An Unexpected Turn
An Unexpected Turn, written by Brianna Nicole Austin, is a male to female story about a young boy who gets caught dressed. I’ve had the story swirling in my head for years, and I am happy to announce I finally completed and published it. Here are some of my thoughts on the storyline and why I wrote it the way I did.
Growing up transgender, my earliest memories were the fuel that the book begins with. While the opening scene never actually happened to me, I did experience scenarios, in part, just as frightening and, seemingly, nearly as catastrophic.
Many of the feelings Ricky experiences in the book were born of feelings I myself had or imagined throughout my life. This would include that sense of being different, of something not fitting in, of me not belonging, as well as the shame of private compulsive behavior and fantasies. I often wonder if I had encountered different circumstances as a kid, and been exposed, would I have emerged as Brianna Nicole Austin and transitioned as a teen and had an entirely different life?
During the past ten years, I have been inspired and moved by some of the young transition stories I’ve seen or read. So I decided to weave just of a touch of that sense of unapologetic sense of self into the book story as well.
In 2000 I exploded onto the NYC transgender scene as Brianna Nicole Austin, and there are places in the book that I used some of what was revealed to me during those years, late in life — about myself, and the world around me (transgender, gay and mainstream).
The best friend character of Stephanie, Dorothy, was the vehicle I used to vocalize things I’ve learned over the years, from research into what makes trans people tick, to transgender history. I then used some of that as Ricky and his parents grapple with his ‘condition’.
Instead of making Ricky 5, as I was during my near-miss-being-caught first dress-up-incident, I opted to make him 13. This provided the story more leeway to explore puberty and sexuality, as it lined up with puberty. Many of the older readers may actually identify with feelings Ricky struggles with that mirror their own in later life.
My initial intent for the book was to just be a fun story. It struck me funny how with every desperate move the mother makes to resolve the initial incident, it only spins the web thicker. But, then I saw an opportunity to grapple with some of the issues real parents, teens, and adult crossdressers are faced with when dealing with transgenderism. I did, however, work very hard to remain true to the characters and the story. The result is that it is light and fun, while just touching on heavier issues briefly, without writing a textbook. Some of the more profound and deeper issues about being transgender I will capture in my memoir, The Last Woman & Me.
You can read Chapter One here for free (which has been updated), or jump straight to Amazon and read it there. At the bottom of that page is a link to the Amazon store.
If nothing else, at least read the first chapter (FREE, you can do that on the Amazon site as well) and review or comment on Amazon, and any of my social media (all links on the bottom of the page for Chapter 1), and at most buy it for $3.19 to help fund some free time so I can complete three other books in the works.
Next up is untitled, and very erotic! And my goal is to complete that by summers end, as I have several chapters already done, and written most of the rest in my head already. In truth, I’ve visualized it in my head for many nights during the past year.
I’ve also been sporadically working on two of my transgender-themed full-length books; my memoir written in the form of a novel, with a twist, entitled The Last Woman & Me, and the other is a fiction novel, with a transgender sub-plot, entitled A Changing Season.
Brianna Nicole Austin is an author, writer, columnist and journalist and editor of TGLIFE.com from New York City, now living abroad.
Brianna Nicole Austin