#MoreThanVisibility

I am definitely an ally of all members of the LGBTQA+ community, and have a mission to write about all combinations of sexualities and genders. 

So, here is a paragraph from my new book Rainbow Connection, this is from the mini story T* about Kieran and Riley. 
I’ve known Riley since I was in school, I may have been fourteen when we met, he had just moved to our sixth form, he was sixteen, almost seventeen, and had been forced to come to my class and tell us all about sixth form. That was the first time I met him, really, but, we both agree the actual first time I met him, I was fifteen, he was seventeen and we were at a party. I was trying to work out how much beer I could get away with drinking, and he’d surpassed my limit, we simply spoke to each other, I knew of him, there were many whispers around school of him, most of them intrigued me rather than scared me, and he definitely left an impression on me – from that day on, I knew I was going to go to our sixth form. We did actually become friends, but, at the time I was a fifteen year old girl. He sometimes was very conscious of that fact and kept our friendship reasonable at all times, when I turned sixteen and he was still seventeen he asked me out. I said yes. We’ve been together ever since, with no short term breaks, with no little tiffs, we’ve been together since that day when I was sixteen. I was going through a lot at that point in time, I mean, sure, I was going through all the cliché sixteen year old exam drama, but, I was also questioning a lot, and trying to figure a lot out, that summer was when I went on the pill, to stop my periods, I started to dress in bagger clothes and got my hair cut really short, I stopped shaving my legs almost in a protest and Riley was there for it all, near the end of the summer he had come over to my house, we’d been playing video games most of the day, but he told me he had something he wanted to talk to me about, he told me that he thought I was like him, he had been thinking it for a while, and had finally decided to bring it up. He explained it all too me, that afternoon in my living room, he explained who he was, he explained what dystopia was, he explained about the surgeries, the hormones, he told me everything, the next month I began identifying as a he, and requested others did so also, I started in sixth form as a male, and changed my name to Kieran, with help from Riley and a baby name website. Coming out to my parents was harder, but, Riley helped, Riley helped a lot. When I tell people how I figured it out, a lot of people question me, they state that I think I’m only this way because Riley is, and when we break up – which were so not going to do – I’ll go back to identifying as a girl, I know I won’t, I know that I am a boy called Kieran, and I know that because of many many things. 

RJ