In November 2007 I posted a story here called THIS QUINTESSENCE OF DUST. It was my 4th or 5rh work of transgender fiction but it was the first one of any length, and the first I worked really hard on trying to create credible well-rounded characters that I hoped the reader could empathize with. And it was a challenge for me because I wanted them to be a pair of normal cisgender guys who were intelligent and more or less decent and not just buffoonish caricatures. In a way my creating them was my attempt to grow beyond my often misadrist attitudes toward males. I think I did okay with this, since I at least came to care about these two over the course of their journey across the post-apocalyptic wasteland.

I know writing should ideally be its own reward, and it might be vanity to want accolades, glowing reviews and kudos; but I really like it when a story of mine reaches the 100 kudo mark. While some writers regualarly get twice that or more, I don't expect my odd little tales with their meandering plots and talky characters to become immensely popular blockbusters. Although the story this blog is about did really well for me, and for a story that was posted before there even was a system here for giving a story kudos, garnering 99 kudos in a few years. And then it s kudos count STAYED at 99, for...

I don't know how many years; but that elusive hundredth thumbs up was something i kept hoping to see, that was driving me nuts like a sneeze that won't erupt. I suppose I could have begged for it in a blog, and somene would have obliged. but that seemed like cheating somehow.

Then today there it was, along with a nice comment (thanks Patricia).
100. I am somebody. Yay.

THIS QUINTESSENCE OF DUST is an odd hybrid, an attempt at a story that feels like realistic hard science fiction most of the way through, until at the end where there's a big fat ludicrous fantasy tale type magical solution to its grim end-of-the-world scenario. Which you're not supposed to do; but it does earn the story its TG tags and its place in a site like BCTS.

Or as the intro teaser says: Two astronauts return to Earth after fifty years in space to find a world completely depopulated by a terrible plague. The last survivors of a doomed planet, the two men eke out a grief-stricken pointless existence, foraging in the ruins of shops and warehouses as they wait to grow old and die. The fact that they are such good friends does help, but the crushing sense of loss and isolation is always with them. Until one day...

And here's the link, if you're not totally sick of stories about killer pandemics by now:
https://bigclosetr.us/topshelf/fiction/4779/this-quintessenc...
~hugs, Veronica