Well I've been reading 'trans fiction' for over 50 years and writing it on and off for about 15 years. My writing emerged mainly because and when the internet arrived.
My own perception about trans fiction is the simple but well tested adage that people write about what they know, or at least they all start out like that.

The logical follow on from that is that trans-people, like everybody else, will naturally write about what they know and an overwhelming majority of what we know concerns our growing up, and the problems we encountered both externally with others and internally with our conciences, our sexuality and our fears.

It's inevitable therefore that trans-fiction sites will attract all and every sort of trans-writer, good or bad, who will wish to write about every aspect of transgendered life. We none of us have the right to judge others on the content of their stories though we might have some right to expect a reasonably grammatical text and language.

We all write what we feel and what we can and what we know and none of us is entitled to judge others because all of us have endured or encountered different histories.

For example I steer clear of stories with strong emotional or sexual content because those are the areas where I was bruised and battered in my formative years. I cannot write about romance or love because I never encountered it or experienced it as it should have been experienced. If love ever appeared in my early years it was invariably as a tool to use against me or manipulate me. Emotion was something I avoided like the plague for it demonstrated my disfunctionality or alternatively, weakness to the other disfunctional specimens that surrounded me.

Consequently I tend to write 'kitchen-sink' stuff surrounding the social, political and economic factors aurrounding transgenderism. It's only recently that I've grown brave enough to dare display the slightest whisper of emotion and even then, the shutters go up immediately if I deem that display to have invited unwanted attention.

By and large, I try like crazy to avoid offending but occasionally my guard slips and I let rip. Usually to regret it soon after.

I could write about some of the most horrendous abuse imaginable like being raped by dogs as a child but I don't. What's the point? I could never draw on sufficient depths of emotion or sensitivity to properly portray the consequences of those years. No matter how I put down the cold, hard, facts they never, never seem to reach that kernel of hatred and despair that lies deep and now buried within.

Consequently, to me at least, my own writing seems shallow and inadequate to me because it doesn't go deep enough. I keep asking myself if I'm only skimming the emotional surface because I'm either too disfunctional to be emotional or I'm too afraid to dig.

My writing will never satisfy me that's why I look to other writers here on BC and elsewhere to fullfill my needs.

Then, when some particular passage has moved me I wonder if I've been too effusive with my praise and sound like an 'arse-licker'.
There's just no happy medium in my eyes. (Dammit, there go my feelings of inadequacy again!)

Anyway, enough of my self-indulgent ramblings. Good luck with your novel Katie.

See you when I see it. QED.