Helen Michaela DaleHelen grew up as a RAF Brat and dreamed of being a pilot herself but failed the medical due to having had hay fever (the RAF considered it risky trying to land an aircraft and sneezing at the wrong moment). Throughout her childhood and early career i pr, advertising and marketing and getting married and having a family, she concealed the secret that she was transgendered. In 1998, she accepted that she needed to transition. Losing one job as a consequence, she joined Greater Manchester Probation as IT Customer Services (help desk) Manager later becoming IT Project Manager. As the first openly trans employee nationally she provided awareness training for probation and prison staff (and others) and became the de facto lead on trans issues. She persuaded the then Lesbian and Gay staff association (LAGIP) to extend its membership criteria to include trans and bisexual members and spent several years as chair. She also helped to found a: gender - the UK pan-Civil Service trans support network and was made an honorary life member when she retired in 2015. She served on local and national diversity boards and chaired a trans charity in Manchester as well as training as a counsellor. Her work was recognised with several awards including a Butler Trust Award presented by HRH Princess Anne at Buckingham Palace.After transitioning, Helen joined a social group, Spice, that provided the opportunity to try a wide range of adventurous activities: learning to scuba dive, fire-eating, diving with sharks, driving a tank - even flying a former RAF jet trainer (fulfilling her childhood dream)! Her colleagues at work would ask what did you do last weekend? then say she'd had such an interesting life that she should write her autobiography. So, she did.'A Tale of Two Lives' tells the story of her childhood in the UK, Iraq and France - joining the scout movement; and the RAF as an Officer Cadet - but being told 'you're not ready for a commission yet, come back in a year'; moving to London and living alone in a bedsit; getting into trouble and purging all her female items. Getting married and eventually having a family before eventually starting to seriously question what she needed to do and coming out to family and friends and her life post transition. After retiring in 2015, she started writing her debut novel 'Summer Dreams'. She also produced a handbook 'Understanding Gender Variance' based on her award-winning transgender awareness workshops. Helen also produced an anthology, 'Transgender Tales', based around a diary she'd kept when she first moved to Manchester and was considering whether she needed to transition permanently.More recently, she has completed her second full-length novel 'Changes' as well as a novella 'Operation Busted Flush' that considered what might happen if a group of trans ex-special forces veterans were to defend their community against attacks by the White House.She is now working on her third and fourth novels Impact and Imposter and has ideas for a number of others.Helen is involved in Manchester Women's Writers' Group, whose critiques of her work has been very valuable and Out on The Page - an LGBT writing group.Since retiring, she has continued to present workshops on trans issues and provide counselling for trans individuals. She has also been a volunteer with Diversity Role Models - going into schools and talking to students about homophobic, transphobic and biphobic bullying.She has a website for her writing at www.helendaleuthor.info. Read More Read Less