"I WRITE BECAUSE..." By Troy Ford

A "baker's dozen" of questions in search of 12 + 1 answers.

Welcome, Troy Ford. So pleased to have you be our fourth contributor to “I Write Because…

I first met Troy last August, when Jerry Portwood recommended him to me. Jerry suggested that Troy might help answer the many questions I had about becoming a Substacker. He was right and Troy quickly became a mentor … and friend. I owe him the acknowledgement of most of what “Michael A Horvich: Memoirs, Musings, & More” has become, and I am grateful!

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Date: 3/2/26

Name: Troy Ford

Substack Link:

and

A. Gender-wise, I identify as male(ish).

B. In the LGBTQIA+ Community, I am queer.

C. I am married.

D. My age is 56.

E. My educational background is a B.A. in Rhetoric, UC Berkeley.

F. I live in Sitges, Barcelona, Catalunya, Spain.

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1. I have been seriously writing since I was (age) … 50.

2. I consider myself a writer and author. I write full-time, and I publish newsletters and books, so that’s pretty much the definition of those.

3. I consider myself somewhere between an amateur and a professional. I don’t make enough money from my writing to support myself, but luckily, my husband is wonderful, and we adore each other, so he does his tech thing and lets me do my writing thing.

4. The kind of writing I do is Queer literary fiction, focused at the moment on young, ne’er-do-well gay boys muddling through sex, love, and partying too much for their own good. Ford Knows Books is a catch-all for personal essays about indie publishing and life; Qstack shines a light on other queer Substacks to increase our community’s visibility on the platform.

5. The first motivation that I can remember as a major encouragement for me to write was a book and a teacher. Isn’t that how these always start?

The book was Harriet the Spy when I was 10ish, and I was almost more interested in the spying part but the writing part turned out to be fun too–I’ve kept journals now for almost half a century…(!?!)

The other was a teacher, Mrs. Cardona, the principal’s wife, and she was fun and zany and encouraged us to pick pen names in 6th grade. Mine was Xavier Gadfly–Xavier, after Xavier “Supersex” Hollander, whose book baffled and mesmerized me when I stumbled across it in our Greek hotel’s gift shop on vacation when I was a kid.

Gadfly because my 5th-grade teacher used to say “good gadfry” instead of “godammit,” and I didn’t know what gadfry meant exactly, but I had heard gadfly at some point, and it seemed vaguely more apt for a writer.

6. A writing topic I return to again and again, and why is because I’m working through a cycle of stories which focus on the experience of young gay men who came of age in the aftermath of the AIDS crisis. We missed the first waves of infection and death, but none of the shame associated with “God’s retribution” against our sinful ways and our audacity for demanding equal rights in the wake of Stonewall.

This subject still haunts me from my younger days, and I write about it because while there are a lot of AIDS narratives, there aren’t as many about the generation that came after, who never knew life without condoms and HIV tests and the terrible anxiety of What if I become HIV+?

7. I find writing easy, hard, or in between because. Sometimes writing is easy–you get a bee in your bonnet, and the words fall out, done and done. Other times, it’s like walking knee deep through a bog. Inspiration doesn’t always sit by your elbow, blowing kisses; and sometimes it’s just a job.

8. As far as my writing legacy, Gee, I really don’t care what my writing legacy is – it’s not up to me, and humanity has a pretty iffy track record on notable persons from the past, so I have no grand designs. I’ll just be over here writing until I can’t or don’t want to any more.

9. What makes the work of writing worthwhile for me is that, for all the “loneliness” of writing, the gatekeeping, the uphill slog trying to get published or make a living, it is an Art, and I feel deeply honored to be among the people who get to practice it. So much of the beauty of life arises first in the mind; it’s a pleasure to work in that sphere.

10. If I stopped writing today, I’d be OK. I’d probably throw myself into an eco/rewilding project or a crusade for limitarianism.

11. When I have been away from writing, I come back to the page because it’s my calling – since I was a kid, it’s been the only thing I really wanted to do.

12. I write because … (this feels so similar to my answers for #9 and #11. I’m not sure I have anything else to say about that.)

13. I would like to add that … my second novel, Waterspout, will be released on the fourteenth of July. Pre-orders coming soon! Subscribe to Ford Knows Books for updates and more sparkling repartee.