by Cam Montgomery
I like to joke about the ways in which the stories I write, or other author faves write, are written for me. Literally, about me.
This past year I was given the opportunity to really put that to the test. Anthology Queen, Saundra Mitchell, approached me about writing a contemporary story for her next antho, OUT NOW: QUEER WE GO AGAIN. It’s a collection of contemporary queer stories written by queer authors.
Needless to say, I was mad stoked to be asked. We’re talking, full-body sweats, jumping-around, text-your-best-friend stoked.
Surprisingly, I ended up needing two deadline extensions because I didn’t know how to get the story out. I tried a few different story ideas but, like mangey cats, none of them wanted to be told or controlled. (Sorry to those stories and cats.)
I tried different points of view, different tenses and ended up settling on the least likely of them to make my life easier.
I ended up telling a story about a non-binary skater who struggles with their identity and, nearly as important, an all-consuming crush on the prettiest girl whom they have only corresponded with through soft, questioning glances from a distance.
The day before I banged this story out, start to finish, in one sitting, I had a personal break-through with my older brother.
My brother is five years my senior. He got married and joined the military when I was thirteen. He left as this skateboarding rap star in training. He came back someone I had to relearn. He’s 36 now and I, 31.
There’s been sometime between 13-year-old Candygirl, as she was once known, and 31-year-old Cam. And in those long but entirely too swift years, Candygirl became Candy became cANdiE became Candice became Cam. Forever evolving, like a gay Pokémon. And my older brother missed all of it, through no fault of his own, nor mine.
I also learned who I was in those eighteen years.
Things like gender assigned at birth and the gender binary and queer as a sexual orientation versus bisexual versus pansexual. I was introduced to a lot of things while he was away building and raising a family to which I am very attached. My best friend Freddy is his six-year-old daughter. I’m happy for my brother. Proud of him. The dude is a freaking rocket scientist. Seriously. A literal rocket scientist.
But in the military, the Marines in particular, there’s not a whole lot of LGBTQ+ education. There’s not a whole lot of respect for queer people. The whole “don’t ask, don’t tell” thing comes to mind.
So my brother became who he is, a really good guy, but ignorant to a lot of progressive, liberal ways of thinking. It’s a thing I’d like to think I remedied when I came to Washington 3 years ago and moved in with him and his family.
I’m loud about my beliefs and it’s a lot for anyone to witness, I know. But the day I sat down to write my OUT NOW story, “Kick. Push. Coast.” I had a conversation with my sister-in-law about an enby I was crushing on hard, and my brother sat down with us at his kitchen table and jumped in on the conversation. He asked to see a photo of her and I corrected him. He made the change without question, glanced at me every time he used “they” and “them,” I assume, to make sure he was using them correctly. And told me he thought we’d make a cool couple because we both had that “angry at the government” aesthetic. And it’s true. They’re very angry at the government. I am, too. Angry Queer Power Couple for sure.
But it was that five-minute conversation that bolstered me to sit down and write a story that, at the time, I didn’t realize, had become about me. It was like pulling teeth at first. I had maybe a paragraph or two of the story but when I started writing, it flowed. I wrote a second-point-of-view story about a skateboarder trying to land a complicated trick. While also trying not to stare at this girl in a sundress that they think runs the entire world. And all of that gets wrapped up in the sliding, winding, twisting curve that is gender identity and sexual orientation.
When I finished the story, I sent it off to Saundra immediately. They came back with… a lot of nice words.
Never in my life have I experienced such joy in the creation of a story. In the completion of a story. And it still shocks me that it was simultaneously the most difficult and the smoothest piece I’ve ever written.
The story is nestled within a collection of true heavy hitters, talent that leaps off the page and pulls no punches as it settles in the hearts and hands of readers. I sincerely hope others pick up this collection. If I’ve learned anything from writing, it’s that we as authors are made vulnerable for a time an that’s just part of the job description. And it extends further back than just the writing process. It’s the part that comes before that, too.
The life part. The living and the planning and how much of that does or does not go into whatever thing you’re drafting at the time.
So much of me is in that short story. More of me is in those 1500 words than any 80k word novel I’ve ever written.
When we got our author ARCs for the anthology, I immediately drove one of my two allotted copies over to my brother’s house. He wasn’t home when I got there but my sister-in-law was. She asked me if I wanted to stay. To wait for him. Said he’d be home in an hour and I think she knew I was gonna turn tail and run because she offered to make me dinner if I was willing to wait for a half hour while she got things together.
I absolutely do not ever pass up my sissy’s cooking. It’s a rule I’ve set for myself.
But I left. Left his copy right there on their bookshelf, got in my car and drove home to my apartment, wherein, ya girl spent three hours in turmoil, wondering if I should text my SiL and ask her to hide the book so I could come pick it back up. She would have done it for me, too.
Turns out I didn’t have much to worry about. Got a text from him that night: “Omg… love u… this is u, I told u. your industry. proud of u, sis…”
Kick, push, coast, indeed.
—
Candice “Cam” Montgomery (non-binary she/her/Dad) is an LA transplant now living in the woods of Seattle, where she writes Young Adult novels. Her debut novel, HOME AND AWAY can be found online and in stores now, and her sophomore novel, BY ANY MEANS NECESSARY was released October of 2019. Now, she finds herself the editor of an anthology. ALL SIGNS POINT TO YES (ed with cara davis-araux and Adrianne Russel-White) is to be published by Inkyard Press in winter of 2022!
By day, Cam writes about Black teens across all their intersections. By night, she tends bar at a tiny place nestled inside one of Washington’s greenest trees. Cam is an avid Studio Ghibli fan and will make you watch at least one episode of Sailor Moon before she’ll call you “friend.”
Cam is represented by Jim McCarthy of Dystel, Goderich & Bourret.
