So, with the #weneeddiversebooks movement still going strong, and everyone tweeting about their hopes and desires for #Romance2015, I thought I’d take a minute to take stock of how I’m doing diversity-wise with my books.
I’m doing this both because I want to highlight and promote my books in the hopes of getting them to people who want to read them, but also because I talk a lot of talk about writing diverse fiction, but at this point I don’t feel like my books 100% back me up. I want to see where I’m lacking, and how I can improve going forward.
I also want to encourage my author friends and followers to do this as well, because I want to read and support all your diverse books as well! So, without further adieu, here are My Diverse Books 2015:
Stories with a gay main character:
Stories with a bisexual/pansexual main character:
- The Gentleman and the Rogue
- To Summon Nightmares
- Here for You (short story in the Touch of Mistletoe anthology)
Stories with a lesbian main character:
- None! In fact, I don’t currently have any books published with a female main character. This is something I really hope to remedy in the future, and I currently have two books in the works with female main characters. I’m very excited!
Stories with a transgender main character:
- To Summon Nightmares
- Double Take* (coming in January!)
Stories with a non-white main character:
- Prince of the Forgotten Planet
- Ink & Flowers
- To Summon Nightmares
- Here for You
- Double Take (Here for You and Double Take both feature interracial romances between non-white characters.)
Stories with a main character with a mental illness/disability:
Stories with a main character who isn’t super thin/athletic:
Stories with a main character who is aged 40+
- None! But people fall in love later in life too, so I want to write about that as well.
So, most of these lists are pretty sadly short. I especially need to make more of an effort to write female main characters, and more trans characters! And the two can definitely intersect. I also want to write more characters with disabilities, and who aren’t traditionally attractive and/or young.
I’m a little worried about this list though, because I don’t want to make diversity in my stories into something that I can check off and then go back to writing perfect white cis dudes. I want to throw out the idea that those characters are the default, and that everyone else is a special alternative. Writing diverse characters means that every time I come up with a new character, I’m drawing from the complete well of human experiences, and getting a new, unique person every time. It’s not about creating a character and then arbitrarily assigning them a minority. It’s about allowing my characters to be that way in the first place. If I chose human beings at random, and asked them to tell me their stories, I know those lists up there would fill up pretty fast. So I hope that in my writing I can reflect that.
Please let me know in the comments if you think of any other categories to add, and let me know the stories that you would like to see in 2015. Thank you for reading, and I hope everyone has a wonderful new year!
J.K. Pendragon 