"What we do is hard, because it's not supposed to be possible."
Change was everywhere in early 1980's London. New sights, sounds and the fresh confidence of a new generation determined not just to subvert, but to become the future.
Lee Habens arrived from small town grief, seeking her own change. She hoped to be part of the new revolution - but on her own terms. In short, Lee needed to become the woman she had not been born.
She would need to find ways to support herself and to fund a complex and terrifying journey she could only loosely comprehend. She would need to walk the delicate lines between the straight world and places where genders pass and blur. And she would need to do it all unnoticed - until it would be time to move beyond, to the life for which she'd always felt destined.
There would be new challenges, old secrets and relationships of impossible promise - for if a new life could be created, perhaps even love could stand a chance.
From West London to Brighton, Bristol and the South of Spain, Interloper echoes a time of optimism and flamboyance; fear and danger. The prize is peace and a place to call home. For the interloper to finally belong.
Kim Erin Cowley writes with a sensitivity born out of her own experience of becoming a woman, over 20 years ago. She works in the film industry, supplying support services to producers, distributors and broadcasters.
I was born on the Kent coast in 1963, in the midst of a winter that famously froze the sea. Everything was fine until I realised what I was - and wasn't. As for so many young people raised in the orbit of London, the pull of the capital proved overwhelming and I eventually left for the big city at the age of 19. I spent the next few years trying to ignore and then placate my own instincts. I began to realise that my future might ask rather more of me than I might have to give. I began a media career in the 1980's, dealing with promoters and record companies on behalf of various music magazines including Sounds and Kerrang!. By the beginning of the 90's I'd found my way to the film business - initially in the shape of trade titles, Variety and Screen International and for an extended period, at the British Film Institute. I've since spent almost two decades providing support services to producers, distributors and broadcasters. In addition to earning a crust and negotiating all of the usual trials of love and life, I needed to resolve the conflict at the heart of my very existence. Changing sex has been an experience more challenging and amazing than I could ever have imagined. It has been in turns, harrowing, terrifying, infuriating and soul-crushingly lonely, but following raw instinct and a drive beyond reason brings a special sense of liberation - and ultimately, a kind of peace. What I lived through all those years ago, naturally informed the writing of Interloper - and I hope it will continue to help me to interpret and create in the future. Writing the book has in itself been another attempt to make happen, the unlikely. There have been a few special people who have also believed in the plan to breathe life into this story and its characters. That the book exists at all is due in no small part, to that encouragement and support. Who I am has ultimately proved to be more important than what I am - but harmonising both has given me the chance to love the life I am now so fortunate to live.
