Welcome back to The Colorful Catalog, the LGBTQReads feature that welcomes authors of at least five works of queer fiction (beyond cis m/m) to come on the site and discuss those works with us! Today we’ve got Chace Verity, whose work (or at least covers!) you might be well familiar with by now as a reader of the site! So come check out their work and find a new fave!

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I’m Chace Verity (she/they, though “they” is preferred over “she”), and as of this writing, I’m 30. For a person who vehemently dreaded turning 30, I’ve been embracing this year and using 30 as an excuse to really explore all the queer parts of me that I’ve been avoiding my whole life. Writing has been the best road for me to take in this particular journey of self-discovery.

As a voracious consumer of media in multiple genres, I find myself branching into all kinds of worlds in my writing. Many authors I respect greatly have a distinct focus in their branding, and maybe I will get there one day when I’m no longer 30. But right now, I’m everywhere. I’m too busy figuring “me” out to worry a whole lot about what kind of platform I’m building.

(I guess I could always make business cards that say “Chace Verity: writes whatever the hell they want.”)

The Panic Before 30

Team Phison, a geeky age-gap long distance m/m contemporary romance, is the novella that I published in the last bit of 20s I had left. I wrote it when I was 28, the same age as grumpy protagonist Phil’s ball of sunshine he finds himself shockingly in love with. I put so much of myself into Tyson, more than anyone knows.

I sat on it for a year, thinking no one had any interest in a low-drama, queer take on people who meet through a video game. Then 3 months before 30 came, and I desperately wanted to say I did something with my twenties.

Everyone around me loved Phil and Tyson. People I admire tell me they reread this novella constantly. Wow, I thought. Maybe I can really be me.

But who am I?

The Rush Of Turning 30

I’ve known I was pansexual for nearly half of my life (ID’d as bi before I discovered pan). Realized I wasn’t cis maybe two years ago, while I was channeling Tyson. Felt validated after publishing Team Phison and seeing the positive feedback. Validation feels good.

Once my birthday rolled around, I started refining older works and making them even queerer before publishing them.

My heart lies in my fantasy series, The Absolutes. This is a world that’s truly for me. Queer characters! Being open and proud! In a fantasy world! If other people enjoy it, then that’s a bonus.

My Heart Is Ready is a prequel novella with f/f and m/f romantic pairings, featuring a bi heroine with secret earth magic and a queer hero who is half-harpy, half-human, and 100% into gossip. They’re exes who are best friends with some serious trust issues. Throw in a heist to steal some rare seeds, and you’ve got a serious test of friendship going on.

The first full-length novel in the Absolutes series, Your Heart Will Grow, focuses more on romance than friendship. A m/f romance with a (mostly) hetero trans soldier hero and a pansexual mermaid heroine, that stakes go up as the unlikely lovers go against a spurned prince and the possible eradication of mermaids.

Flipping back to contemporary, Just Some Things was a tiny collection of f/f shorts I put together as a freebie. It’s truly amazing to me how many people have enjoyed the weird museum cute-(re)meet, my grumpy girl with a predilection for the F word, and the college friends who have suddenly realized they’re in love.

30 isn’t scary, I realized in January. I don’t know who I am, but this number doesn’t define me.

The Calm Of 30

In my new decade, I’ve started writing really weird and queer stuff. Things without the allocishet gaze. Things I absolutely am obsessed with.

Back in February, I was really into the idea of a retelling of The Scarlet Pimpernel, but f/f and with minotaurs. And rock candy, holy moly, I love rocky candy. The Masked Minotaur came together very quickly as a novelette. It’s a unique work in that I have a version with a super explicit sex scene and a version where the sex scene fades to black. Pick your version; it’s in the same download!

My most recent release veers away from romance and focuses on friendship. The best thing I ever did for myself was find other queer people to be friends with, people who encouraged me to be myself, people who I will forever encourage to be themselves. Hard To Find is a collection of short stories with queer characters making friends with other queer characters. Half of it is contemporary, and the other half is fantasy.

I’m really in a good place now. I’m working on queer stuff and having a good time with it. I can’t wait to show you what 31 will bring. So far, there are couch hunters (enby/f main pairing), disastrous thieves (m/m), a fantasy enby/f/f tale, and more from the Absolutes involving a wishing well and pirates (m/m and m/f). I’m excited for everything beyond 31, too. You can follow me on Twitter or check out my website for all the updates of my thirties.

Will I freak out again around 39? It’s possible. But I hope I will look back at this year and remind myself everything turned out well.

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Chace Verity (she/they) is turning 31 on September 28 and ready to help anyone else feeling down over arbitrary numbers. They are publishing queer as heck stories with a strong romantic focus, although friendships and found families are important too. Chace prefers to write fantasy but dabbles in contemporary and historical fiction as well. An American citizen & Canadian permanent resident, Chace will probably never be able to call a gallon of milk a “four-liter.”