Hi everyone! I’m sorry it’s been so long since I last posted here on GR! I wish that ARMOUR was finished and was already out there for readers to enjoy, but I’ve had so many things going on. At the age of nearly 49, my thyroid, which has functioned on the lowest end of normal for two decades or more, finally stopped working abruptly in June. I noticed when my hair abruptly began to fall out, my skin was bone dry overnight, and my fingernails began breaking when I so much as grabbed a grocery bag too vigourously. On top of this, my A1C has been elevated for a while, and though I’m an excellent typist, I’ve noticed my eyes have weakened over the last year or so. I thought it was because I needed new glasses, but obesity and type II diabetes runs on both sides of my family, so I am now on a blood sugar regulator and am striving to keep sugar out of my diet as much as possible. I hope my new glasses will make writing easier, and that I don’t have a diabetes-related eye problem. In the meanwhile, I’ve discovered numerous plot bunnies that will lend credence to certain, shall we say, plot holes, or what I prefer to call, “voluntary omissions for several specific and complex emotional reasons.” In my first novel CRUSH, which I wrote during a deep depression in the summer and autumn of 2010, there was barely a mention of a character called Lloyd, who had adopted Jamie, one of two extremely prominent characters in CRUSH, and in my effort to focus on the lives and love relationship of Jamie and Tammy, I gave Lloyd a blurb of a history, and a few perfunctory scenes. Moreover, I did not know until the story began to grow larger and larger and began to take on more meaning and optimism that I might want to publish it at all. The one thing I did for Lloyd that I feel pretty good about was establishing him as a hero who freed Jamie from a deathbed, and a loving, decent parental figure whom Jamie desperately needed for his physical, mental and spiritual recovery from the long term abuse he suffered.

So, here we are, some nine years after I first created Tammy, Jamie, Stacy, Lloyd and the other characters of CRUSH, and I am shaping what you never knew of Lloyd in the womb of my mind. I’ve been labouring at this since 2015, but the first premise didn’t sit well with me. Every story I’ve written has been about some facet or chapter or my life in some way. I’ve tried my hand at writing lgbtq fiction containing erotica and romance, and I’ve enjoyed it immensely. But I decided early on that for ARMOUR, it’s time to truly represent who I am, and I am not gay. I am asexual. I also realised only a few days ago that I am epicene, not agender. I have had the most confused time trying to figure out my gender identity, and have lived under the umbrella “genderqueer” for a long time. The truth is, I am a nonbinary, noncomforming person who feels like both on some days and neither on others. I spent my early childhood as a tomboy forced to wear dresses, and when I hit puberty, I wore the Marty McFly “life preserver” to hide my size C breasteses, which popped up overnight. If all goes to plan, I’m having top surgery in October. What a nice birthday gift that will be!

All of what you’ve read above will be incorporated into ARMOUR. As I’ve said in the past, there are 3 names that were never mentioned in CRUSH: Astrid, Derek and Joey. These 3 people, along with Lloyd, will all be parental figures to Jamie and Tammy. They will have grown up in the ’50s, ’60s, and ’70s, long before same sex marriage was legal. I’ve only recently decided to make one main character intersex, born with XY chromosomes, but with feminine-looking genitalia, and a condition called Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome. This character’s gender identity is epicene. Two others are both born male, with traditional male genitalia, but while one character will end up heterosexual, the other is an epicene asexual like myself. The fourth character was born male in the 1930s, but is transgender, and identifies as a female. However, she does not desire sexual relationships with anyone.

I regret that ARMOUR is taking so much longer than my other works, but so many things are coming together to create a portrait of different asexual people who have different circumstances. Compared to my very first version of this story and even snippets I’ve posted to my WordPress blog, my current version of ARMOUR is making me feel less and less like the George Lucas of indie queer fiction. I no longer feel as though I’m destroying my own legacy (Crush), but rather explaining why certain characters were never mentioned in my debut work. I’m so excited!