JOFFE BOOKS PRIDE Q&A – Michael Hambling

Here at Joffe Books we're looking to celebrate Pride Month over the month of June. We're very keen to show how proud we are of our LGBTQ+ authors, their hard work and their amazing achievements.

This week we caught up with Michael Hambling — read below to find out what Pride means to them.

Which book are you most proud of writing and why?

Of my Sophie Allen novels, the third book (Secret Crimes) introduces Rae Gregson to the detective team. Rae is trans and had been through a hard time in her previous job. I’ve been congratulated by many trans people on her portrayal. A recent trans acquaintance told me that, when she first read Secret Crimes, she thought: this author knows what they’re talking about. Another interesting comment came in an email from an elderly reader. Her teenage grandchild had recently come out as trans, and she didn’t understand at all. She happened to read Secret Crimes and emailed me to tell me that her grandchild’s feelings had now started to make more sense to her. Secret Crimes isn’t my favourite novel in the series, though. Rae appears in all the subsequent novels, and I’ve tried to develop her character in a realistic way. My personal favourite is Silent Crimes (book 6) but I’d be hard-pressed to explain why.

I’ve recently started to write a series of novels for teenagers, called The Misfits. The seven teenage members of the group all feel themselves to be outsiders, either disabled, LGBTQ+, neurodiverse or from ethnic minorities. I’m self-publishing them on Amazon. Crime mysteries for teenagers! I’m intensely proud of these books. The first two are already available (The Lost Tramp and The Missing Pilot) and I hope to have the third (The Poisoned Meadow) available by the end of the year.

How do you celebrate Pride and what does it mean to you?

I try to attend several Pride events in the area where I live, despite the fact that I’m not really a flag-waving person. I also support the fundraising events that occur prior to Pride Day itself. I help to organize monthly social events for both trans people and for my local LGBTQ+ group. I really admire the enthusiasm and openness shown by today’s diverse young people. Salisbury Pride is well known for its wide level of inclusivity. It works to include disabled and neurodiverse people and anyone who feels left out of mainstream society. It makes my heart swell with pride when I see them all together having a good time, despite the scorn, hatred and deliberate fact-twisting spewed out at us by much of the media, and by a few prejudiced individuals who seem to have the ear of the current government.

What advice would you give to aspiring LGBTQ+ writers?

We need to normalize LGBTQ+ characters. In real life, we’re part of the rich tapestry of human variation and what we write should reflect this. I ought to say that I never portray LGBTQ+ people as victims. I try to portray them as decent, principled human beings just trying to get on with their lives — something that reflects my observations in real life.

Be true to yourself in what you write. When I created Rae Gregson more than ten years ago, I decided to keep things simple and make her straightforwardly transgender. But, in reality, many people are more complex than that. I’m still at a gender-fluid stage for practical, family-based reasons, even though they all know about me. For all I know, I may remain there because that might be my reality. Just as there are a significant number of bisexual people who are neither entirely straight nor gay in terms of their sexuality, there are many trans people who do not adhere to any simple binary split but come to realise that they are happy to remain ‘in the middle’, floating between the two binary genders, or choosing neither. I wish that more fiction would portray this range.

Who are some of your favourite LGBTQ+ characters?

Orlando (Virginia Woolf).

Jeanette Winterson’s younger self in Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit. This was my first introduction to such characters. I loved it, along with the BBC adaptation.

Gentleman Jack, of course, as shown in biographies of Anne Lister. Again, a wonderful BBC adaptation.

I also liked the three main characters in Detransition, Baby (author Torrey Peters).

I always wonder if the witches in Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials trilogy were of ambivalent orientation, particularly the way they were portrayed in the recent BBC dramatization. The daemons in that series of novels are very interesting. Philip seems to have created them partly to act as a balance to the characters’ own personalities. But they also seem to provide a gender balance. Lyra’s Pantalaimon is masculine, yet Asriel’s Stelmaria seems to be feminine, as does Lee Scoresby’s Hester.

What’s on your TBR pile this Pride Month?

I’m not that well organized. My book purchases are spur of the moment things — except for Philip Pullman, of course. I haven’t yet read Juno Dawson’s latest book and must do so!