Kim Erin Cowley works in the film industry and has owned her own company for almost two decades providing support services to producers, distributors and broadcasters. She writes:
“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.”
If you had to change everything, where would you begin?
Lee Habens has only the first idea of how to find tomorrow. Now, from the ashes of personal devastation, she must create a new life — one with a true sense of self, belonging and perhaps even love. Driven by irresistible instinct she will have to learn new ways to live, work and grow. She must transform herself in plain sight into the woman she needs to be — but she must do so in secret. Set against the burgeoning London club scene and sexual tumult of the early 1980s, Interloper offers a window to a world where change is the only chance.
