Today we’d like to introduce you to C. M. Alongi
Hi C. M., it’s an honor to have you on the platform. Thanks for taking the time to share your story with us – to start maybe you can share some of your backstory with our readers?
I’ve been writing since I was 12, publishing since I was 20. I’ve always been fascinated with science fiction and fantasy, and writing has always been my go-to expression. In short, I write because I can’t NOT write.
After I graduated college (double B.A. in history and social justice), I figured I’d help my chances of getting published by building an audience, first. Thus I started blogging, and failed. Then I started YouTube, and failed for a few years until 2020, when I got laid off from my sales job and thus had time to properly sit down and research how to make social media work. YouTube got easier after that. And the whole time, I was writing my stories.
My debut novel CITADEL got picked up by Blackstone Publishing in 2021, and my literary agent encouraged me to go on TikTok to keep growing my audience there. My reaction was, “UGGGGHHHHH, do I HAVE to?”
I had enough social medias. I didn’t need another one.
But my audience wasn’t growing as fast as I wanted it to on the other platforms, so I gave it a shot. It took two years to get the hang of it, to find my voice and style, to figure out how to tell stories–something I’ve been doing since I could hold a pencil–in a video format.
And then I had the idea of a cafe run by fairies in February 2023, and that was that.
We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
Absolutely not! Nothing smooth about writing or content creation.
For starters, you don’t get paid for the first few years. What pay you do receive is paltry. So you have to work a soul-sucking 9-to-5 or, in my case, bounce from a PCA job that’ll burn you out to a sales career ended by a pandemic to food service.
Then there’s the challenge of growing your audience. Of finding people who want to hear what you have to say. And that takes time, because for a lot of us, YOU have to figure out what you want to say, and how to say it. It’s as much as journey of self-discovery as it is finding people to discover you, and it’s basically weeks, months, years of screaming into the internet void, hoping someone screams back.
And then, when you do get enough people screaming back that you can create content for them full-time, you have a whole new set of struggles. For me, the biggest one is balancing my mental health with the demand of constant creation. Storytelling takes a LOT out of you, so you have to give yourself a break from time to time, something extremely difficult in our culture of constant productivity and “go go go!”
Plus there’s all the people who tell me that what I do isn’t actually a “real job.” Ha! I dare them to try it for themselves. They won’t last a week.
Appreciate you sharing that. What else should we know about what you do?
I’m both an author and a content creator. I’m best known for my TikTok series CaFae Latte, about a cafe run by fairies. We see them deal with rude Karens, vampire ex-boyfriends, witch coven gangs, and a whole lot of other crazy shenanigans. It’s gotten popular enough that I’m actually publishing a book based on the series called HEART OF IRON, which comes out in October.
That’s not my first novel, though. My science fiction novel CITADEL–about telepathic, telekinetic wolves with wings on an alien planet–came out in 2023 and was nominated for a Minnesota Book Award. I’m currently working on the sequel, DEMONS’ NEST, now. I also have a dark fantasy novel THE WITCH WHO TRADES WITH DEATH coming out March 11 of this year, and an ongoing epic fantasy novella series called BLACKWING.
Because I am a queer woman (aroace specifically), all of my stories center women and queer characters. Pretty much every character in CaFae Latte is queer–with the single exception of Patrick the werewolf. I also enjoy the challenge of writing characters from other groups that I am not a part of, such as Olivia from CITADEL, who is nonverbal autistic. (To the best of my knowledge, I am neurotypical.) These types of characters add a fresh layer to my stories and force me to consider the world, plot, and people in different ways than I normally would.
I pride myself on doing my research with these characters, and my fans love it. I’ve created an incredibly passionate, diverse, and loving fanbase who are quick to educate me when I goof–such as when I introduced what was supposed to be a hijabi character in CaFae Latte in a freaking t-shirt. Whoops! But hey, now we know, and we all laugh over it now.
Is there a quality that you most attribute to your success?
I’d say it’s my willingness to tackle contemporary issues–especially modern-day sexism, queerphobia, and classism–while approaching everything with the spirit of a student. Despite writing the main character of CITADEL as a nonverbal autistic, I will never be an expert in autism, or Islam, or BIPOC issues, by the simple fact that I am not a part of those groups. But I can still add my voice to theirs when I see in injustice in the world, and I can always find someone willing to be the teacher to my student so I don’t goof it up.
Pricing:
- TikTok & YouTube: free
- My books: depends on the store
- Patreon: however much you want to give
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.cmalongi.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/c.m.alongi/
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@CMAlongi
- Other: https://bsky.app/profile/cmalongi.bsky.social
