Life updates & musings | April 2025
Top surgery, festivals, and the change in venue
How are we all enjoying late spring? It’s been a little while since I posted a general update. I’m still getting used to blogging, I suppose. When I’ve blogged in the past, it has had a particular theme or goal – I was required to start and upkeep a blog for my MA, for example, but I mostly posted about the research I was doing at the time. I don’t have the same time on my hands to devote to Viking literature (a tragedy), and mostly I am in workshops or writing or. Watching the world burn. Y’know.
Anyway, my point is that I’m not always entirely sure what it is I want to post here. I’m happy to write about traditional publishing and getting an agent and practical stuff like that; and I’m happy to share little snippets of poems and short fiction that I don’t have another home for. I’m not so great at talking about (gestures vaguely) myself.
This is an affliction I have suffered from since forever, which is inconvenient, because it seems that along with selling your writing you are also supposed to sell yourself.
People want to know the artist, not just consume the art! I too am guilty of trawling through the internet looking for podcasts and interviews that my favourite writers have done over the years. I suppose I just forgot that, should I publish a book, I would also have to present some sort of form of Me that people can read and listen to and watch. A form that the public can consume.
Traditionally I would not have considered myself fit for public consumption, but whatever. I’ve been told that I am off-putting and not a little strange. That’s down to my autism, I’m guessing, coupled with my trans gender and general queerness. What fuckin’ box are you supposed to put me in? How are you meant to talk to me and/or about me?
But I’m sure there are folks out there who are also unsettling, or enjoy perusing the strangeness. So, uh, here we are! I will do my best.
I am raising money for top surgery
A fun fact about Ireland is that TGEU found we rank dead last in transgender healthcare in the EU. Okay, that’s not a fun fact. There really isn’t a way to bring levity to the situation, is there?
In Ireland we do have a National Gender Service, but it still treats transgender people as mentally ill, non-binary folks do not exist to them, and I’d rather tear my eyes out than explain to a doctor that masturbation habits have no bearing on your gender. I feel like a doctor should know that. I feel like any human being should know that. I mean just think about that statement for like four seconds.
Even if I did go the public route for transgender healthcare in Ireland, it wouldn’t matter. First, I’d have to lie and pretend to be a trans man, and reinforce weird gender expectations (“I am definitely a man because I like sports and the colour blue, please treat me like a sane person”), but also there are no top surgeons in Ireland. Zero. Nada. You have to go abroad.
Isn’t that great? Super affordable? Humanising?
I have been dreaming of top surgery since I was 15. I used to take out my shitty little laptop and watch grainy YouTube videos of transmascs giving post-op updates, showing off their scars with big toothy grins.
Good for them! I would think, and then wonder why I felt a sick longing in my stomach.
A few years ago, one of my dearest friends gifted me this badge. I have treasured it since, keeping it in a little purple organza bag, waiting for the day I can wear it.
It has an illustration of a post-op chest, with the crescent moon scars, and reads: Glad I got that off my chest. (Those with keen eyes and/or good memories will see that joke even made its way into A Fix of Light).
I just don’t have the nearly 8k it would cost to fly to another country, have surgery, and stay in a B&B for 3 weeks to recover enough to fly home.
My pride has stopped me from crowdfunding until now. I hate posting about my inability to fend for myself. I hate asking for money when money is so tight for almost everyone right now. But it’s been over a decade since I first wished this wish, and it’s a very strange and lonely feeling, not being at home in your own body. It’s tricky to tolerate. So I’m swallowing my pride and my manners and my sense of decorum and I’m asking for assistance.
Here’s the link to my Ko-Fi, in case you have some mad urge to help me out, or want to share it.
I’m doing some events!
I am thrilled and delighted and kind of amazed to say I have events at both the Cork World Book Festival and West Cork Literary Festival this year!!
Both of these events will be free to attend, but you do need to book your spot!
Being an author with a book out in the world is not like being a musician with a song out on a streaming platform – I have no idea how many books I’ve sold, how many people have read Fix, and whether they’ve liked it or not. That’s fine by me. I think I would drive myself round the bend constantly checking numbers like that (though I do often check Cliffords’ Spotify lol) and in my humble opinion reviews are for other readers, not for me.
I say all of this because I don’t know how many people will be interested in listening to me chit chat about A Fix of Light!!! So I have made a plan: I will chat a bit about the book, but I will also chat a bit about writing in general. I am not very practised at talking at people, moreso talking with or to them, so I’ll make sure to leave room for a bit of back-and-forth or questions-and-answers. I might also go absolutely wild and do a little creative writing exercise with everyone!!
My point being: this is exciting. To be invited in the first place is surreal. On the micro, personal level, I am amazed to be in this position; 18 months ago I was so sure my writing was dead in the water and I was impossibly far from my dream. I’m cheering for my teenage self who got off their ass and actually did the work. Especially when you consider all the hormones and angst and whatnot, lol.
But when I pull back and consider the bigger picture, too, my heart squeezes with a bittersweet hope. Many environments are not very friendly or hospitable to queer/trans and/or autistic people – so it is not lost on me the significance and importance that an artist who looks like me is attending events as big as these.
It’s good to remember, I think, and to take a moment to acknowledge the kindness, especially when everything seems so grim. There are fellow writers and librarians and festival organisers and readers who will champion you and will champion diversity and inclusion. Hope is a verb, hope is an action, hope is something you have to do and tend to, same as love. Don’t forget to count all the little things that feed your hope!
Hey, this isn’t Substack, what gives?
Ah, yes. So you’ve noticed.
I’d just started to get into a groove on Substack when I realised that some of the site’s principles conflicted with my values. Like, treating hate speech as an extension of free speech, à la Meta. Then I read ismatu gwendolyn’s post about why she was leaving Substack (I believe you can read it on Threadings, now, but it’s behind a paywall!) She pointed out that Substack’s so-called “anti-censorship” policy meant that people could post and even monetise racist tirades.
“It’s part of the cultural discourse!!” “It’s freedom of expression!!! Free speech!!!”
No! It’s actually just racists jumping on any chance they can to Be Racist Especially In Public and For Money.
And, yes, whatever, there is no perfect platform, but there are better and worse platforms. I have tried to find one that is, hopefully, better.
For now, anyway. Marginalia may end up hopping around the internet. Please bear with me while I try to figure out this new fangled system!
Best,
Kel x