Different beats

http://books.guardian.co.uk/departments/crime/story/0,,2279620,00.html
5/14/2008

"Excerpt: He's as sassy as his glamorous hero, but Somer is quick to
explain that his gender-bending thrillers tend to provoke assumptions
about his own life. "When the books were first published in Turkey,
some of my friends thought that I was a drag queen or transgender," he
declares. "In fact I'm not - sorry to disappoint." Nevertheless, his
books are fiercely faithful to the hero's cross-dressing pals. "Not
only in Turkey, but in many countries, transgender people are
presented in a way that I don't like at all. They are either
slapstick, half-brained characters to be laughed at, or people with no
moral values. My aim with the books was to do what Pedro Almodóvar
does - turn the negatives into positives."