woke up at my parents’ house, showered, packed, ate a bagel, and drove an hour drive home. The drive wasn’t bad at all. Now that I take an exit to avoid part of the highway that I don’t like, and I know the exit numbers have changed, at 3PM on a Spring day there’s no traffic or blinding sun, and there was no rain like I’d anticipated. It was just a beautiful Spring drive.
When I got home, I comforted my cat right away. She’s an anxious cat who needs to constantly be comforted and she has a hard time when I leave her but I was only away from her for one full day. Still, she’s howling like crazy in the other room as I write, but I’ve given her some food and attention… maybe not enough…
I got some popcorn teriyaki chicken for dinner, talked to my mental health worker and my boyfriend, and I re-did the cover for my upcoming memoir while waiting for my weed. I’d made one yesterday, but I felt like I could do better. I definitely think I improved it a little bit, even though it’s the same basic idea.
I liked this idea of a claw machine representing a very flawed and rigged system, pulling my androgynous baby picture out of a pile of photos of me from various stages of my life. They are the same photos I used in the one I made yesterday, but I added the 8th grade, big hair photo, since 8th grade is an important part of the book and it’s probably the furthest from my true self that I ever was. I also changed some of the details of the person I drew, who is supposed to represent a young soldier.
As soon as I finished, my medicine came…
This is one of my favorite strains. LA Confidential. It’s recommended by Snoop. You can read about it here…
I took out the trash and took a couple photos of the clouds…
I’ve been listening to music, took a bath with my new soap, smoked a little bit of my new weed, and I sent out a few more queries. I got another encouraging rejection today, and this one included a link to a web site kind of like the other two I’ve been looking for people through, but this one has a bunch more people I haven’t tried yet, so I researched four of them who were looking for memoirs and sent them each what they wanted, which were all different. It was hard work as usual, but maybe it’ll pay off. I feel like maybe I’m giving up too early. Now that I’m editing again and fixing a lot and am halfway through, I feel like it’s worth trying some new people. If I was close with a few like they’ve said, maybe this extra edit will be enough. I thought I was out of people, and I haven’t heard back from them all yet, but I don’t know what to expect. I only know what happened last time. This book is stronger in most ways. I do believe in it. Even if I self publish, I think this one might get read more and a little more buzz. I can only hope it reaches the people I’m meant to help with it.
I listened to Big L in my car on the way home. He was a brilliant artist. Some of his lyrics are potentially offensive if they didn’t make for such beautiful poetry.
I saw my family for Mother’s Day today. We hung out for several hours preparing food, eating, talking, sharing photos of pets, etc. My sister helped me figure out how to add tags to my blog posts, but we still haven’t figured out how to use it as a regular blog to follow other bloggers. I may not be able to, but we will see. Both my sisters helped me create a linktree account though, and that should help point people in the right direction as well. I can put it on my Instagram as my main link, so I don’t have to constantly switch the links depending which page I’m promoting in my post…
You can click there to see it if you want. It’s not especially exciting, but I am kind of excited about it, as it is a helpful tool.
The other thing I’m most excited about today is that I created a cover for my upcoming memoir. I’m gonna try to redo it with some different colors and hopefully a better drawing of the person at the machine, but I got this idea the other night and was excited that I was able to make it work, even if I have to do it over to make it a little better, I think it’s kinda cool…
“I Write the System To Fight the System So I Might Right the System”… coming out around the 20th anniversary of 9/11 if I self publish.
What else? I don’t really know. I gotta get back to the usual life later today, but it was nice to get a break.
