Finding the light in the dark side of literature

When I met Nicole Disney she was hawking her novel Dissonance in a Mirror, at this year’s PrideFest in Denver. I had to do a double-take and meet this girl. In a haze of booze, heat and way too much Pride, here was a college-age woman talking about her novel published by JMS Books, a queer publishing company out of Virginia. I introduced myself and made an appointment to sit down on another day.

You’re young (23) to have your first novel published. How long have you been writing?

I started when I was 11 or 12. I started actually writing horror; I was really into scary books. I was really caught up on length, so [my first book] turned into this really episodic, long novel. It was ridiculous of course. But, that’s how I got started.

It wasn’t until I was 16 that I realized that I could [write] as a career. It took a long time to click for me. But, once it did I wrote another novel. My stepdad knew a radio talk show host that was a film critic that had lots of connections in the business. So he introduced me to an editor, and she just ripped my book apart, of course. But, that helped me a lot with my technical knowledge.

What does that do to your self-esteem? It took me a long time to not be attached to every word I write — how did you process that?

You know, actually, there were two effects. First, it did exactly that, it ripped me apart. I was devastated. But I was also just really happy to be talking to someone that was in the business and was taking me seriously, to be giving me that kind of advice. I kind of took it as a compliment; that she would [critique] me the way she did any other writer.

Did she give you good advice?

She did. She said I had great characters, but I didn’t know what to do with them. There was no plot.

It makes sense that would be hard when you’re 16. What happened when you finished school, with the understanding you were going to be a writer?

Well, I chose not to go to college. It was a pretty big deal. I had always known that I was going to go to college and then I decided I’m not going to. There was a lot of skepticism [from my parents]; they put a lot of pressure on me achieve that. The entire time I was writing I was working to support myself. I had moved out, because I didn’t want to be that writer [living with parents].

And how many publishers did you submit to?

Probably 30.

Why not just save the money and publish it yourself?

I thought about it. I even had a good chunk of money [set aside] that I was thinking was going to go toward that. And [these days] self-publishing is much more accepted. Back then I saw it as more like, you couldn’t get published by anyone else. It felt like I would have to admit that no one else wanted to do it. I guess it was a form of validation.

How did you choose to write a novel about a homeless girl and a meth addict?

Anytime I read something dark, I’ve found that those books never went as deep as I wanted them to. I just wanted to get deeper inside. Other books I would read and would get to an intense moment and then was just supposed to imagine what happened next. When I was reading it I was like, what, that’s it? So, I was like, I can do this better.

Are you working on your next novel? Are you really planning on staying with lesbian characters or will you branch out?

I didn’t even think of this book as a lesbian story. I like lesbian literature but my book doesn’t just cater to that. You have to like the rest of what I do, it’s not going to click on lesbian alone. It’s not just a romance. It’s also really dark. It’s also about addiction. That’s not just going to click with other lesbians just because it’s lesbian. When I wrote the story and tried to submit it to other traditional publishers — nothing. It took me months before it even occurred to me to send it to an [LGBT] publisher. When I did that, it worked really fast.

It took them a week to say yes.

Yeah, and then I was like, of course, its family.