I figured that I might as well create a bio page for those interested in learning a bit more about who I am. I do not write about my life to get sympathy or anything like that. I post about my past so other survivors realize that there is hope in the world and that one can achieve anything if they put their mind to it.

So Who am I?

You know that is a question that took me years to figure out myself. Lets start out with the basics.

Name: Kathryn K. Williams, Kat too most.
Date of Birth: April 29, 1975, which makes me in my 30s…
Place of Birth: A small town in Southwestern Ontario, though I was raised in Edmonton Alberta, and now reside in Toronto, Ontario.
Status/sexuality: I’m a married boi dyke, which means I’m a very boyish girl who dresses in more masculine attire then anything else. Many confuse me for being a real boy from time to time and it can be amusing to say the least. I am not one to hide my sexuality, never have been for that part, been kissing girls since I was in elementary school and active in the gay/lesbian community since I was 18. I met my soul mate, Kim, on LJ back in the beginning of 2004 and 6 months later she moved out to live with me to see how things would work out. On the one-year anniversary of meeting online we got married, legally, and have been living happily together for nearly four years now.

My story:
Now that we got the initial introductions out of the way time for the other things. I grew up with a very dark childhood, riddled with abuse of all forms, sexual, emotional, physical, neglect and more. I have very little memory from my past or how I managed to survive through half the stuff that I lived through for the first half of my life. Most think it is some kind of miracle that I lived, but I don’t see it that way. I just drifted through life for the most part and tried to make it through one day at a time. It was back then that I started getting into art and writing. I was too frightened to speak and was known to cringe away from any person who approached me. As a way to deal with this I would draw. This caught the attention of several teachers and before I knew it I was taking art classes every chance I got. I was also known to write many strange and unusual stories, but back then I was not very good at conveying my emotions into works because of problems with my understanding of English. This did not stop me from writing, however I kept most of those journals tucked away because I was afraid my family would punish me for the things I wrote about back then. If you really wish to read about what my past was like then read my novels “Dreaming of Another Day” and “A Shadowlander’s Dream” for a taste.

My live pretty much was filled with darkness and death and by the time I was sixteen I had experienced things that most only hear about through the newspaper. My mind could only handle so much and by the time I was sixteen I was kicked out of my home and forced to live in a Mental Hospital, my family pretty much disowned me and wanted nothing to do with a psycho lesbian like myself. So I’ve spent years on my own, struggling with my darkness, and attempting to make something out of myself. While many stated that I would never achieve much of anything I managed to prove them wrong. After getting out of the hospital, at 18, I was placed on Disability, declared too unstable for the working world. I struggled my way through art school, one of the few paths that I was good at, and graduated with a major in landscape and mural arts. Soon after I discovered that this kind of art was not what I wanted to do for it didn’t allow me to express myself fully. I found myself turning to Anime and manga at that time; this would be back in the early 90s. I had been watching anime since I was a child with shows like, The Little Prince, and Fables of the Green Forest, but it was Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind that changed my life forever. I remember watching it long ago and being spellbound by the story. I was never interested in Disney for their stories seemed to fantasy for me, unreal and unnatural, but the gritty and realistic stories of Miyazaki gave me the direction I was seeking.

Back then I was also into gaming, playing a lot of Rifts, Paranoia, Toon, Beyond the Supernatural and later got into Warhammer 40K. People found me a very interesting storyteller so I was quickly promoted to one of the head game masters in my area, also the only female game master. I would spend a lot of my time at gaming stores teaching people how to game, a lot of the time it was girls who wanted to spend more time with their boyfriends and understand what was so interesting about gaming. I began creating my own games that were insane, but fun all the same. Like a game I called “Victims” in which the players are trapped in a haunted house and must find their way out, but before the end they will die, many times over. I created a quick character creation system that allowed people to roll up a character in only minutes and so they didn’t mind dying. They just rolled a new character and continued on with the story.

The popularity of my stories and insane idea, along with the art that I would draw on the sides of posters I made for gaming sessions, started getting people asking me when I was going to create my own comic book. I never really considered it because I thought my stories were completely insane for the most part, but after a time people, including a couple of comic book store owners, convinced me to start writing and drawing something. Back then I ran into an older boy who was the head of the local anime group at the university and he introduced me to the underground world of the fansubbing community. It was here that I gained more attention for my art works and started to attend conventions.

For the next few years I landed several gallery showings for my style of art, mostly at Pride Galleries during Pride Week. Back in 97 I attended my first convention, Anime North. There was a spat about some of my artwork in the gallery that really frazzled me to no end. People had a problem with my outward appearance and my interest in drawing lesbian characters. I had a fighting battle with convention staff on and online even, a battle that ended up putting a lot of my work into the lime light and landed me a job as the convention mascot artist. The stress of this crap that people were throwing at me only made me more determined and I plunged deep into my art work, writing more and creating A Shadowlander’s Dream, a dark and twisted tale that just made no sense at all, but people wanted more. My drive to prove that lesbianism was a respectable form of art and story telling lead me to becoming a Guest of Honour and hosting one of the first gay/lesbian anime panels, which became very successful.

In search for a more understanding community I ended up coming across Yuricon online, at that time they were only known as Anilesbocon and was mostly an online community devoted to shoujo-ai and yuri. I liked the idea so much that I started drawing sketches of their mascot for them and trying to figure out any way to gain the convention more attention. I spent several years working with them along with working on my own works. Going from one convention after another, soon finding myself busier then I could handle and becoming very stressed out.

The most of my stress was not from the art actually, it was other stuff outside of my art. While there were the groups of people who felt a need to pick apart my work or make fun of the fact that I’m a dyke and a survivor no less, there was the bigger problem of the abusive relationship I had got myself into and I suddenly found myself in a very bad place. Not knowing what to do I ran, I ran from my family that suddenly took an interest in me, my ex girlfriend and everything else that was dragging me down. . I was so sick and tired of being dragged down, beaten and walked over that I, along with a friend, ran all the way to Toronto, where I have been hiding from my family, worried that they may find me at anytime. I tried to continue with conventions but finally the stress was too much for me, it didn’t help that my ex-girlfriend was stalking me on and offline, and I just decided to drop everything and try to start over again.

While I dropped pretty much all my old activities I did not stop my website, which I continued to expand upon. Before long my site included reviews for shoujo-ai series, focusing and anime/manga that dealt with romance and not sex, tutorials, my art and writing, forums and finally a place for other lesbian writers to post their works. Before my crash I began working on my first novel, Dreaming of Another Day, which was simply a nightmare that I had written out one day, a very vivid and disturbing dream that really shook me up. With the doctors telling me to quit comic books and conventions I turned to that novel and decided that maybe novel writing was more my style. Over the next few years I pounded out Dreaming and A Shadowlander’s Dream in novel form. Both were not that great and needed a lot of work, but Dreaming gained a lot of attention, causing me to gain emails begging me to write more. This told me that writing was truly the right direction for me, but at that time I was still in the depths of despair and was having troubles pulling myself out of it. I was slowly feeling as if I was losing my mind and becoming more suicidal by the day. The only thing that kept me together back then was the need to finish my novel ASD, because I did not want to leave it unfinished for those actually interested in that tale. All it took was one person telling me they wanted more to give me a reason to keep going.

During one of my rougher patches I suddenly decided to open up my LJ to comments, wanting to hear a voice in the darkness I guess, and that is when she showed up and turned things around. I awoke one day to a simple message from a kind-hearted girl who just wanted to be there for me. She was not interested in my writing as much as me personally and something about her comments sparked something inside of me. I’d dated many girls over the years, but always things would fall appear for one reason or another. There was something different about this girl and I could not put my finger on it, but I found myself falling in love. I tried to stop myself from falling, but no matter how hard I tried it didn’t help. We planned to meet up for Pride in Toronto, simply because it was something that I thought would be something interesting for her to see more then anything else. Everyday I was expecting everything to turn out to be a huge joke, but it wasn’t and she turned out to be more then I ever expected. We hit it off better then either of us thought and on the day she had to return home we both cried, not wanting to be out of each other’s arms. I remember sitting on the stairs watching the taxi take her away from me and just crying. I never felt so strongly for someone like this before and I needed to get her back.

This began the plan bring Kimmy back. The next month we talked on the phone every single day, for hours on end, only stopping when she needed to go to work, as we planned how we would get back together. Seeing as I’m on disability and have a legion of doctors appointments I could never leave here and Kim wanted to get away from where she was so she decided to move out here with me, after I met up with her family. So in August I travelled on several busses, which was hard on me because of my agoraphobia, and finally arrived in Rhode Island where I met up with my love and her family for two weeks before her parents drove us back to Canada where we have been living for many years.

After only five months of living together her mother started calling asking about when we would be getting married. This left us rather startled and we had discussed marriage many times, but for the most part were just enjoying being in each other’s arms. We decided on the very day that she first messaged me, Jan 29th, to be our date. We rushed around as we got everything together and had a small wedding at the chapel in Toronto’s city hall. After that was the long battle with immigrations and disability, who would not consider Kim my wife because she was not a Canadian, that was about a year of utter stress that neither of us needed, but she is now legally allowed to stay with me forever.

Over those years she really pushed me to write from my heart and get everything out of my system. It was because of her that I ever managed to finish my first full-length novel. She has been like a miracle for me, changing me in so many ways and making life all the more worth while to live in. Since she has entered my life I’ve found myself returning to art and writing more then I ever thought possible. With her help we expanded upon the website adding in forums and sales, however last year I discovered myself being pulled to thin and had to drop the site so I could focus more on writing and art.

That is what led me here to DA. I was searching for a place where I could post my works and not have to worry about fighting with HTML and site updates. I know my decision disappointed many, but it is something I needed to do.

Now I’m trying to focus on my write, art and life with my sweet wife. I’m hopping that the future will be filled with many more projects and I want to thank all my fans who followed me through out the many ups and downs I’ve gone through over the years. You have been wonderful and gave me a reason to keep going even in some of the darker days. Thank you.