Firstly, there was a series of news reports of gay teenagers who had committed suicide over their sexuality. But a number of factors prompted her to think back to her rejected first book. So far, so straightforward for Kessler’s writing career. My sense is we’re not there yet-we’re a long way along that road but we’re not there I think it’s still a struggle to come out as gay. Orion puts Kessler’s sales-including her Philippa Fisher series-at approximately 4.4 million copies globally across all editions, including e-books. So she turned instead to Emily Windsnap-“I love Emily, I think she’s responsible for so many good things that I have in my life, so I’ll always be grateful to her for choosing me”-and the series became successful, both in the UK and internationally. “And it’s weird because a heterosexual person can write a book with a gay main character and I wouldn’t imagine that would be a scary thing to do, but I don’t think I was ready to do that actually.” “It’s never been a secret with people I work with, or with anyone really, but just in a public way, I felt I would be exposing myself by writing the book,” she says. As a lesbian herself, Kessler felt that it would be making too much of herself public before she had even begun her career. She says now that while she had mixed feelings when the book was turned down, she was aware of “an enormous sense of relief”. It was rejected by 10 companies, including Orion Children’s Books (OCB), with whom Kessler had already done a deal for her first Emily Windsnap novel. Read Me Like a Book is actually the first book Kessler ever wrote, begun while she was on a Manchester Metropolitan University creative writing course and first submitted to publishers by agent Catherine Clarke more than a decade ago. A relationship with a boyfriend proves abortive, but Ashleigh’s feelings about Miss Murray become increasingly intense, and she starts to question herself, coming to recognise that she is a lesbian. Her rather lacklustre school life takes an unexpected turn with the arrival of an inspirational English teacher who really seems to understand her. Instead it’s a contemporary story about a fairly typical, sparky 17-year-old, Ashleigh, muddling her way through many of the common teenage issues-first-date nerves, exam pressures, parent troubles. It is a world away from the Windsnap tales-fantasies about a little girl who is half-mermaid. Liz Kessler, author of the much loved Emily Windsnap middle-grade novels, is to show herself in a new light this spring, with publication of her first YA story, Read Me Like a Book.
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