Bankers Hill-based author Lauren Marie Fleming’s debut book “Because Fat Girl” comes out 20 years to the month since xe first started writing fiction. While xe has written over a dozen books and ghostwritten more for clients, this is the first time a publisher has backed her. The queer rom-com set in Hollywood comes out from Entangled on Oct. 22 with an audiobook read by Fleming.

“Throughout my career, I just kept getting these rejections of you’re too queer, you’re too fat, you’re too, you’re too, you’re too—,” Fleming recalled. Through two decades of rejection from agents and publishers, spite kept her going. “I wish I could say that I was zen and wonderful and everything. But it was community and spite. It was friends that believed in me from the beginning… It was, ‘I’ll f***ing show you.’”

Fleming wrote “Because Fat Girl” in 2017 with a plus size, queer main character rethinking her identity after a Hollywood hunk asks her out— and her first thought is less about whether she is attracted to him than what this means for her place in the LGBTQ+ community and how people would treat a fat woman dating a star.

“It was a look at the way in which we put ourselves into binaries and structures, even within the queer community,” Fleming said over tea from Cafe Bassam on Fifth Ave. Through the writing, Fleming examined how xe limited herself in love. Xe wrote her happy ending into existence while in a deep depression over the loss of her brother. “It is me in 2017 when I wrote it,” Fleming said, with the main character leading an alternate life as a filmmaker while facing similar circumstances: A brother dying, moving into the suburbs with a sister, a destabilized identity, and career dreams failing to materialize. The mirroring of the main character and Fleming’s real life is why xe pushed so hard to read the audiobook herself.

After many rewrites and edits, the resulting book grapples with body image issues, identity, and grief while featuring a happy ending that is just as much about romance as it is making a movie with your best friends. To Fleming, a romance book was the perfect vehicle to explore the nuances of these issues in an accessible way. “The only way to put all of that in one book without it being too much is to make it a joyous love story.”

Xe’s agent sent the book out to publishers in 2019 only for it to be added to her pile of rejected novels. In the intervening years, the publishing world went through a major shakeup amid 2020’s social justice movement and LGBTQ+ books like Casey McQuiston’s “Red, White & Royal Blue” becoming hits. Publishers started releasing books from more diverse authors and even marketing some of them. “We’ve had some people who have shown that if publishers put some might behind a book, queer books will sell,” Fleming said. When her agent pitched the book again, it was picked up by start-up publisher Entangled, a boutique romance pub focused on cutting-edge digital marketing that has already splashed onto bestseller lists with “Fourth Wing” by Rebecca Yarros and “Assistant to the Villain” by Hannah Nicole Maehrer.

While in the early stages of her journey to get published, Fleming moved to Portland, which was considered the literary capital of the world at the time. Ten years ago, xe moved to San Diego when her brother was dying of cancer with fears the loss of literary contacts would set back her career. Instead, within a few weeks, xe found a better literary community than xe ever had. “The open arms and support and collaboration over competition and friendliness of the local bookstores, of the local authors, of the local reader population is unlike anywhere else,” Fleming said. One way in which the local literary community is supporting her is through a book launch party and signing at Mysterious Galaxy (3555 Rosecrans St., Suite 107A) on Oct. 27 at 1 p.m.

Now, xe is on a personal mission to convince everyone that San Diego is a literary capital of the world: “I want to write the kind of love stories people write about New York, about San Diego.”

Fleming is currently writing two new books set around San Diego, but for now, xe is focused on celebrating the culmination of 20 years of effort. Her debut novel, “Because Fat Girl,” can be found wherever books are sold.