A young, gangly rocker in baggy trousers, studded belt and band tees? The kid who fancied Skin from Skunk Anansie and Kurt Cobain from Nirvana (especially when he wore make-up)? Can you see her now?

Yep! I was THAT teen. While my friends were all good about who my crushes were, it was the rest of the world that made embracing that part of me a bumpy ride.

By the time I got to university, I didn’t feel rock enough to join the Rock Society. Or LGBTQIA+ enough to join the LGBTQIA+ Society. (NOTE: I totally was both… but confidence wasn’t my strong point then.)

Working at the Glee Club in Birmingham, a superstar human called Griff loaned me a copy of The (original) L Word box-set. It was around then I realised I was pretty much a lesbian who occasionally fancied people from other genders.

About to move to Brighton from Birmingham, this was the perfect time to embrace this newfound information. Or it would have been if an incredibly beautiful man with gorgeous flowing hair and crescent eyes that twinkled when he laughed hadn’t spoken to me just weeks before I left the Midlands, completely ruining my grand seaside lesbian plans! I’d never met anyone like him, we started talking and have never stopped. Eighteen years later we have a magical little family and are super happy.

Being with my other half, people presume my heterosexuality all the time. It’s 100% rubbish. Any pride I’d mustered in my life diminished to something that I jammed into a tiny box at my core.

Now, as anyone who’s tried to ignore a part of themselves might know, it starts to explode out of you. Every time I thought the female lead in a film was more fanciable than the male, I would get this drowning sensation, combined with a panic that I was living a lie. Every character I wrote or drew were all brilliantly queer AF.

I’d been writing for about six years before I discovered LGBTQIA+ authors like Benjamin Alire Sáenz, Simon James Green, Nic Stone and Juno Dawson. Reading these books was like putting popping candy in my bloodstream. With each LGBTQIA+ book I read, the more confident I became in who I was and with that, my writing voice got stronger.

I’m not sure if it was someone telling me that my other half had ‘cured me’ of my bisexuality. Or someone telling me that queer characters in books were ‘a fad’, but around September 2020 my bisexuality ROARED! She was done being squashed into a hideously hetero-normative box. She was going to come out so loud and so proud, there would be no putting her back.

Empowered by the authors I’d read and their characters, I sent a coming out message to my mum, brother and sister – my other half and kids have always known. I bought pride badges and patches from the Manchester Pride shop, posted about it on my Insta and answered people’s (sometimes truly bizarre) questions about what it is to be bi. I also started a LGBTQIA+ book club at the college I work at to help get these books into the hands of young people who they might help.

It’s through reading and writing queer young adult fiction that I found the courage and energy to be myself. I’ve always suffered with anxiety and panic attacks, but they are much more manageable now my queer identity is a big and proud part of who I am. Coincidence? I think not.

I think every queer author has at least one book about coming to terms with their own inner battles and Dead Real is definitely mine. A comedy zombie story for young adults felt like the perfect setting. I really hope my book can help some people grow their knowledge of what it’s like to be bisexual and that it finds people who it may help to live as their best and happiest self.

Fox and Ink have published Dead Real by debut author Poppy T. Perry. Out now!

Available at Waterstones and other good bookshops.