{"id":60100,"date":"2025-01-23T08:20:30","date_gmt":"2025-01-23T13:20:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/?p=60100"},"modified":"2025-01-23T14:46:14","modified_gmt":"2025-01-23T19:46:14","slug":"enfys-j-book-five-things-i-learned-writing-queer-rites","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/2025\/01\/23\/enfys-j-book-five-things-i-learned-writing-queer-rites\/","title":{"rendered":"Enfys J. Book: Five Things I Learned Writing Queer Rites"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Embrace Your Personal Power with 20 Queer-Specific Rituals<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Queer people go through all kinds of unique milestones and rites of passage as we grow into our true selves. Whether you are coming out, attending your first Pride parade, or changing your pronouns, this book will help you enter these rites of passage thoughtfully and spiritually.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Explore rituals for honoring chosen family, going through gender transition milestones, exploring and affirming your gender and sexuality, entering your first queer relationship, and more. Enhance your rituals with a variety of magickal allies, including deities and community ancestors (such as queer activists and leaders).<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Regardless of your skill level or spiritual tradition, Queer Rites makes it simple to connect your lived experiences to your magickal practice and commemorate occasions in a way that resonates with your unique and wonderful self.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Includes a foreword by Ariana Serpentine, author of <\/em>Sacred Gender, and rituals by guest writers Storm Faerywolf, Misha Magdalene, Brandon Weston, and Rev. Ron Padr\u00f3n.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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It\u2019s both satisfying and bittersweet to write the book you needed when you were younger.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

As I interviewed queer people of various backgrounds and identities, it became clear how many of our landmark LGBTQ+ milestones are tainted \u2014 or worse, defined \u2014 by negative experiences. I, and many of those I spoke to, wondered how our experiences of embracing our identities would\u2019ve been different had we celebrated them more, or at least been able to approach them more intentionally. So this book is kind of an instruction manual for how to create a sacred and empowered container for major milestones of the queer experience\u2026and one I wish I\u2019d had decades ago. It\u2019s both satisfying and heartwarming to provide that experience for others, but also bittersweet knowing that I didn\u2019t have this book when I most needed it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

No book is easy to write.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I honestly went into this one like, \u201cHooray, a book that\u2019s basically an instruction manual: Easy as pie!\u201d Um, no. As it turns out, I had to do just as much research and re-working and re-visiting and re-writing as I did with my first book, Queer Qabala<\/em>. Instead of reading dusty old tomes, though, I did a lot of interviews with people whose lives and experiences were different from mine, so I could make sure the book was as inclusive as possible.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

(And I also read some<\/em> tomes. There was a lot less dust involved, though. There are some pretty great books on queer magick<\/a> that have come out in recent years!)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A consistent soundtrack helps produce a consistent product.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

While writing and editing this book, I listened to the Baldur\u2019s Gate 3 <\/em>soundtrack on a loop, and I credit that, in part, for helping me keep a consistent voice and tone throughout, and also for motivating me through the grind of writing and editing. (I even included the composer, Borislav Slavov, in the acknowledgements.) Video game music is super good <\/em>at pushing you to keep going. It\u2019s what it\u2019s designed to do. <\/em>(Though sometimes it also motivates you to play video games instead of writing.<\/em> Your mileage may vary.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Take time off the day job for every edit round (if you can).<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I was lucky enough to be able to take a few days off work right before my manuscript was due to my publisher, and then again when I had to turn in the first big edit round, so that I could sit and truly focus for 8-10 hours each day and didn\u2019t have to lose time context-switching\/getting into the groove for several separate editing sessions. This made the process more efficient and it helped me keep the whole book in my head at once, so I could more easily catch things like, \u201cOh wait, I already said this three chapters ago\u201d or \u201cthis contradicts something I said earlier\u201d or \u201cthis doesn\u2019t match the format.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Try not to write two books simultaneously on top of a day job.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Right as I started working on this book, I got a golden opportunity to co-write another book, Sagittarius Witch,<\/em> that had an aggressive deadline. I was able to put Queer Rites<\/em> aside for a bit and focus on the other book, but then as soon as I turned that one in I had to shift focus back Queer Rites<\/em>, and there were times when the edit rounds of both overlapped and I ended 2023 feeling super burned out. <\/em>And I still wasn\u2019t done with Queer Rites <\/em>at that point! I decided to take 2024 off writing (though I still had to do a lot of editing), and now I am going into 2025 feeling like I still need more time to recover.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bonus thing: Book launch parties don\u2019t have to follow a standard script!<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

For this book\u2019s launch, I co-produced a big queer cabaret with a friend of mine. We gathered some of the top talent in the DC\/Baltimore region, hired a venue, lined up some vendors, partnered with local radical bookshop Red Emma\u2019s<\/a> to sell the books on site, found some generous sponsors, and sold 160 tickets to fill the venue. It was wildly successful \u2014 we sold over 85 copies of the book! But it was also a ludicrous amount of work for months <\/em>leading up to it, and there\u2019s no way I could\u2019ve pulled this off without my co-producer, who had all the connections and savvy for how to pull these kinds of events together from a decade of experience. It was certainly more fun than rolling into a bookstore to talk a bit and do a signing, but it took much, much more preparation and had a lot more moving parts in the planning.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Enfys J. Book<\/strong> (they\/them) is an author, priestx, blogger, teacher, performer, singer, songwriter, and comedian. They wrote the Gold COVR award-winning Queer Qabala: Nonbinary, Genderfluid, Omnisexual Mysticism & Magick<\/em> (Llewellyn, June 2022); co-authored (with Ivo Dominguez, Jr.) Sagittarius Witch<\/em> (Llewellyn, 2024); and wrote Queer Rites: A Magickal Grimoire to Honor Your Milestones with Pride<\/em> (Llewellyn, 2025).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

They are also a founding member of the \u201cfunny, filthy, feminist, fandom folk\u201d band The Misbehavin\u2019 Maidens<\/a>, the creator of a website on queer magick called majorarqueerna.com<\/a>, and the host of a podcast called \u201c4 Quick Q\u2019s: Book Talk with Enfys,\u201d<\/a> where they interview pagan authors using questions determined by a roll of the dice. They have taught many classes on tarot, Hermetic Qabala, magickal rites of passage, and queering one\u2019s magical practice at conferences and events around the world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Queer Rites (U.S.): <\/strong>Bookshop.org<\/a> | B&N<\/a> | Amazon<\/a> | Buy an autographed copy<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Author website: <\/strong>https:\/\/majorarqueerna.com\/<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Embrace Your Personal Power with 20 Queer-Specific Rituals Queer people go through all kinds of unique milestones and rites of passage as we grow into our true selves. Whether you are coming out, attending your first Pride parade, or changing your pronouns, this book will help you enter these rites of passage thoughtfully and spiritually. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-60100","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"hentry","6":"category-theramble","8":"no-featured-image"},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pv7MR-fDm","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60100","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=60100"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60100\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":60108,"href":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60100\/revisions\/60108"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=60100"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=60100"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=60100"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}