Uncomfortable inside my own skin

At a Kaffeeklatsch this weekend at LTUE, a reader asked me why it was that I chose to write such an unusual romance in The Princess and the Hound. It’s a romance about two people who are uncomfortable inside their own skins. Prince George is terrified that if anyone knows the truth about his animal magic, he will be burned at the stake. Princess Beatrice is terrified that people will discover that she has been transformed into a hound/that she is a hound transformed into a human body. I spent some time talking about my discomfort inside my own skin and realized that this is a nearly universal experience.

I don’t wish that I had been born male, not really. I noticed as a kid that there were certain things that boys were allowed to do and that I wasn’t. I also spent some time angry about the bouncing boobs that interfered with any athletics, and seemed to draw unwanted attention as I hit puberty very early. I didn’t want to trade my body for a different one, but I felt like there was something about my body that wasn’t displaying properly who I was inside.

I also felt like I didn’t fit the category “female” as it seemed to be embraced by other women. I wasn’t interested in makeup, in fancy dressup clothes, in dresses at all, or in conversations that seemed “feminine.” Much later, I realize that a lot of this culturally constructed “female” stuff isn’t authentic to anyone, and also that I had plenty of internalized misogyny to deal with. Nonetheless, I was left as an adolescent feeling like I didn’t belong even inside myself, like I was afraid to tell anyone who I was, but I was seeking for a group of people who would understand.

Both Prince George and Princess Beatrice go through this same self-loathing/hope that I was going through, and that is why I think that I was able to write them so authentically. It is why so many readers connect to them, as well, because almost everyone feels some disconnect between their outer selves and their inner ones. We are all hiding something that we are afraid to have revealed. We all want to be seen and loved for the deeper, frightened self we keep hidden.