We recently connected with S.E. Fleenor and have shared our conversation below.
S.E., thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Let’s kick things off with talking about how you serve the underserved, because in our view this is one of the most important things the small business community does for society – by serving those who the giant corporations ignore, small business helps create a more inclusive and just world for all of us.
Bitches on Comics, our podcast, as well as our projects Decoded Pride, Decoded Horror Channel, and Queer Spec are all focused on elevating the voices of 2SLGBTQ+ creatives and critics. Every other Wednesday on the Bitches on Comics podcast we interview a creator or critic about their project, covering everything from webcomics to graphic memoirs to novels to movies and TV. If it is queer and it’s speculative, we consider it part of our beat. Decoded Pride and Decoded Horror Channel are focused on producing high quality digital and audio based speculative fiction from queer and transgender creators for an audience of queer and trans people and our allies.
Publishing is an industry that is widely antagonistic toward 2SLGBTQ+ folks and all the more so toward our Indigenous, Black and Brown, disabled, immigrant, and otherwise multiply marginalized siblings. While there are undeniably more queer and trans stories being told than ever before, we have created a home for queer and trans stories that don’t have to bend to a cisheterocentric system of editors, readers, and listeners. Instead, we aim to help our creators and our guests on the podcast tell THEIR stories THEIR way, whether they’re a first time creator or an award-winning best-selling author. In that way, we’re a deeply antiauthoritarian, antihierarchical, antifascist, anticapitalist group of people working together to shine a light on queer and trans storytelling.
We’ve heard both on and off the air about how unique our projects are, particularly given the care we take with our creators and guests. 2SLGBTQ+ people often have to fight to tell our stories, so we have created a fun, open, respectful space for us to use our voices–without having to worry about someone misgendering us or treating us like we’re lesser because of our identities. Because of that commitment, we get to share stories that aren’t being told anywhere else. Whenever I doubt myself or worry about how much work these projects take, I read the letters from our listeners, our guests, our creators where they say they’ve never been so raw and honest before and I know I’m on my path.
Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.
I’m S.E. Fleenor. The short version of my “about me” is that I tell stories and help others tell theirs.
The longer version goes something like…
I’ve been a reader and writer as long as I can remember. When I was five, I would sit on the stairs under the light after my older sister fell asleep in our shared room and call out the letters to the words I didn’t know to my parents who would tell me what they spelled and what they meant. When I was ten, I wrote a book of poetry (very, very bad poetry that no, you cannot read). All through my tumultuous childhood, books, words, and stories were my second best friend. My best friend was a tie between my dad who loved to tell me stories around the campfire and my dog named Kizzy who really, really liked to listen to my stories and his.
Film editing was a brief, intense passion of mine in high school and through it I found what would unwittingly become the core of my work for the rest of my life: interviews. At a national competition to make a news segment in 24 hours, I randomly chose a woman to interview by pressing a button on a hotel elevator and then knocking on doors until someone answered. What I thought would be a silly gimmick resulted in a powerful, touching story about the great love of her life and how he’d died. This complete stranger told me her deepest held story because I had been curious. My voracious desire to know people had a place in the world. I could interview them. And I did. For surveys and colleges and employers and publications and research.
In college and graduate school, I studied literature, religion, film, and writing. When I wrote my first script for a sitcom pilot, all other study was over for me. I had rediscovered my love of telling stories and I knew that was my path forward in life. I wanted to be like James Baldwin and Carson McCullers and write novels that were complicated, challenging, and filled with real people, real pain, and real healing. I’ve done that and am currently querying that novel (yes, you can read it if you’re an agent or editor looking for a new project).
Intermixed with that time, for over ten years, I worked in higher education and nonprofit management. I directed programs and worked on tons of written materials, ranging from social media posts to marketing decks to legislative reports. I learned so much during that time—including the fact that having writing be 10% of my job was not going to cut it. I began taking on projects and extra contract work that put me in the thick of writing and editing, but I still could never find a way to make writing and editing work in the traditional workplace. So, I made my own workplace and now I write, edit, instruct, interview, and podcast. In other words, I’m a storyteller for hire.
On the editorial side, I’m a freelance developmental and line editor, bringing years of experience as a managing editor, publisher, and editorial gem-of-all-trades to my clients’ fiction and non-fiction. I work with self-published authors and authors seeking traditional publishing, as well as short story writers and essayists. I pride myself on working with clients from diverse backgrounds to tell unique stories in ways that will connect with their audience. One of my favorite feelings in the world is working on a client’s book and finding the perfect turn of phrase that pulls a whole paragraph, a whole page, a whole chapter together. It’s nerdy, but it’s the stuff I love. I also teach online and in-person writing workshops with Writers Digest University, public libraries, and beyond.
I co-host the Bitches on Comics podcast, am an editor of Decoded Pride, and a contributor to Decoded Horror Channel (Bitches on Comics and Decoded Horror Channel are proudly distributed by the Realm network). These projects seek to shine a light on 2SLGBTQ+ voices in comics, speculative fiction, and beyond. Bitches on Comics, available on all podcast platforms, releases episodes every other Wednesday where we interview the coolest LGBTQ+ folks and women in comics and pop culture–we have nearly 200 episodes in our backlog and more coming all the time! Decoded Pride has released three issues of our story-a-day Pride anthology, all of which are available for purchase and support us continuing to tell queer and trans stories. Decoded Horror Channel, also available on all podcast platforms, has six episodes currently available with more on the horizon.
I am a film, TV, and culture critic with some of the best citations on Wikipedia, if I do say so. My own essays, creative nonfiction, and fiction appear in various publications including The Independent, Buzzfeed Reader, VICE, Electric Literature, Xtra Magazine, them.us, Upworthy, Denver VOICE, and many more. My words have appeared in print in various books covering topics from Star Trek to classism. I am a head writer and voice actor for the horror narrative fiction podcast Tales of the Sapphire Bay Hotel. My short story “Anomalous” was adapted to audio through Decoded Horror Channel’s Graveyard Orbit.
It might be obvious that I juggle…kind of a lot (just think of all the projects I can’t talk about yet!!), but the reality of being a modern day artist is that we all have to juggle so much more than just making art. Most of the creators I know are in the same situation–and many of them don’t have the privileges I do.
Everyone has a story to tell. And I want to hear as many as I can.
Is there mission driving your creative journey?
2SLGBTQ+ folks and our rights are under attack at terrifying rates pretty much worldwide. In the United States, hate crimes have risen at historic rates (See: https://www.advocate.com/crime/anti-trans-hate-crimes). In 2024, over 500 anti-transgender bills have been introduced in the United States with states like Louisiana and New Hampshire passing horrifying bills targeting trans people (See Erin Reed’s reports: https://www.erininthemorning.com/p/anti-trans-legislative-risk-assessment-3dc).
There’s never been a more important time for trans and queer stories–and that’s what drives me forward, what keeps me focused on my creative work.
I grew up in rural Colorado, in a district so conservative it was most recently represented by Lauren Boebert. I had no idea that queer and trans people could live beautiful lives and be seen for who they were. I thought the whole world was people like Boebert who hated trans and queer people just for existing and that pushed me so far back in the closet I thought I’d never escape. But I did. And I have a beautiful life. I am seen and loved for who I am.
That’s my goal: to see trans kids grow up into trans adults who believe in and love themselves–hopefully much sooner than I did.
So, it’s for trans and queer people that I tell my stories. It’s for trans and queer people that I do my editorial work, helping authors tread carefully where they should. It’s for trans and queer people that I make my podcast.
I hope allies will join. I hope they will listen and read and learn and use their voices to protect and support trans people, but at the end of the day, I do this for us.
Is there something you think non-creatives will struggle to understand about your journey as a creative? Maybe you can provide some insight – you never know who might benefit from the enlightenment.
Being a creative doesn’t just mean working hard. It means the work never really stops.
While that’s true for all small business owners to some degree, for creatives, it’s often our art, the very reason we get into our industry, that suffers–almost always from lack of time and, more often than I think we want to admit, from a desiccated creative well (aka burnout).
While that is in and of itself an issue, what’s difficult to quantify or express is the pain it causes to not be able to create for either reason. It’s like an itch you can’t reach except it’s in your brain but also somehow in your gut and, of course, in your dreams. I’ve gone years without writing and creating art because I was busy with something else and when I return–I always return–it’s like the first breath of fresh mountain air after too long away.
I believe all people have the capacity and desire for creativity, so the creative/non-creative divide has limited use. In reality, it’s likely that most of us who are hustling day to day to make a small business or project work are flirting with if not outright living in burnout. What’s the antidote? As far as I can tell, it’s connecting with others in non-transactional ways like partnering on events or initiatives that might not be as lucrative or donating proceeds from a special fundraiser to a cause or it could start as something as simple as expressing solidarity with a marginalized group on social media. Often we think it’s forcing ourselves to be creative that will help us create, but sometimes what we need is a reason to create, a genuine connection with another human being that sparks the fire inside.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://sefleenor.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/se_fleenor
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/sefleenor/
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/s-e-fleenor-423b4936/
- Other: S.E.’s Blue Sky: https://bsky.app/profile/sefleenor.bsky.socialBitches on Comics website: https://bitchesoncomics.com/
Bitches on Comics Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/bitchesoncomics/
Bitches on Comics Blue Sky: https://bsky.app/profile/bitchesoncomics.bsky.socialDecoded Pride and Decoded Horror Channel website: https://decodedpride.com/
Image Credits
Decoded Horror Channel logo by Sara Century
“Anomalous” art by Sara Century
Bitches on Comics logo, Decoded logo, Comic stylized art of S.E. Fleenor by Emma Mallinen