“Find what you love and let it kill you” – that’s what jumped out at me from the page when I opened my copy of the Guardian, back in 2013. The author, James Rhodes, was a pianist, and a very important friend I hadn’t met yet. I took his words to heart, and carried them with me from that day. They will be tattooed on my hand, some day soon.
A few years later, with a bestselling cookbook under my belt and a high-selling one shortly afterwards, I sat in my small damp flat hurling things at the wall. The third cookbook deal, signed and sealed, had been pulled. I had just come out as transgender. The publisher (I won’t name them, but it wasn’t Penguin), had relied on me using the “A Girl Called Jack” brand, and I had refused. My world fell apart around me.