Let’s Get This Out There…Liz Kessler

Last month, two things happened to make me realise how much the world has changed. The first was that I got married.

Why would that make me think the world has changed? Well, because I married a woman.

OK, officially, I got Civil Partnered. What I actually did was stand up in front of a room full of my beloved friends and family and make a legally binding commitment to my partner of six years. So, yeah, I married a woman.

Twenty two years ago, I went to my brother’s wedding. It was a beautiful and emotional day. I remember looking round at everyone in the room and feeling overwhelmed by the love and support for my brother and his new wife, and I remember being so happy for them. And then I remember having a fleeting feeling of sadness as I realised that I would never have that. It never occurred to me that one day it might be possible. And last month, I proved my younger self wrong as I found myself at the centre of a room of my favourite people and felt wrapped up in love and happiness as two families became one.

The second thing that happened last month that made me realise how much the world has changed was that my publisher offered me a new contract. A very special new contract, and one that is close to my heart – especially this year. It is for a book that I wrote over ten years ago and which has waited patiently for its time to come. The novel is about a teenage girl learning about love and life – and coming out as gay. Ten years ago, none of us could really see how we could publish this book. It felt like a risk in all sorts of ways and my publisher, my agent and I were all happy to put it to one side and get on with writing and publishing all the other books that I’ve worked on since then.

But in the last couple of years, all sorts of things have made me start thinking again about this book. Incidents of gay youngsters committing suicide after unbearable bullying hit the news in the states. Violence against gay people increased in Russia after anti-gay laws were passed.

Amongst the campaigning against homophobic bullying, a wonderful song was released last year by a group called the L Project which I played over and over again. It’s called It Does Get Better and ever since I heard the song, I knew that I wanted to be part of a movement that was telling young people that it didn’t matter who or what they were. They were OK and they would get through it.

So I looked at my book again. I dusted it down, polished it up and sent it back to my agent. This time, when she sent it on to my publisher, the answer came back very quickly. ‘Times have changed, and we are ready to move with them,’ was the reply. My publisher not only wanted the book but the whole team was ready to support it, celebrate it and get it out into the world with enthusiasm.

Read Me Like A Book will be published in the spring of 2015 – and I can’t wait. It’s been a long time coming and, in many ways, it is the most important book I’ve written. But I’m also quite nervous of what this might mean for me, personally as well as professionally and commercially. I write books that are mostly read by girls aged between eight and fourteen. I like to think that my books have strong underlying messages about family and friendship and love and loyalty. These things are close to my heart and judging by some of the letters and emails I get, they are close to the hearts of many of my readers and their parents, too. But people sometimes have different ideas about what they mean by these values, and publishing such a different book could possibly create difficulties for me. Maybe it won’t – I have no way of knowing.

But in the year that my partner had very serious major surgery that made both of us think about the fragility of life, and the year that I took a legally binding vow to love, cherish, honour, respect and be faithful to her, I think that it’s time for me to stop letting fear dictate what I am prepared to do publicly. And it’s time for me to tell anyone who needs to hear it, for whatever reason, that it is OK to love whoever you love.

After all, if Ashleigh, the seventeen-year-old main character of my new book can do it, then it’s about time I did, too.

Follow Liz on Twitter
Check out Liz's Website
Find out more about the L Project and their work here
Watch the video of It Does Get Better
All photographs by Mark Noall. Check out his website here