Reprinted with permission from Heckin’ Lewd: Trans and Nonbinary Erotica edited by Mx. Nillin Lore (Bold Strokes Books).

Like countless other trans queers, I didn’t have a great deal of positive exposure to things outside the realm of cisnormative, heteronormative, monogamous relationships and sexuality while growing up. Spending all of my formative years in Alberta and Saskatchewan, two of the most socially conservative and repressive provinces of Canada, came with the pretty challenging caveat that queer people, especially any who were trans or gender-nonconforming, simply didn’t exist ‘’round here. And if they did exist, they were generally expected to remain unseen and unheard.

Fortunately, that’s changed over the past couple of decades, and visibility nowadays around those areas is as radically badass as I ever could have hoped it would be. Yet when I look back on the first 25 twenty-five years of my life, I do so with a sense of sadness for all of the time I spent fearful of who I was, hiding, and feeling dreadfully alone. It was especially hard during more more formative years because whenever I went to look up anything at all to do with trans or queer people I was met with a tidal wave of slurs, dehumanizing opinion pieces, and, of course, porn. But it wasn’t the good kind of porn that made you feel affirmed and excited while watching it. It was more the porn for cis guys, laced in harmful language and framed in a way that made you feel like gender diverse folks were nothing but an exotic oddity, a dirty little secret, and at worst, a vulgar trophy lay for men around the world to enjoy in deep, closeted shame.

I always hated that and wished it was different. But never in a million years would I have expected I would actually get the chance to be a part of changing those narratives myself!

That’s what Heckin’ Lewd is to me. I mean, sure, on one hand it’s definitely gratuitous and shameless smut, but it’s also more than that. This anthology is filled from cover to cover with sexy, brazen, and uplifting stories that I hope will contribute, if even just a little, toward both destigmatizing and humanizing trans identities, as well as the relationships we have with others. To me, this book is a celebrational lens through which trans authors can rewrite the harmful narratives out there for ourselves, one radically affirming tale at a time. And the only way that was ever going to work was by putting trans and nonbinary writing, by trans and nonbinary authors, out into the world for trans and nonbinary readers.

I chose the stories collected here because they unapologetically celebrate queerness, gender diversity, and non-traditional relationship structures, while simultaneously challenging more conventional nonfiction genre writing and styles. Be it the adventures of a non-binary swashbuckler going through crewmate initiation under the watch of their dreaded and desirable captain, or an edge-of-your seat techno-heist pulled off by two horny as hell queers, or the semi-public sexual exploits of trans masc angel and demon gym buddies who get off on teasing and testing one another, each of these stories purposely bucks the conventional cisnormative storytelling.

These are exactly the kinds of stories that I’d always wished I could read. And here they finally are! I hope that you enjoy them, and find affirming bliss in yourself as much as I have.

I know that Heckin’ Lewd isn’t the first of its kind, but I certainly hope that it won’t be the last either because the world needs more. So, let’s get out there and crack those eggs, affirm our peers, empower our community, and take back the power of telling our own stories.

Heckin’ Lewd is available from Amazon and Bookshop.