trans – Page 2 – A. L. Lester

Interview: J. R. Hart

Today I’d like to welcome J. R. Hart to the blog, to talk about Miss Claus, their latest release. It has the dubious distinction of being the book that most recently made me cry buckets! It’s a lovely story and the trans rep is excellent.

So, take it away, JR. Welcome! Why did you decide to pop in today?

Mostly, I’m excited to share more about my upcoming book, Miss Claus. It’s the first time I’ve really deviated from the books I’m typically known for (m/m romance) to work in more non-romance and really speak from the heart. While all of my characters have pieces of me and my frame of reference worked in, Kris’s view of her transgender identity, her progress through a relationship where she’s manipulated and gaslit quite a bit, and her love/hate relationship with local politics, all while reaching for a huge goal? She’s truly a girl after my own heart and I feel connected to her in many ways, which makes me want to talk more about her story!

What started you writing?

Writing has been a complicated journey. As an early reader, I’ve always been fascinated by stories, and when I was in second grade, our teacher held a storywriting contest. The winner would get a little hardbound copy of their story printed by the school. I won! I was hooked on the praise for my storytelling and knew writing would be a huge part of my life. But then I hit high school and an independent study on creative writing. The librarian at the school, who had recently self-published a book of her own, told me very strongly that she saw no future in writing for me, and that even if I enjoyed writing, I’d never be worthy of publication. That crushing blow led to me walking away from fiction writing for ten years. Some of my jobs involved writing to some degree or another – at one time I won a relatively popular food and family blog – but I wouldn’t touch fiction. Eventually, I joined a fandom, but I promised myself I wouldn’t go near writing fanfiction. I could admire from afar. That lasted approximately three days. Then I started what became a 100,000 word fanfiction. Within a year I’d written a million words, and when I started realizing that I exclusively wrote AUs far removed from the source material, I decided that since I preferred creating my own worlds, maybe I’d just dip out of fandom all together and attempt my own novel. I haven’t looked back!

Where do you write?

I love the small desk in my bedroom since it has a wonderful view of my backyard. It truly sparks a lot of inspiration in every season of the year… except when I get distracted by the squirrels chasing each other outside! When I need a change of scenery, though, I’m definitely one to head to the kitchen table or the coffee shop. I’ll write anywhere, though. I even wrote part of Miss Claus inside a Chuck E. Cheese!

What do you like to read?

I love to shake up my reading with plenty of genres and authors, but I have to say that I’m a sucker for anything with a major trope in it. Fake dating? Sign me up. Only one bed? Sold. Enemies to lovers? Oh gosh, I’m in. The tropier the better, which means I find myself in the romance section pretty often!

What are the three books you’d take to a desert island? Why would you choose them?

This is a really hard one. Only three? I’d have to say right now I’d take my major comfort reads. First up would be The Ex Hex by Erin Sterling because it genuinely made me laugh out loud so often, while also allowing me plenty of room to tear up. Second, I’d need to go with Cool for the Summer by Dahlia Adler. Adler is one of my auto-buy authors where I can’t help but preorder the instant something’s announced. And finally, I’d have to go with my current absolute favorite, at least once it’s released. I was lucky enough to read an ARC of an upcoming novella from Skye Kilaen’s Love at Knockdown series. I loved the first book in the series, but book two had me hooked from page one.

Writing is an intrinsically solo occupation. Do you belong to any groups or associations, either online or in the ‘real’ world? How does that work for you?

Yes! Connecting with fellow authors is a huge part of writing for me. Currently, I’m working on a novella as part of an upcoming multi-author series with some authors I really admire — Skye Kilaen, Roz Alexander, and Karmen Lee are all on board, among others. Another place I’ve really found a connection is in a small discord a writer friend of mine created. Touching base with those friends regularly has been a big motivator! We even sometimes watch television shows together. I also write for a couple of small magazines. Patch Magazine is an independent gaming magazine, and all of us who write for it have a very active group chat every time something new and exciting is released in the indie gaming world.

What do you like to do when you’re not writing?

When I’m not writing, I’m usually doing something with my hands. I dabble in cross stitch, miniatures at 1:24 scale, love LEGO, and work on an antique needle craft from the 1970s called Bargello. I do have ADHD, which means I tend to go from one intense hyperfixation to another when it comes to my hobbies. Alternately, one of my earliest special interests (I’m also autistic) was the Titanic, so anytime a new article or documentary comes out about it, I essentially stop everything else to watch or read about it.

Tell me a little bit about your most recent release. What gave you the idea for it? How long did it take to write? What did you enjoy about writing it? What did you hate?

So many things about Miss Claus pull from my own experiences. I think I took my first political petition around town when I was 9 years old, and I’ve always been heavily invested in politics, especially on a small-town city council level. I’ve also long been invested in those awesome scenes from movies like Legally Blonde’s “you were in the shower?” perm courtroom scene, where the lead everyone underestimates manages to really speak eloquently and win everyone over to her side. Scenes like that have long inspired me to want to write a character I felt could really deliver that girl power moment. But underneath it all, Miss Claus is a trans story told from a trans lens, and a story about a fat person told from a fat person’s lens, and a story about parenting told from a parent’s lens.

Miss Claus took me just under a month when it came to producing a first draft. It definitely took more than a couple of sessions at the coffee shop trying to spill 10,000 words at a time onto the page. The editing process definitely took longer, as it often does. I will say, it definitely did a number on my search history, because I read article after article about the history of women as Santa. Of course, many of the stories came from my own experience with small-town politics, some directly ripped from my local City Council’s proceedings, but reframed from a North Pole lens with some massive edits. That was both challenging and exciting.

Miss Claus

Kris Claus has spent her entire life preparing to become the next Santa Claus. After all, she’s Santa’s daughter, so she’s certain to be next in line for the title. She’s gotten the degrees, served as his assistant… nothing can stop her. Well, nothing except her lawyer ex, who is trying to sneak his way into the title by bringing up an archaic gender law that says women can’t be Santa.

Steeped in small-town politics and a rivalry for the ages, Kris won’t stop until she’s gotten what she’s fought for her whole life, but she won’t give up who she really is — a proud woman — to reach her dreams. When a letter from a transgender girl down South reminds her of herself as a child, Kris knows exactly what’s at stake, not just for her own dreams, but for the dreams of girls everywhere.

Miss Claus is available at NineStar Press : Kindle and Paperback : Other eBook links

Find J. R. Hart

Website : Goodreads : Twitter : Instagram : TikTok

Trans people in history

This morning I want to talk a little bit about trans people in history. Transgender is a word that can only be traced back to 1974, but that didn’t mean trans people didn’t exist before that date! Walter, one of the main characters in The Quid Pro Quo is transgender—he’s caused me all sorts of plot issues, but has sent me off to do lots of really interesting reading, which I’m delighted to share here!

One of the things that gender studies academics all agree about is that it’s almost impossible to know how people in the past that we now see as trans would have seen themselves. The records are very sparse, often sensationalised and are usually other people’s view of the person rather than their own. Who wanted to put that sort of thing down in writing when it would get you prosecuted or put in a mental hospital? So it’s hard to tell whether past figures were transgender; or whether they were passing as a man or woman in order to access spaces and privilege they would be otherwise denied. This is particularly true of people who were assigned female at birth and lived the bulk of their lives as men.

The most famous of these cases is Dr James Barry, who after his death in the mid-nineteenth century was revealed to be AFAB (assigned female at birth). I won’t write much about him here because this is the article I would write and Rebecca Ortenberg has already done it better than I would. Suffice to say that after he began his medical education at Edinburgh, Barry never presented or referred to himself as female again. He was only discovered to be AFAB after the person laying his body out for burial spoke about him. In recent years he’s been absorbed by the ‘plucky girl breaking the glass ceiling by putting on breeches’ narrative, which I personally feel is wrong.

This article at the British Library about Transgender Identities in the Past is fascinating. It focuses on two people, Eliza Edwards, who on her death in 1833 was discovered to be AMAB. And in 1901, someone we’d now understand to be a trans man who at the age of sixty and after several marriages and a career as a cook on P&O liners was revealed to be AFAB. The newspaper article calls them by a woman’s name. It completely erases the life they lived. The article has audio clips of a 2018 discussion between E-J Scott, curator of the Museum of Transology; Dr Jay Stewart, the chief executive of Gendered Intelligence, and Annie Brown, an activist, artist and GI youth worker. It’s worth your time.

In The Flowers of Time, my story set in the late eighteenth century, Jones the non-binary character eventually decides to present as masculine because it makes their life with Edie easier. They fudge the record, more or less blackmail close family into accepting them and that’s that. However, it’s not unreasonable to suppose that as time went on, communication became quicker and easier and records of births and marriages became more common it became much more difficult to pass. British army records mention Phoebe Hassel, who was discharged in 1817 when she was flogged and discovered to be a man (bottom of page seven, you have to register, but it’s free). We don’t know whether she was a passing woman for financial or social reasons or whether she was what we’d understand today as trans. Her male name is not mentioned. However, she must have passed well enough or had enough support by her peers to have concealed her natal gender for some years.

However, The Quid Pro Quo is set a hundred and fifty years later than Phoebe’s flogging and The Flowers of Time. By the time Walter joined up in 1898, there were medicals for army recruits. This was such a sticking point for me that I bottled it and I honestly tried to write the book with him as cis. However, he just wouldn’t play…he’d been trans in my head as I was writing The Fog of War, right back as far the planning stage of the trilogy. But when I came to write it, I couldn’t make the story work with him as trans because of the army regulations; and I couldn’t make the story work with him as cis because he’s not cis.

I threw the question to some of my lovely friends at the Quiltbag Historicals facebook group (join us, we’re cool!) and they immediately began working out ways I could fudge the story. So Walter begins his army career as his twin brother and has a little help from the people around him to keep his origins concealed. And I reassured myself that if people are prepared to suspend disbelief about the paranormal aspects of my stories then they can allow me this tiny (enormous) stretch of possibility to get it off the ground!

I love Walter. He’s so very pragmatic about his life and his place in the universe. He’s just getting on and doing his thing. I wanted him to have a happy ending so badly all the time I was writing The Fog of War and I was very pleased to be able to give him one here in The Quid Pro Quo.

I like to think of my stories as realistically historical first and paranormal second. My characters are just getting on living their lives—which have greater or lesser levels of complexity—and the paranormal comes and whacks them round the back of the head with half a brick in a sock. I try and make the history as accurate and the paranormal as twisted as I can! I think I’ve done Walter justice, as he’s one of my favourite people. I hope you like him too.

Lastly, here is a brilliant collection of books about trans history and trans issues, curated by Christine Burns and available from independent bookshops.

The Quid Pro Quo

Village nurse Walter Kennett is content with his makeshift found-family in tiny Bradfield. However one midsummer morning a body is found floating in the village duck pond, dead by magical means.

Detective Simon Frost arrives in Bradfield to investigate a inexplicable murder. The evidence seems to point to Lucille Hall-Bridges, who lives with doctor Sylvia Marks and nurse Walter Kennett at Courtfield House. Simon isn’t happy—he doesn’t believe Lucy is a murderer but he’s sure the three of them are hiding something. In the meantime, the draw he feels toward Walter takes him by surprise.

Walter is in a dilemma, concealing Sylvia and Lucy’s relationship and not knowing how much to tell Frost about the paranormal possibilities of the murder. He isn’t interested in going to bed with anyone—he’s got a complicated life and has to know someone really well before he falls between the sheets. He’s taken aback by his own attraction to Detective Frost and angry when Frost appears to twist the spark between them to something transactional in nature.

Will Walter be satisfied to stay on the periphery of Lucy and Sylvia’s love affair, a welcome friend but never quite included? Or is it time for him to strike out and embark on a relationship of his own?

Add The Quid Pro Quo on Goodreads

The Week that Was: Mattresses and activism

This week, we bought a new mattress. My back’s been increasingly creasing me and we’ve progressed through putting a board under the mattress, adding a memory foam mattress topper and then, finally, adding a big duck-feather thing on top of that. Making the bed is a bit like an out-take from The Princess and the Pea. (Yes, this is a genuine picture of me and Mr AL, in our night attire. Enter our bedroom at your peril.)

The whole process has been massively stressful, largely because it’s such a first world problem. Firstly there’s the cost. And secondly there’s the number of choices. And thirdly there’s my sneaking and increasingly unpleasant feeling that the world is going to hell in a handbasket and I should care more about the fact other people don’t even have safe spaces to lie down rather than the number of poxy springs I can afford to sleep on.

Yes, this is a post about guilt. But it’s also a post about nurturing your spoons. This is a bit of a stupid example–I could simply donate the cost of a mattress to an organisation helping the homeless and stop flailing about on the internet about it. It’s an analogy that I’ve been pondering though…how much is enough? In a society so unequal, how much is enough? Do I have to put up with a bad back to enable other people to have somewhere safe? Or can I make myself comfortable and help others too? It’s a really simplistic analogy, but I guess I’ve needed simplistic this week, because it’s what’s finally straightened my head out.

I’ve been really upset these last few weeks by the cess pit that’s the public discourse over trans rights in the UK. I’m saddened and upset by the level of hatred and silencing directed at trans people and a few weeks ago I decided I’d try and be a bit more active amplifying trans voices, and share things people can do to help. This has involved following accounts that share trans news. And even in this short amount of time, it’s devastated me.

I don’t know how these people manage it. There’s so much bile directed at them. I just pop onto their twitter timelines, check out the day’s events and see if there’s anything practical I can do to help…sign and share something, amplify news about a protest, that sort of stuff. I belong to a couple of blocklists and often the blocked responses scroll down and down and down the page. But then I come across a few people I haven’t blocked and the responses are vile; so I block them too. They are often accounts with followers below a couple of dozen, some only one or two.

After only a few weeks I feel worn away, exhausted by the horribleness of it all. I am non-binary. I present as a short, round, middle-aged straight person, married with children; and as such, my level of privilege is huge. I don’t get spat on in the street, or threatened at school, or shouted at in public bathrooms. Even watching the courage of these people with high public profiles from my safe position behind a keyboard I am awed at their strength. It’s the least I can do to keep trying to amplify their voices.

But…I can’t do it to the exclusion of the rest of my life…the looking after the kids, all the adulting I have to do on the day to day. And that includes the caring for myself. That’s the balance that’s so hard to get. And I guess it loops back to the stupid first-world thing about the mattress…it’s okay to look after myself and it’s okay to not feel guilty about that. As we travel along, our capacity to hold the light for ourselves and for others changes, whatever activism we participate in.

Some days you can’t even hold the light for yourself. Some days you can hold it for the village. It’s really important to a) remember that and not beat yourself up about it…you’re not failing if you can’t do it, you’re doing self-care. And b) you can’t do everything. Even on a good day, you can’t do everything. You’re in it for the long haul and whatever activism you’re doing, that’s enough. One step at a time and hopefully we can change the world.

Christine Burns has a curated list of books about the trans experience here.
Here are some resources for trans people experiencing homelessness.

Am Reading

This week I’ve been reading two touch-of-sff romances with trans characters by J. R. Hart and Jem Zero and a short gay novella playing with memory by Nathan Burgoine.

Miss Claus by J. R. Hart

This is a wonderful, light, Christmassy book with brilliant world building and very good pacing. The North Pole is a business, a huge industrial complex, an employer of thousands. But it’s also a small town, with politics and potlucks and pettiness alongside family and friendships and living your best life. It’s so well drawn. It’s every small town based around one big employer you’ve ever been to, except alongside all that, there’s Christmas magic.

For me, a lot of that magic was intimately tied up in the main character Kristin, Santa Claus’ daughter. She’s a shoo-in for his job when he retires as per the family tradition…until she’s not. The story follows her shock, her devastation, and then her building confidence in her suitability for the job despite the ‘traditionalist’ members of the town council being against her. They are against her twice, once because she’s a woman and once because she’s trans.

I cried at various points during the story, partly because Kris is so well characterised. Her words of kindness to a trans child and their parent are beautifully set down and were one of my sobbing points. Her journey from self-doubt to self-confidence was a joy to follow. All the characters are well rounded and it was simply a pleasure to spend time with them.

Also you will need cookies as you read this. Don’t question this. Simply accept it and get them ready before you sit down to with this excellent book.

Home Within Skin by Jem Zero

I came upon this book from a GR rec and it didn’t disappoint. I loved the premise…here’s our world…but aliens turned up in 2004. Humans don’t like them much and treat them as second class citizens. I liked the way the alien Rrhi culture was drip-fed into the story rather than info-dumped. And I think the stab at depicting how humanity would treat an alien species who had to leave their home planet and turn up on Earth asking for help is pretty accurate. Humans are so disappointing, generally.

I very much liked the human MC, Jax, a disabled, homeless trans twenty-something man with so many issues he needs a wheelbarrow to carry them round in. The story is told from his POV, but in second person, which I often find difficult but in this case worked well for me. It felt like I was experiencing his life alongside him, because that this is how he inhabits the world, keeping it at a distance.

Some bits of the story…Jax’s distress, his inability to allow himself to be anything less than utterly self-reliant because he is so afraid of being let down, his reactions to kindness…are heart-rending. But his gradual unfolding, his journey to get to a place that’s okay, not perfect, not a fairytale happy ending, but simply okay, is really engaging.

I loved Sei-vész, his alien boyfriend…a practical and kind person who happens to have tentacles, horns, very non-human sex organs and green skin. The relationship between them was beautifully drawn. I thought the contrast between Jax, so uncomfortable in his own human body, and Jax’s reaction to Sei-vész, so alien to Jax and yet someone Jax accepted unconditionally where he couldn’t accept himself was achingly well depicted.

Basically, if you like stories with messy protagonists trying to get their lives together, alien sex bit and a happy ending, you should read this.

In Memoriam by Nathan Burgoine

I really liked this novella. I can’t write about it properly without spoilers I don’t think. But it reminded me quite strongly of the film Memento in the way it plays with time and memory. I couldn’t put it down, I was so invested in the main character’s story. I started off with one understanding of him and his life and by the time I got to the end that was all turned around like a Moibus Strip or an Esher drawing. I really enjoyed it.

That’s all for this time!

Announcing The Quid Pro Quo

So, here’s some news! The Quid Pro Quo will be out on the 20th November and here’s the cover and an excerpt!

It’s the second in the Bradfield trilogy following The Fog of War and stars Walter, Sylvia’s nurse-friend; and Simon, a local detective who visits Bradfield to investigate a murder.

The Quid Pro Quo

Village nurse Walter Kennett is content with his makeshift found-family in tiny Bradfield. However one midsummer morning a body is found floating in the village duck pond, dead by magical means.
Detective Simon Frost arrives in Bradfield to investigate a inexplicable murder. The evidence seems to point to Lucille Hall-Bridges, who lives with doctor Sylvia Marks and nurse Walter Kennett at Courtfield House. Simon isn’t happy—he doesn’t believe Lucy is a murderer but he’s sure the three of them are hiding something. In the meantime, the draw he feels toward Walter takes him by surprise.

The second in the Bradfield trilogy, set in the Border Magic universe. With a transm/m couple. Read The Fog of War first and/or add The Quid Pro Quo to Goodreads.

As Simon was replacing the device on the telephone table a pretty young woman put her head out of a door at toward the end of the hall. “Sylv!” she said, “Do you want tea? I’ve boiled the kettle.” and then when she realised he wasn’t who she thought he was, “Oh, I do beg your pardon! I thought you were Dr Marks!”.

“She’s still in the surgery,” Simon nodded across the hall.

The woman emerged into the hall. “Lucille Hall-Bridges,” she said, extending a hand. “I’m a friend of Sylvia’s. I help with the house.”

Simon took her hand in his. Her grip was sure and warm. “Detective Frost,” he replied. “Nice to meet you, Miss Hall-Bridges. She had a recent bruise running from her jaw to just below her eye, entering the black-and-purple stage.

“I’ve made a pot of tea,” she was saying. “I don’t know whether anyone will want any, but I do like to feel useful and tea is so…normal-making, isn’t it?”

He nodded, slightly bemused at her chatter. “Yes, indeed,” he said. “Very normal.”

She gave a perfunctory tap on the surgery door, opened it and disappeared inside without waiting for a response. “Sylv, Walter, I’ve made tea. Would you and your detective like to come into the drawing room?” Her voice faded, presumably as she joined them in the examination room.

There was a pause. Then, “Oh!” he heard her say. “Oh.” She sounded a little shocked. “What’s happened to her hands?” she asked.

“Scraped on the bottom on the pond I think,” Simon heard Dr Marks say. “She was face-down in the water.”

“Oh.” Miss Hall-Bridges’ voice was small. “Sylvia…there’s…she’s…I can feel…do you think…?” Her voice trailed off and Dr Marks spoke over her, clearly away they might be overhead.

“Let’s not worry about that now, shall we? The policeman is sending her down to Taunton to a postmortem. You go and take the tea-things into the drawing room. We’ll just cover her up.”