CIRCLE WITH A DOT

@afewbugs I seldom use the browser I’m afraid. Can you not get him set up with a mail client app?

@junesim63 Indeed you can! And that’s a great opportunity for me to mention my own affiliate bookstore there, where I present a hundred other trans-related titles for people to buy. It’s run by the same company behind Hive and, since the company is Britain’s largest wholesale book distributor, you can always be sure they’ll have the books in stock. https://uk.bookshop.org/shop/christineburns

Had the backlash begun sooner or had we started writing later then it’s a certainty that a consciousness of the threat would have entered everyone’s contributions and my vision as editor of their accounts. We would have lost the focus on what we’d come through to reach a proud and confident peak. The story of the backlash and how it will have eventually been overcome is a different book for someone else to write when the threat is in retreat and trans folk commence rebuilding. I hope to see it.

Even at the time that the manuscript entered the production process in August 2017 there were few signs of the monstrous backlash to come, although it was apparent something big was building by November when I received review proofs. Suddenly the book (scheduled to publish in January 2018) had a bigger responsibility than ever. But I’m glad we got to write it before the world went mad with hate; that makes it a perfect snapshot of where we’d come to before folks rose to bring us down.

Trans Britain was conceived in the late summer of 2016 when I was invited to pitch ideas to the former literary editor of the (demised) Independent newspaper. She had just taken up a new job as head of commissioning for the crowdfunding publisher Unbound and had promised them at her interview that they could get books from the likes of myself. The book was fully funded by pledges from hundreds of supporters in under six weeks at the start of 2017 and edited together by me by July that year…

It’s the middle of LGBT History Month so a good moment to remind everyone that my book, Trans Britain — a modern history fashioned from the observations of generations of contributors — is still going strong in paperback and eBook form in its ninth year. It’s got a new publisher this year and you can buy it in online stores or from queer bookshops like QueerLit and Gays The Word. Hive makes a great ethical alternative to Amazon. https://www.hive.co.uk/Product/Ms-Christine-Burns/Trans-Britain--Our-Journey-from-the-Shadows/23931110

@only_ohm @dan @jaawerth @cstross @Nicovel0 That was my first thought, given that the whole idea of distributed working across a company’s office locations and working from home relies on virtual private networking. VPNs are not just for concealing your current location. Modern business life relies on them. Otherwise we’re back to leased lines.