This week, Gillian interviews Ash Sekhon, a historian and gender-fluid trans author living in the Netherlands after time in the US, Scotland, and Canada. They explain leaving adjunct university teaching in the US after Trump-era DEI cuts and now writing full time while supported by savings and investments, and choosing the Netherlands for its tolerant laws and culture.
They discuss Ash’s Victorian-tinged Gothic novella Assumptions, which opens with a man waking in a London morgue and centres on how rumours and respectability culture can destroy lives, paralleling past panic about gay people with modern misinformation about trans people.
Ash describes research into 1830s–50s Edinburgh and late-1800s pre–Great War Europe, references Britain’s 1885 law used against Oscar Wilde, outlines the rivalry between Henry and manipulative Dr. Dick Falstaff, and notes ongoing work on a prequel and sequel.
The paperback is available via Waterstones and Amazon; contact is via assumptionsbook.wordpress.com.
00:00 Meet Ash
00:39 Historian and Identity
01:14 Research and Writing Life
02:22 Why the Netherlands
03:00 Why Write Assumptions
04:38 Plot and Themes
05:35 Rumor as Weapon
07:38 History Echoes Today
11:09 Victorian Evidence Hunt
12:46 Characters and Rivalry
16:06 Sequel and Prequel Plans
17:46 Where to Buy and Connect
18:45 ADHD and the Writing Process
20:02 Wrap Up and Thanks
You can contact us at gillian@transvox.co.uk and find out more at transvox.co.uk